The perimeter quotation is from Mahler. Remaining unclued lights were names of symphonies: 12A Mahler / Schubert; 26A Haydn; 39A Britten; 11D Liszt; 18D Beethoven. ‘Titan’, the name of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, was to be highlighted. First prize Margaret Lusk, Preston, Lancs Runners-up David Heath, Elston, Newark; Mrs S. Arnold, London SW9
The British Medical Association is the latest organisation to fall victim to gender identity ideology. At the BMA’s annual representative meeting, medics called on the government to let anyone change their legal sex on the basis of a ‘witnessed, sworn statement’. But in the midst of a pandemic, is this really a matter worthy of being listed as a prioritised motion on the agenda? It’s hard to see how it is. Yet perhaps a more worrying aspect of this motion is what isn’t included: the word ‘sex’. Even amongst doctors, it seems that the word ‘gender’ has supplanted biological sex. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. For the past few years, a fervent bunch of
It was easy to criticise Westminster for caving into Extinction Rebellion’s demands for a ‘citizen’s assembly’ on climate change when it agreed to convene just such a body at the end of last year. By appeasing the group’s law-breaking, so the argument went, parliament was emboldening XR and other direct action groups to block streets, spraypaint buildings, smash windows and so on. But the exercise, which has just concluded in a handful of recommendations to government, has served one purpose: it has proved that the public’s views on climate change and what to do about it are nowhere near that of Extinction Rebellion. That seems to have come as a shock to the group,
Some bright spark at the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence wants all alcohol intake by expectant mothers to be recorded, regardless of whether they consent. This would reveal whether a mother had consumed a single drink during the first week of pregnancy – a time when they may not even have realised they were expecting. There is no consistent system in place to monitor drinking among pregnant women which, according to NICE, is a problem. Midwives ask about alcohol but it is not mandatory to record the information; NICE wants women at antenatal appointments to be grilled on the pattern and frequency of their drinking and the numbers and type of beverage. This
Imagine a world where Covid-19 has been eliminated. To be certain this is true, the government conducts regular tests at random. The number of positive results should be zero, right? Wrong. There will always be a proportion of cases tested that come back with a false positive test result. Thankfully, for Covid-19, the false positive rate is less than one per cent of tests done. But it is not zero. It will be impossible for us to ever reach zero. Why? Because Covid-19 cannot be eliminated, even if it is likely to evolve to be more benign and become a seasonal problem like influenza. Coronaviruses are, after all, seasonal, and
The object of a slanderer is to blacken the name of his target so thoroughly everything she says and does reinforces his slander. She can have no independent life or complexity. No one is free to say, although I disapprove of her views on X, I admire her for speaking out on Y. No quarter can be given or complexity acknowledged. The slander is all. In the case of JK Rowling, everything she says and does must be twisted to reinforce the slander that she is a ‘transphobe’. Last night, I turned on Twitter and wondered, ‘What the hell are they screaming about now?’ – a recurrent thought, I grant
Why does the BBC do it? Needlessly antagonise that rapidly diminishing section of the population which still has a vaguely nice memory of the organisation? The latest move in their ‘stuff the elderly’ campaign is to drop Sue Barker from A Question of Sport – an enormously admired presenter and easily the best host the programme has had. Why? ‘The BBC want to take the show in a new direction,’ according to Barker. I bet they do. As far away from their audience as possible. The new presenter will tick at least one diversity box, and people will assume, perhaps rightly, that that is why they were hired. Barker should sue on
31 min listen
Has the government found the magic money tree? It certainly seems like it when the furlough scheme and various other Covid measures have taken government debt to above £2 trillion. The crazy amount of spending has been kept afloat by quantitative easing, the Bank of England’s policy of choice since the financial crisis. Some have called this ‘money-printing’ and warned of a reckoning, yet none has come. So what does this new financial environment mean for investors, savers, and the less well off? Fraser Nelson talks to a panel of special guests in this podcast, sponsored by Charles Stanley. With Harriett Baldwin, Conservative MP who sits on the Treasury Select
Much hope is being pinned to a vaccine as our route out of this Covid nightmare. But even if one is developed, would enough of the population be willing to take it? Amidst a growing movement of ‘vaccine scepticism’ online, there are signs that many people would take a lot of convincing to get themselves inoculated. In New Zealand, one in ten people would refuse a Covid-19 vaccine. In Belgium, 30 per cent of people are either sceptical about a vaccine or would refuse one; and in the USA, fewer than half would get the jab. In a worldwide survey carried out by the World Economic Forum, 29 per cent
17 min listen
Damian Thompson is joined by Dr Gavin Ashenden, regular Holy Smoke contributor, former chaplain to the Queen and former boy chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. Damian considers the ongoing row in Westminster Cathedral over a small number of new admissions, and asks why the quality of its music has declined in recent years.
It was only a matter of time before Covid-19 got swept up into the wider narrative of humans facing impending doom thanks to our abuse of the planet. But one might have expected better of Sir David Attenborough. His latest BBC documentary, Extinction: The Facts, broadcast on Sunday night might as well have been produced by Extinction Rebellion, so determined was it to present a hysterical picture of apocalypse caused by consumerism and capitalism. Just to ram home the point, one contributor, naturalist Robert Watson, spoke of ‘many in the private sector making a huge profit at the expense of the natural world’, seemingly oblivious to the far greater rape
‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’ wrote the Bard. He was referring to a rose which is a rose, instantly recognised by its fragrance and its appearance. But a case of Covid-19 does not fit the metaphor, because it differs wherever you look. In the course of our evidence gathering activities, we have gone through a few thousand papers reporting studies on all aspects of Covid-19 spread. We found that not very many defined a case of Covid, which is a sign of sloppiness when that is what you are looking for. Those that did, reported different definitions
I am being inundated with messages from people with what they fear may be Covid-19 symptoms who cannot work because they can’t get a test. So what’s going on? It’s not all about the growing incidence of the virus. Though that is part of it. Here is what a source from NHS Test and Trace tells me: Demand for testing has gone through the roof. It’s almost like the loo roll phenomenon early on the year. We are doing more testing per head of population than other European countries but at current demand even once we have doubled that testing capacity (which we will do by end Oct) we will
‘You have insulted the prophet – we are al-Qaida Yemen.’ These words, terrifying yet clichéd, were spat at a female cartoonist just moments before the massacre of 12 people in and around the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January 2015. Their crime? Drawing. The trial of those accused of abetting the slaughter continues in Paris this week. We should all be following. That this harmless activity, favoured mainly by schoolchildren, architects and retirees, now carries a death sentence to be meted out by any degenerate with a warped adherence to seventh century religious texts is a societal evolution not to be ignored. Of course, it’s only
I’ve been in Bayeux this week. Not to admire the tapestry but to plant a cross on the grave of Private Thomas Bintley, one of the 4,144 British and Commonwealth servicemen who lie in the immaculate cemetery on the outskirts of the town. Bintley parachuted into Normandy on the night of 17 August, one of a small team of SAS troops, and three days later he was killed in a skirmish with German troops. A local man was made to dig the Englishman’s grave and while he did so, he later testified, the Waffen SS ‘danced on the corpse of Bintley’. Having found Bintley’s grave I walked among the forest
Was the Oxford vaccine trial paused? Mine wasn’t. I signed up for it last week, in the 55 to 69-year-old category, and I was told on Friday that I should continue posting my swabs and attending follow-up appointments. My friends were keen to tell me I was ‘utterly mad’ to join a trial. But I believe in vaccines. So do most anti-vaxxers, incidentally. It would be a rare adult who hadn’t benefited from childhood inoculations against polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. My parents, who were raised in the 1930s, didn’t just believe in vaccines they rejoiced in them. When they were little it was all too common for a family to
Totalitarian powers mostly want foreign journalists to go, but sometimes they want them to stay. China recently detained Michael Smith and Bill Birtles, of the Australian Financial Review and ABC respectively. The men were held in the country so they could be questioned about Cheng Lei, an Australian-born anchor for the state broadcaster, CCTV, who is now being investigated by the authorities. Seven police arrived at Smith’s Shanghai flat late on Thursday night last week and interrogated him, pointing a spotlight in his face. Australian consular officials, who had sensed danger even before this, then gave the two men shelter and got them back to Sydney. There are now no
32 min listen
On this week’s episode, Douglas Murray asks – why would anyone want to be a government adviser, given what’s happened to Tony Abbott? The historian Francis Pike reads his piece on Thailand’s Caligula; and Philip Hensher reviews a new book on Wagner. Spectator Out Loud is a weekly audio collection of three Spectator writers reading their pieces in the latest issue.
In the early hours of Sunday, a man walked round central Birmingham stabbing people. He killed a 23-year-old man, inflicted critical injuries on two other people and wounded five more. The police were accused of hanging about nervously in cars instead of getting out and tackling the man. Later, Supt Steve Graham gave a press conference. He could not yet say much, he warned, but he could confidently assert that there was ‘absolutely no suggestion at this point that this was in any way, shape or form, motivated by hate’. The stabbings had not been aimed at gay people, but had been ‘random’. So that’s all right. Supt Graham seemed
After Ted Halstead delivered his speech at the famously liberal TED conference, its founder Chris Anderson remarked, ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a conservative get a standing ovation before that.’ That is because Halstead was not a normal conservative. In a time of American polarisation, he had a genius for mobilising both sides behind a practical and achievable plan, a genius which he applied to solving climate change. Halstead, an American campaigner who died in a hiking accident last week, is not a household name either in the US or around the world. But his legacy may be one of the more consequential of modern times, saving both capitalism