Society

Damian Thompson

Is it time for Christianity to go underground?

38 min listen

Boris Johnson’s package of Covid restrictions announced this week included a rule that weddings will be limited to 15 people and funerals to 30 – numbers plucked out of thin air that will have questionable effect on the transmission of the virus. You might think that a ruling that affects only weddings and funerals isn’t such a big deal for the churches, but that is to underestimate the fanatical zeal of their leaders for implementing, and expanding, restrictions on their own worship. The control-freak Archbishop of Canterbury, predictably, seemed quite thrilled by the government’s intervention. My own reaction, informed by conversations with many clergy outraged by their bishops’ baffling willingness to

Bridge | 26 September 2020

When I first learnt bridge, my teacher (not known as bossy boots for nothing) would thump the table when dummy came down and boom: ‘What is your plan?’. I could hardly say I didn’t know I needed one. When I understood what he meant, things became a little clearer, until he introduced ‘Plan B’, reassessing the situation at some point in the play because things have changed. I was reminded of this as we were watching the final of a strong Online Mixed competition (see diagram). North’s 3♣ promised some values, enabling South to judge that 6♠ should be reasonable — which it was — and West led her singleton

Barbara Amiel: My memoir has cost me my best friends

The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are rather short. That, I realise, is an advantage of sorts. You have less height to lose. Didion is 5ft 1in according to her Wiki entry, and Atwood, a tiny powerhouse, is listed optimistically as 5ft 4in, but that I think is like the Hollywood actors who I know are several inches shorter than listed heights, having stood breathlessly when Robert Redford walked passed me outside Bloomingdale’s in New York City. I mention this because after completing my third book, the first two written over 40 years ago when I was

Whose bright idea was the circuit-breaker?

It’s electrifying! Who invented the circuit-breaker? Thomas Edison patented it in 1879, realising what damage could be caused to electrical equipment in the event of a surge in current created by short-circuit. However, his early electrical installations did not use them, opting instead for fuses — thin wires designed to burn out when the current flowing through them reached a critical level. The first circuit-breaker — with spring-loaded contacts designed to open when the current became too much — was not installed until 1898, at L Street Station by the Boston Electric Light Company. Vehicle recovery Has the recovery in car sales been maintained? Registrations by month: 2019 – 2020February

Letters: It’s too late for Boris

Disastrous decisions Sir: In his otherwise excellent analysis of Boris Johnson’s premiership (‘The missing leader’, 19 September), Fraser Nelson suggests that he could still succeed. It’s too late. Although we ‘know that he’s not responsible for the pandemic’, he is responsible for the government’s response to it. The consequences of that hysterical response, seemingly contrived by a small, mostly unelected cabal, have been, and will be, disastrous for huge numbers of people; the enormity of the failures too great to be set against subsequent successes. Boris persuaded us to support him with a carefully crafted image of a jovial positive thinker, a libertarian and man of the people. He’s been

Is my phobia of upmarket restaurants misplaced?

Scotching my bright idea of a stiff gin for Dutch courage in the bar across the road, Catriona bounded straight for the door of the Colombe d’Or. My restaurant phobia was fast upon me and I followed her into the bourgeois holy of holies more slowly than a nudist climbing through a barbed wire fence. We were half an hour early and directed to the bar. Here my plea for strong spirits was again denied and I had to make do with champagne. Speechless with ecstasy — this was her birthday treat — Catriona toddled off with her flute to cast her eye over the Miros, Matisses and Chagalls in

This was not your usual entitled Surrey trespasser

The Volkswagen Passat was parked next to my field gate, sticking out into the lane, blocking larger vehicles from getting round. The farrier was due in an hour. I looked around and saw a lady picking blackberries a little way down the lane. ‘Excuse me? Hello!’ I called, walking up to her thinking: here we go again; more lockdown torment. I geared myself up for conflict with another bad-mannered Surrey rambler. This one was slumped against a bush, reaching upwards, almost swallowed by branches, apparently not hearing me but no doubt pretending, as they do, that I didn’t exist. ‘Excuse me?’ I insisted. As she pulled herself out of the

Toby Young

The creep of internet censorship

Kristie Higgs, a 44-year-old school assistant, didn’t realise that criticising the sex education curriculum at her son’s school on Facebook would get her fired. For one thing, her account was set to ‘private’, so only her family and friends could read it. For another, she was posting under her maiden name, so no one could connect her with her employer. Finally, the school that sacked her for expressing these views wasn’t actually her son’s, but another one altogether. This seems a pretty clear case of a person losing her livelihood for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy. Kristie’s case is being heard at an employment tribunal in Bristol this week. The dispute

Why crowds are so pleasing

London, writes Dr Watson in the first Sherlock Holmes story, is ‘that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained’. The quote sums up the thrill of a crowd, the excitement of being with lots of other people, of not knowing who or what you’ll see or hear. It’s a thrill that feels a very long way away at the moment. The problem with arguing in favour of crowds right now is that the reasons for being in one — watching men kick a pig’s bladder around, dancing to recordings characterised by loud and repetitive drum beats, drinking alcohol in close proximity to

A murderer among us: I was Dennis Nilsen’s boss

How would you know if one of your colleagues was a murderer? When police announced the man they’d arrested for multiple horrific murders was Dennis Nilsen, many of his former colleagues — including me — were amazed, but perhaps not completely incredulous. Des worked with me at the Hotel and Catering Jobcentre in 1980 and he was unquestionably odd. My wife recalled him saying in the office one day: ‘You know it would be really easy to pick up some rootless young man in a bar and knock them off. Who’d notice? Who’d care?’ For his colleagues it was just another rant, a weird take on his continuing critique of

What I would do if I were in charge of the BBC

Gstaad I’ve been wrestling all week with indecision, the kind that tests one’s soul, and the uncertainty is killing me. It’s like having to choose between Keira and Jennifer, when it’s normal to want both. No, I’m not being greedy — and it’s not even my fault that I’m in this position, but that of my esteemed colleague Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds and a fellow columnist. Two weeks ago, at his most serious, he proposed that I be put in charge of either the BBC or the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Yippee, hooray! Douglas was annoyed when certain Tory wets did not defend the appointment

An independent Kent isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds

The news that a Brexit border will be introduced for lorry drivers entering Kent has aroused hilarity and derision among some Remainers. These critics see in Kent the personification of all that is parochial and plebeian. Horrible old Kent, with its proles who epitomise Little England at its most execrable and risible. The truth is that we people of Kent won’t be too flustered by this new development. Many of us will actually welcome the Sussex/Kent divide.  For too long our county, the oldest in England, has been the playboy playground of rich Londoners and Sussex/Surrey county types who have descended on our wonderful chaff fields and cliffs, wading their cash around, buying

When Garry met Fabi

Send in haste, repent at leisure. It is a cruel certainty that you will sooner or later text your intimate thoughts to the wrong person, or hit ‘reply all’ by accident. The second you spot this, your heart will leap into your mouth. That sensation is much like how a mouse slip feels during an online game of chess, when you move a piece and release it on the wrong square. If the universe is merciful, it hardly matters and the game goes on. In the worst case, you’re done for: it’s time to resign. Internet chess provides another way to shoot yourself in the foot. To make a ‘pre-move’,

No. 623

White to play. Areshchenko–Koch, Bundesliga 2020. White has won rook for bishop, but the queen is offside and his Rf2 is pinned by the Qb6. How did White win the game at a stroke? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 28 September. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1…Ra2! traps the knight on b5. 2 Re3 Kc6 and White resigned a few moves later.Last week’s winner Jeremy Hart, Yatton, Somerset

2476: Playtime

The ten unclued lights (one of two words and hyphened) consist of two themes which can be resolved into five playful pairs. Elsewhere, ignore one accent. Across 10 Source of painting old archdeacon found in spring (10)12 Display and make lace as well (6)13 Richard Murphy, it’s said, is a tyrant (8)17 Tending to wear away motor-biker’s gear returned during middle of week (7)18 Improve hospital in Cornish town with no parking zone (7)20 Could be Oxford poetry at Globe (8)25 Openings of saunas provided at resort (3) 26 Turn down the heat and look relaxed (7, hyphened)28 Abominable chap, one with common sense (7) 29 Snatch old bent coin

Portrait of the week: New Covid restrictions, a Supreme Court vacancy and an earthquake in Leighton Buzzard

Home Pubs and restaurants would have to close at ten o’clock, under new coronavirus restrictions announced by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, in the Commons. Shop staff and passengers in taxis would have to wear face masks and weddings be limited to 15 people. ‘We’ve reached a perilous turning-point,’ he said. The new laws could be in force for six months. Official advice was changed back to: ‘If you can work from home, you should.’ Police would be able to impose £10,000 fixed-penalty notices on people caught outside their house who had been ordered to stay in quarantine. People in Scotland would not be able to visit each other’s homes.

Charles Moore

The National Trust’s shameful manifesto

The National Trust has brought out its ‘Interim Report’, with the clumsy title ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery’. Such use of the word ‘histories’, as opposed to ‘history’, is an alert that a woke view is coming your way. Like ‘diversity’ and ‘multiple narratives’ (also deployed in the report), it suggests plurality but imposes uniformity. The aim is to be ‘historically accurate and academically robust’. According to John Orna-Ornstein, the Trust’s director of culture and engagement, ‘We’re not here to pass judgment on the past’. It is not true, as the BBC reported, that the Trust has ‘revealed’ that 93 of its properties are linked to slavery