Society

Thursday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: patchwork poetry

In Competition No. 3164 you were invited to submit a poem in which each line comes from a different well-known poem. The cento form — the stitching together of lines from existing poems — is an ancient one, around since at least the days of Virgil and Homer. ‘Cento Nuptialis’, by the Roman poet and teacher Decimus Magnus Ausonius, is a whopping 131-liner, composed of lines, or half-lines, from Virgil’s Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogue. You were required to cobble together a mere 16 lines (or fewer if you chose), but the challenge, obviously, was to avoid sliding into nonsense. It was an accomplished entry — many of you chose to

The Spectator

2470: Express route solution

The unclued lights are places served by the Norwegian HURTIGRUTEN ferries from Bergen to Kirkenes. Tromsø (at 4D) overruns into the first O of 22 Down. First prize Barbara Butterworth, Princes Risborough, BucksRunners-up Alexander Caldin, Salford, Oxon; Glynn Downton, Maidstone, Kent

Toby Young Toby Young

The best leader we never had

I spent Monday afternoon with The Wake Up Call, a new book by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge that lambasts the West for its grotesque mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis. Despite an upbeat chapter towards the end, in which they dust off the standard menu of reforms, it makes depressing reading. They contrast the cack-handed response of the authorities in countries like America, Britain and Italy with those of China, Singapore and South Korea and conclude that, absent a political miracle, the world will soon resemble the 17th century again, with Europe beset by war and corruption and Asia in the ascendant. There’s a good deal in the book to

Peter Jones

Museums need wonder, not wokery

The British Museum’s aim is to use its collection ‘for the benefit and education of humanity’. If that manifests itself in jerking the knee to Black Lives Matter’s anti-colonial agenda, the Museum might do well to learn from the ancients. Near Eastern conquerors used to dedicate their loot in temples, and so exhibit it. It was Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (6th C bc) who gathered reliefs, weapons, inscriptions (one going back to 2,400 bc) etc. and placed them in a ‘Wonder Cabinet of Mankind’ for the public to enjoy. Greeks and Romans took up the idea, filling their temples with collections of relics, statuary and art. The temple of Lindos

The Spectator

Who first committed ‘cultural appropriation’?

Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting Hill Carnival. Who first committed this alleged sin? The concept has been traced to a paper presented by Canadian art historian Kenneth Coutts-Smith at a symposium of the International Association of Art Critics in Lisbon in September 1976 — he used the terms ‘cultural colonialism’ and ‘historical appropriation’. His earliest example didn’t involve black cultures, however, but the Medici adopting an ‘idealised view of Roman Republican Virtue’ in the construction of Florence. Bags of rubbish The mandatory charge for plastic bags is to be doubled to 10p and extended to

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can we be sure our host gives us clean sheets?

Q. Some friends persist on displaying our email addresses in large address lists when sending out round robins to all of their friends. How may I tactfully ask them to blind copy me, GDPR and all that? In chain recipe and joke emails, before you know it, there are 200 addresses included: a hacker’s dream, I’m told.— Name and address withheld A. Quite right. You need to spell out, to wilful Luddites, the potential nuisances that could arise from not using the ‘Bcc’ box. Next time reply with an email which shows only your own name in the ‘To’ section. Open with a reassurance, clearly meant for all, that everyone

Dot Wordsworth

The hijacking of the Scots language

A teenager in North Carolina has been revealed as the creator of a fifth or even a half of the 60,000 entries in the Scots Wikipedia. This online resource is like Wikipedia in English, except that it is in the Scottish tongue — not Gaelic, but the Lowland Scots dialect of English, a Germanic language. Robert Burns was familiar with it, but unfortunately the energetic Wikipedia compiler was not. Even his American English seems shaky. He has been at it since the age of 12. ‘The Roman Catholic Kirk is the lairgest Christian denomination in aw the warld,’ begins one entry. ‘Ane oot o ilka sax humans belangs this kirk.

Jeremy Brown

The problem with fast-tracking vaccines

You have to admit it, Operation Warp Speed is a good moniker. It’s the name for the American interagency programme, initiated by the Trump administration, to produce 300 million doses of a safe vaccine for Covid-19 by January. Who couldn’t get behind this all-hands national effort to defeat the virus and end the pandemic, excitingly named after the faster-than-light space travel in Star Trek? While we wait for clinical trials led by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca in the UK, America warps ahead. Warp speed allows the Starship Enterprise to put aside the laws of physics. Vaccine development also has its own laws, or rather guides, that describe the

Johan Norberg Johan Norberg

The Covid trap: will society ever open up again?

The great pandemic of 2020 has led to an extraordinary expansion of government power. Countries rushed to close their borders and half of the world’s population were forced into some sort of curfew. Millions of companies, from micropubs to mega corporations, were prohibited from carrying on business. In supposedly free and liberal societies, peaceful strollers and joggers were tracked by drones and stopped by policemen asking for their papers. It’s all in the name of defeating coronavirus; all temporary, we’re told. But it’s time to ask, just how temporary? As Milton Friedman used to warn: ‘Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme.’ Measures that seemed unthinkable a few

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The trouble with ‘taking back control’

I sympathised with Leave voters who yearned to ‘take back control’ of British borders. After all, if being a country means anything, it surely entails first and foremost a clear understanding of who comes under that country’s protection — and who doesn’t. Otherwise a country is just a patch on a map. Yet I’ve always found Leavers’ high hopes for reduced immigration heartbreaking. Cutting ties with the EU was never going to limit the migrants apt to put the greatest pressure on British borders this century: immigrants from outside the EU, especially from high-birth-rate countries in Africa and the Middle East — who, absent an unlikely new agreement by the

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Are liberal conservatives now history?

It was a luminous late August sunset, and we were in France, dining outdoors with some friends who have a magical, charming place in the countryside there. We were discussing audiobooks of the kind you could listen to on a long car journey and I mentioned how Julian, my partner, and I had enjoyed my Times colleague David Aaronovitch’s memoir of childhood and youth, Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists. If you haven’t read it, do. David’s family were hardline members of the British Communist party. He was brought up to believe that ‘God Save the Queen’ was an anthem of imperialist oppression, and the revolution, hopefully peaceful, was

Bruce Anderson

A perfect luncheon wine

I suspect, though this may be romanticising, that if a French lorry driver with hitherto suppressed culinary tastes won France’s national lottery, and booked a table at the local much-rosetted restaurant, he would know what to expect. A great chain of culinary being would connect him to the heights of gourmandisme. In the UK, we lack a gastronomic tradition. As a result, when it comes to assessing food, inspissated snobbery often takes the place of inspired gluttony. There are superb chefs: Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, the Roux family. But there are also instances of pretentiousness: no names, no pack drill. These characters forget that the glory of a good

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Government jobs don’t have to be in the capital

Boris Johnson has put a huge amount of stock in persuading reluctant civil servants to return to their desks in Whitehall. His campaign this week to get more people back to the office was tinged with the suggestion that those who were slow to return might be in danger of losing their jobs. This divided the cabinet, with Matt Hancock pointedly suggesting that he was happy with many in his department continuing to work from home. Never one to miss the opportunity for a battle with Westminster, Nicola Sturgeon suggested that the government’s campaign to get people back to the office amounted to ‘intimidation’. But why not see the slow

Tim Wigmore

The science of tennis grunts

The cancellation of Wimbledon this summer deprived fans of their annual exercise in moralising. There is one topic SW19-goers love to complain about every year: the grunting sounds that players emit as they hit the tennis ball. Maria Sharapova, who retired in February, was called the Queen of Screams. Her grunts were once recorded at 101 decibels, more than a Boeing 707 as it touches down. They even inspired a series of ringtones. ‘I’ve done this ever since I started playing tennis and I’m not going to change,’ Sharapova once said. Yet her grunts were said to be mysteriously absent on the practice court. Grunting can give players a tactical

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Remote workers of the world, unite!

A few nights ago on Twitter, I quipped that I was planning to launch a trade union for remote workers. With dues of £10 a year, but membership of 200 million worldwide, I planned to become the Jimmy Hoffa of Zoom (my colleague Jamie McClellan, clearly a Microsoft fan, suggested we call ourselves the Teamsters). If our demands for swivel chairs were not met, we would threaten to homework-to-rule — sitting with our backs to brightly lit windows, perhaps, or running vacuum cleaners in mid-presentation. But in a way, a million or so Londoners are already doing something similar by refusing to travel to work. This is a white-collar strike

Wednesday

Carl Heneghan and Jason Oke

Is Scotland over-counting Covid patients in hospital?

Recently, the government has provided Covid data on a UK basis – merging official figures from the constituent parts of the UK. But are the English and Scottish figures really comparable? Take figures for the number of Covid patients in hospital in Scotland on 28 August. The Scottish official count is 255, a drop of 42 per cent since 1 July. But this is odd when you see that England has recorded a far higher drop, of 81 per cent (from 2,289 to 430 patients over the same timeframe). The difference is much starker when you analyse the number of patients in hospital beds per population, given England’s population is

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What is behind the increase of non-Covid related deaths?

The latest data on weekly deaths in England and Wales, published today by the Office of National Statistics, show what could be the beginning of a disturbing trend. From mid-June to mid-July, the number of excess deaths has been running at below the five-year average. But for the second week running, that has reversed: in the week ending 21 August there were 9,631 deaths, 474 higher (5.2 per cent) than the five-year average for this week of the year. The rise does not appear to have been caused by any increase in deaths from Covid-19, however. On the contrary, there were just 138 deaths for which the death certificate mentioned

David Abulafia

No, racism isn’t a ‘creation of white people’

I remember that, as a small child, I was told not to talk when my father took me inside the public library in Richmond. Now I find that the British Library has rendered me speechless. With the apparent approval of the chief librarian, Liz Jolly, a review of statues and artworks in the library is under way. Among those who are commemorated by statues in the library and who are being subjected to this inquisition are Beethoven and Mendelssohn, as protagonists of ‘western civilisational supremacy’. Setting aside for the moment the implication that many of the greatest composers, artists, writers and maybe scientists of the past should be shunned as

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

‘It’s not a crime to understand science’: Behind the scenes at Extinction Rebellion

There was plastic aplenty at today’s Extinction Rebellion rally in Parliament Square. Plastic shoes, plastic badges, plastic sunglasses, plastic phone covers. A woman offered me a sticker peeled from a strip. ‘Are they plastic?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Someone gave them to me.’ XR is starting a week of demos and civil disobedience. I arrived just as a sit-down protest opposite Parliament was being cleared by police liaison officers. ‘If you occupy the road you’ll be arrested under Section 14 of the Public Order Act, 1986,’ they said politely. An XR steward went around quietly advising the tarmac-squatters: ‘Don’t acknowledge what they’ve said. Then they can’t say you knew you’d broken the law.’ But the cops