Society

Tutti-bam! Frutti-boom! Musical double dactyls

In Competition No. 3162 you were invited to submit double dactyls on stars of popular or classical music. Fans of ‘higgledy-piggledies’, as they are also known, should check out Jiggery Pokery, the terrific 1967 compendium of the form, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, who, in case anyone is wondering exactly what a double dactyl is, spells it out below: Starting with nonsense words: (‘Higgledy-piggledy’),Then comes a name (Making line number two);   Somewhere along in the Terminal quatrain, aDidaktyliaiosWord, and we’re through. This crowd-pleasing challenge drew a whopping entry. Honourable mentions go to Simon Balderson, Helen Zax, Jill Sharp, Iain Morley, Alex Steelsmith and Fabian Carstairs. The winners

Why it pays for a jockey to follow the rules

Lester Piggott was famous for pinching other jockeys’ rides. He used his friendship with owner Ivan Allan to have Luca Cumani’s regular rider Darrel McHargue ‘jocked off’ Commanche Run in the 1984 St Leger. The disgusted McHargue said that he would spend the day playing tennis rather than watch the race, which duly supplied Piggott with his 28th Classic victory. Asked on Leger morning if rain would spoil Commanche Run’s chances, Lester replied coolly: ‘No, but it will ruin McHargue’s tennis.’ Piggott is famously a man of few words but he can make them tell. Former jockey Dean McKeown told me once of riding 33-1 shot Miss Merlin at Windsor

Rory Sutherland

The danger of following ‘the science’

I have decided to divorce my wife after 31 years on scientific grounds. Though perfectly happy, on reassessing my original decision to enter matrimony it has emerged that at no point was that choice subject to peer review, there was no randomised control trial, the experiment could not be replicated and the data-set on which I based my decision failed to provide the levels of statistical confidence required. In reality, what you don’t know is always more critical than what you do I don’t think my decision to marry was bad, but it was definitely unscientific. Most important decisions are. Indeed if one phrase has most irritated me in the

Soave, an original sin-free wine

‘The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day’: surely one of the most beautiful images in all writing. One might have thought that it would have softened the Almighty’s mood, so that He would have given Adam and Eve a mere ticking-off for scrumping. But no: that stroll ended in the doctrine of original sin. For those who suffer under it, there is one aesthetic relief from stifling, humid heat: stucco seen through green-leaved branches. That combination refreshes the soul. It works even better, of course, if lesser regions have a less aesthetic form of refreshment: the cool of the glass. In pursuit of garden

Rod Liddle

Brits aren’t idiotic – but our institutions are

Two headlines from the same news-paper, less than three weeks apart. So, the Guardian on 31 July: ‘The Guardian view on delaying elections: it’s what autocrats do.’ This was in response to a suggestion from the US President that the elections might need to be delayed on account of Covid. And then on 17 August: ‘By delaying the New Zealand election, Jacinda Ardern appears magnanimous and conciliatory.’ This was in response to the New Zealand Prime Minister postponing the elections on account of Covid. The only rational response to this fairly typical piece of doublethink is that the Guardian likes Jacinda Ardern whereas it does not like Donald Trump. I

James Delingpole

The joy of an illegal rave

Every time I read that Britain’s anti-coronavirus measures are being jeopardised by a ‘small minority of senseless individuals’ holding illegal raves, my heart soars. Maybe there’s hope for the youth after all! I’d been beginning to wonder. In my experience, kids of about university age have been priggish and obedient about the government’s rules during lockdown. ‘Why can’t they just get off their faces on drink, drugs and repetitive beats, like my generation did at that age?’ I’ve often mused. Well, thank goodness that’s exactly what some of them are doing. Last month alone, the Metropolitan Police claim there were as many as 500 illegal raves across London. According to

2468: noah entry? solution

The puzzle’s number 2468 was printed above the grid, hence ‘The theme is confirmed by the information provided.’ Letters deficient in the wordplay of eighteen clues spell out TWO, FOUR, SIX and EIGHT in rows and columns 2, 4, 6 and 8 respectively. The title, a pun on ‘No Entry’, alluded to animals entering Noah’s Ark 2 by 2, reflecting the increments of 2 in the puzzle number. First prize Mary Cotterell, CarlisleRunners-up Tony Esau, Islip, Oxon; Pam Dunn, Sevenoaks, Kent

Beware of beaver fever

Exmoor has just witnessed the first beaver birth in more than 400 years. Last August, fisherman Simon Cooper argued for caution when it comes to reintroducing the extinct species. The verdict is in: hooray for beavers! The rodents that once roamed the wetlands of Britain, hunted to extinction in the 16th century, have been gradually returning to our rivers for some years now. The first, discovered on the River Tay in 2006, had either escaped from enclosures or, more probably, were deliberately (and illegally) released into the wild. In England the first were found on the River Otter in Devon in 2013. Following a five-year report by the Devon Wildlife

Portrait of the week: A-level chaos, quarantine confusion and revolution

Home The government seemed to be taken strangely unaware by the frenzy of recrimination that came its way when results were announced from a system put in place as a substitute for A-levels, cancelled in March. Schools had been told to present teachers’ assessments, to which Ofqual applied an algorithm supposed to iron out anomalies. Almost 40 per cent of teachers’ assessments were downgraded, but even so the proportion of A and A* grades was higher than ever. Yet anomalies abounded, and schools that had performed less well in recent years saw bright pupils penalised; black children and those from poor backgrounds were said to be hard hit. While candidates

Joan Collins: my face mask fight with the gendarmerie

It’s three days since rumours swirled around France that President Macron was going to impose a ‘tit-for-tat’ quarantine on UK visitors. While waiting for the axe to fall, several friends who had booked flights to visit us in Saint-Tropez were unsure whether to come or not. Julian Clary, who had already accepted the fact that he was going to have to quarantine upon his return home to London, told me: ‘I don’t mind having to stay at home — what I mind is not being able to visit my mother.’ ‘Well, I haven’t seen my eldest two children or my grandchildren for nearly six months,’ I retorted. There seems to

The Romans welcomed migrants with open arms

The kind of arguments raging about migrants crossing the Channel to enter Britain illegally never raged in the Ancient Roman world. The reason is quite simple: borders, in as much as they existed, weren’t controlled. Romans did their best to negotiate entry and settlement for armed tribal groups, many of whom they welcomed into the army. Otherwise, individuals and families came and went as they liked. The point is that newcomers were essential — they kept numbers up (Rome required about 10,000 immigrants a year net, not including slaves) and were not a ‘drain on the economy’ because the welfare state did not exist. If they could not carve out

How scared are we still about Covid?

Pink and twisted Bernard Matthews, which stopped making Turkey Twizzlers in 2005 after criticism about unhealthy school dinners from Jamie Oliver, announced it is reintroducing the product. It will contain up to 70% turkey, compared with 34% originally. — Bernard Matthews came up with the idea of making twisted pieces of turkey, allegedly as an accidental by-product from a machine which stamped out imitation drumsticks from reconstituted turkey meat. — The name ‘Twizzler’ was also used by a Pennsylvania confectionary company, Y&S Candies, from 1929. The product, still sold in the US, is made from corn syrup, flour and sugar, with strawberry flavouring. Covid courage How brave have the British

Lionel Shriver

The crucial variable with Covid-19 isn’t ethnicity – it’s fat

In the UK’s capital city, where do the fewest obese people live? North London. The most? East London. The weight disparity between largely white and largely immigrant residents might seem to concern race, but I will argue — against the tide, as right now everything is about race — that, deep down, the fat differential isn’t ethnic. The American and British media have chided for months about higher Covid fatality rates among minorities, and I’ve previously cast medical dubiety on the fashionable claim that these patients are dying of racism. Released last month, a statistically meticulous Columbia University study of some 7,000 cases validates my scepticism. As the New York

Solved: the mystery of the uncomfortable train seats

Readers may recall Matthew Parris’s Spectator article from August last year, ‘Who’s to blame for my terrible journey?’ From 2016 onwards, many rail operating companies, including Thameslink and GWR, began introducing new carriages with ‘ironing board’ seat designs. ‘My buttocks ache at the very recollection,’ Matthew complained. He demanded to know who was responsible and offered £200 to any reader who could produce the relevant names. In accordance with Matthew’s challenge, I sent a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Transport (DfT). As requests are often denied for being too broad in scope, I focused on Thameslink’s Class 700 carriage seats, asking for the names of the individuals

Sam Leith

Today’s undergraduates are customers – and the customer is always right

If you’re looking for a sign of the academic times, you could do worse than consider the image, published in newspapers recently, of Mr Chan King Wai at a solemn ceremony in China last year. There is Mr Chan, grinning stiffly but with real pride, dressed in a scholar’s cap with a gold tassel, and a red and shiny purple gown. Around his neck, a little incongruously, is a stripy Brideshead-type scarf. He looks like he has presented himself for Oxbridge theme week on RuPaul’s Drag Race. He is showing a certificate to the camera. Holding the other end of the certificate, and mustering more of a grimace than a

Isabel Hardman

Why hasn’t the government done more to protect domestic abuse victims?

From the start, it was obvious that lockdown would have a devastating effect on domestic abuse victims, although it wasn’t possible to know just how bad it would be. But the picture is becoming clearer now. Abused women have been telling their stories: a survey this week by the charity Women’s Aid found almost two-thirds of victims said the abuse worsened during lockdown. In a BBC documentary this week a victim recounted how her abuser, after watching Boris Johnson’s televised announcement of lockdown restrictions, turned to her and said: ‘Let the games begin.’ Victoria Atkins, the minister for safeguarding, has demonstrated a good grasp of the problems women’s refuges face.

The case for mass testing

This morning, Matt Hancock claimed on the Today programme that the government is now working as fast as it can on developing a mass testing programme, which is ‘incredibly important’ if we want to ease coronavirus restrictions. The health secretary is right to finally focus on mass testing. So far, the UK’s performance has been relatively poor in fighting the pandemic, and we are currently expected to come out among the worst in the two-by-two matrix comparing Covid-19 performance on deaths and forecast economic impact: While some of this is structural – we have an economy that is more exposed to the service sectors than others and our population is

Ross Clark

Why weren’t we wearing masks at the start of the crisis?

The rise of the face mask has been one of the remarkable features of the later period of the Covid-19 epidemic. Yesterday, France announced that face coverings are going to become mandatory in workplaces where more than one employee is present. It is quite a cultural change for a country that previously banned face coverings in public. Could mask-wearing have been used as an alternative to economically-ruinous lockdown? Compulsory masks in shops are becoming the norm around the world – and in many cases the obligation now extends to the streets and other outdoor public places too. Until a few weeks ago, UK government advisers were very cool on face