Society

Thursday

Taki

The forgotten victims of communism

I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, a magazine we co-founded 18 years ago. He writes about how the victims of communism are less commemorated than those of fascism. The death toll under communism was 100 million (see the Black Book of Communism). And as the mass murders continued, your Cambridge Joseph Needhams and his fellow apologists insisted that Maoism represented mankind’s best hope. Maoism never received the moral obloquy that Nazism did. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which documents the horrific enormity of the Nazi project, has had 40 million visitors since 1993; the victims of communism are marked by a ten-foot statue

Melissa Kite

Will Zooming replace real-life socialising?

‘Are you seriously telling me you would rather meet up on Zoom than in reality?’ I asked a friend as we got stuck into an argument about the future of our existence. ‘Well, it’s all we’ve got,’ he argued. No, it really isn’t. But how to explain to people who refuse to stop being locked down that lockdown is, to all intents and purposes, over? I get the distinct impression that a lot of people have so thoroughly enjoyed sitting on their backsides doing nothing — sorry, I mean finding themselves and getting in touch with their inner child and being close to nature — that they don’t want it

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 11 July 2020

What goes through a world-class player’s mind when he or she stops to think for an age during a hand? I always find it slightly humbling: are they calculating probabilities, spotting chances, and creating contingency plans that mere mortals would find hard to grasp? Almost certainly that’s true, but they’re also doing something else: sizing up their opponents. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve presented a declarer-problem to a top player, only to be asked: ‘Who am I playing against?’ Take this hand. When I asked David Gold how he would tackle the diamond suit, his immediate response was: ‘How good is my left-hand opponent? How good is my

Luke McShane

The Streisand effect

There is no sight so compelling as one that would be hidden. I am fascinated by the Streisand effect, named after Barbra Streisand, whose Malibu house appears in a large online collection of aerial photographs documenting the California coastline. In 2003, she filed a lawsuit to have it removed, which as well as being unsuccessful drew much more publicity to the photo. You can count on that appetite for mischief: Goya’s ‘Portrait of the Duke of Wellington’ was more in the public eye after it was stolen from the National Gallery in 1961 than before. (Wittily, the painting ‘appeared’ the following year in the hideout of Bond villain Dr No;

Luke McShane

No. 612

White to play. Giri–Nepomniachtchi, Chessable Masters 2020. Giri has sacrificed a knight to lure the black king forward. Which move forced a decisive breakthrough? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 13 July. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Qg8+ Rxg8 2 Nf7+ Qxf7 3 Rxh7+ Kxh7 4 Rh1 mateLast week’s winner Alex Everingham, Newton Mearns, Glasgow

Fieldfare

2465: Definitely amusing

Unclued lights (three of two words, two hyphened) have something in common, verifiable in Brewer. Across 4 Everybody agreed to close college immediately (9, three words)11 Look into Republicans’ sentimentality (5)12 Quickly performed the responsibility of guarding Emperor (7, hyphened)14 Advice is rejected for ritual meal (5)15 Elongated figure cast musket (5)16 Irrational row: one sympathises (6)22 Supposed evolutionary force teacher backed in series of notes (7)24 Woman some men idealise (4)27 Do they join torchbearers? (7)28 Grebe’s caution, about to become too large (8)33 South American seeds and coca regularly taken by member of large family (6)34 Like porridge? During working, took some (5)35 Rush along, cold and wet,

Jeremy Clarke

My Great War obsession

Bernafay Wood B&B, Somme, France I came up on the TGV yesterday from the Midi to northern France and it went like the clappers. I fell asleep zipping through stony, sun-baked vineyards and olive groves and woke an hour later in dairy country obscured by rain. What I had hoped for was an empty carriage or at least a socially distanced one, but this particular Sunday train was packed to the rafters. A woman behind me sneezed at my head from one end of France to the other. A bloke across the aisle was soaked in sweat, his head lolling this way and that on the bends and he looked

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The vanity of ‘white guilt’

When I was about ten, on return home from church I ate a peach, the juice of which dribbled down my new pink frock. I scuttled to my room to change, bunching the dress under the bed. I emerged the picture of innocence, but I felt guilty. For weeks, the garment pulsed with accusation. Going to sleep, I always knew it was there. Sure enough, my mother discovered the wad while vacuuming, and she was furious. She could have scrubbed out the juice had I told her about it right away. To this day, I’m mindful that you can only expunge stains while they’re still fresh — and somewhere in

Lucy Vickery

Poems about schadenfreude

In Competition No. 3156 you were invited to supply a piece of verse or prose on the subject of schadenfreude, a challenge inspired by the late great Clive James’s glorious poem ‘The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered’, of which he said: ‘Not my most worthy moment, but somehow I had more fun writing that one than anything I ever wrote.’ Poetry outshone prose this week. Nick MacKinnon’s riff on ‘That’s Amore’ and F. Shardlow’s clever haiku both caught my eye, but they were eclipsed by the winners below who take £25. Because young Norman often smiledHe seemed to be a pleasant child.But sad to say, his joy aroseFrom

The Spectator

2462: Over and Out? solution

The seventeen entries clued by definition only required removal of the abbreviation BR ( = Britain), in keeping with the highlighted ‘BREXIT POLICY’. First prize Elizabeth Hogg, London SW13Runners-up Peter Moody, Portchester, Hampshire; J. Anson, Birmingham

Robin Oakley

Aidan O’Brien’s Derby victory was an act of grand larceny

It wasn’t so much a Derby victory this year as an act of grand larceny. Aidan O’Brien isn’t just a master racehorse trainer. He is a master of psychology too. On Serpentine, a son of his first Derby winner Galileo, he put up a capable but little-known jockey who hadn’t had a winner for 260 days assuring him that his mount would last two furlongs more than the Derby distance. Emmet McNamara duly pushed Serpentine into a massive lead and the other jockeys assumed they would blow up well before the finish, just as two front runners had done earlier in the Oaks. By the time the others realised that

Charlie Campbell­

How dangerous are cricket balls?

The Prime Minister recently blamed the delay in the resumption of amateur cricket on the ball itself, calling it ‘a vector of disease’. Happily, tests have disproved this. Balls contaminated with Covid-19 showed no trace of it 30 seconds later — and recreational cricketers will be allowed to return to the field from this weekend. Much of the complexity of cricket comes from the interplay between wood, turf and the leather of the ball. Bats have changed greatly over the centuries, from curved to straight, from thick to thin and back to thick again, but the ball has remained much the same. A core of rubber and cork wrapped tightly

Michael Moorcock

We’re spending lockdown defending a family of mice

Austin My first Independence Day in the US for many years. Usually I’d be in Paris avoiding Texas heat. My wife and I are self-isolating with much more square feet and wildlife to enjoy. Our garden is lush and green, full of flowers, owls, hawks, possums, squirrels, skunks, armadillos and snakes. Recent wild fires drove more animals into town. Joyously athletic with the recklessness of youth, squirrels and redbirds chase each other through our oaks and pecans and it’s pretty good to sit on the front porch with a cooling drink and the rich scent of magnolias in the evening air. The young hawks are in heaven. They have discovered

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I leave a boring WhatsApp group without upsetting anyone?

Q. During lockdown I have done my level best to assist with household chores. Last week, while my wife was taking her daily constitutional, the washing machine finished its cycle and I took it upon myself to hang the clothes on the washing line. On her return, my wife upbraided me for hanging out her ‘smalls’ as she refers to them — somewhat ironically given their size. Is there a protocol for what washing can be dried on public display and what needs to be aired indoors?— D.R.D., Northamptonshire A. You did well to try to help but your actions must be regarded as at best unimaginative, and at worst

Dot Wordsworth

The increasingly irritating language of ‘love’

It is 17 years since we began to hear McDonald’s: ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ This was always annoying, but most of us could only object by asserting that one simply could not say: ‘I’m lovin’ it.’ It should be: ‘I love it.’ Yet I doubt we’d be more convincing by saying (truly enough) that love is a stative verb which cannot be conjugated in the continuous aspect. In that it resembles know, fear, own or hear. Anyway, apart from the great McDonald’s annoyance, I have become increasingly irritated by the widespread use of love followed by a clause introduced by that. An example in the Sun was someone enthusing about a

The Spectator

What are online shoppers most likely to snap up?

Price of protest Greenpeace was fined £80,000 for defying a court order and occupying an oil rig in the North Sea. What else have protestors been fined for in Britain in recent times? £750 for spray-painting a war memorial in Whitehall in a climate change protest. £430 for spraying slogans on a pavement against Barclays, accusing it of investing in fossil fuels. £400 for eating a raw squirrel at a vegan food market in Soho. £150 for chaining themselves to the gates of a nuclear submarine base. Travel money The tourism industry is opening up again. Who spends the most: Britons holidaying abroad or overseas tourists coming here? — In

Toby Young Toby Young

Does the curriculum really need ‘decolonising’?

Layla Moran, the Lib Dems’ education spokesman, has written to Gavin Williamson urging him to do something about ‘systemic racism’ in schools. ‘Changes to the history curriculum, such as learning about non-white historical figures and addressing the darker sides of British history honestly, are a vital first step to tackling racism in our education system,’ she wrote. ‘This chasm in information only serves to present students with a one-sided view of the events in history.’ I’m not sure Moran knows very much about how the education system works. For one thing, Williamson cannot dictate how history is taught in free schools and academies — they don’t have to follow the

John Lee John Lee

The fatal mistakes which led to lockdown

Over the past few weeks, my sense of the surreal has been increasing. At a time when rational interpretation of the Covid data indicates that we should be getting back to normal, we instead see an elaboration of arbitrary responses. These are invariably explained as being ‘guided by science’. In fact, they are doing something rather different: being guided by models, bad data and subjective opinion. Some of those claiming to be ‘following the science’ seem not to understand the meaning of the word. At the outset, we were told the virus was so pernicious that it could, if not confronted, claim half a million lives in the UK alone.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The magic money tree – what can possibly go wrong?

After every Budget, big or small, Tory backbenchers usually meet with the Chancellor. But on the evening of Rishi Sunak’s mini-Budget this week, they had already scheduled in a meeting with Andrew Bailey, the new governor of the Bank of England. This was extraordinary. Since when does the governor talk to MPs? Or risk upstaging the Chancellor? Worse still, the Treasury had not been told about the governor’s new gig. When the news was broken (by Katy Balls on The Spectator’s website), phone calls were made and the Bailey address was rescheduled. Natural order was restored — for the time being, at least. But had the governor appeared, the Tories