Society

Saturday

Aidan Hartley

My narrow escape from a burning aircraft

Addis Ababa airport   This morning I caught a connecting flight via Addis Ababa’s Bole airport. For me this place has always been like a magical wardrobe, leading me towards different adventures across Africa. Today Ethiopia is the world’s fastest-growing economy and Bole is a continental crossroads, teeming with religious pilgrims, wandering tourists, African traders and sunburned Chinese workers. When I pass through the airport I always look for the wreckage of a Boeing 707 jet I know so well. It still sits there, shoved off to the side of the tarmac apron, scarred by time and caked with dust. On 11 July 1989 I was on that aircraft with

Melissa Kite

How to catch a thief

My tech guy Andy appeared on the doorstep in a puff of smoke. I had just texted him to ask if he was still coming and as I typed the words I heard his footsteps outside. I raced to the door and opened it to find him standing, wizard like, amid a cloud of vapour. I sniffed. Mmm. Blackcurrant. He sucked a big guzzle of it in before stepping inside. He knows to stock up on nicotine ahead of an evening with me. He is having to service the surveillance cameras I have fixed in the trees at my horses’ field after two burglaries. You may remember the first was

Jeremy Clarke

War has broken out between me and my siblings

Last night I watched a boxed set. Parade’s End is a small box set as box sets go, and quite old, but my snobbish vow never to watch one is broken. The lead character, Christopher Tietjens, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is an old-fashioned Tory aristocrat. His wife and almost everyone else in the film takes against him, offended by his uprightness, his anachronistic virtues, his always being on parade. Everywhere he goes, he is subjected to calumny and abuse. Baseless gossip nearly ruins him. He weeps occasionally but refuses to lose his temper or defend himself. Apart from plucked staccato violins punctually underlining the lighter moments, I enjoyed every moment

Taki

Two books that made me forget everything else

Gstaad I’ve been hitting the books rather hard lately, the ritzy-glitzy crowd having gone the way of natural snow. There’s great skiing, they tell me, but it’s on man-made white stuff, which is a bit like going to bed with a plastic doll instead of the real thing. I know, skiing is skiing, but it’s somehow different for me. I need the true white powder, and I don’t mean the Colombian marching stuff. My friend Peter (Santa Claus) Livanos sent me two literary beauties for Christmas, Wounded Tiger by T. Martin Bennett and James Holland’s Normandy ’44. The result is that I’ve forgotten all about women, martial arts, booze and

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Never mind the royals – the real national crisis is at John Lewis

Asked to name British institutions they’d rather not see shaken to the foundations, many consumers would list the John Lewis Partnership and its Waitrose supermarket subsidiary just behind the House of Windsor. Indeed some might rank the employee-owned retail group ahead, on the grounds that Her Majesty’s family doesn’t sell Egyptian cotton sheets and organic celery juice. A fall into losses, a management bloodbath and a threat to John Lewis’s distinctive business model really is, in its way, a national crisis. As you flick from one online retailer to the next, pondering how to spend the saving you just made on a load of Lidl groceries, you may ask why

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I’m at risk of becoming a cat person

Just before Christmas our cat Runty died and I wasn’t in any rush to find a replacement. I like cats well enough but I wouldn’t consider them one of life’s essentials. You can’t ride them; they won’t come with you on walks or bark at burglars or gaze at you like you’re the most wonderful, special, adorable person in the entire universe; plus, of course, they are the most evil, deadly and inappropriate predator. Domestic cats kill an estimated 55 million birds each year in the UK alone — and an estimated total (when you add in all the mice, voles, slow-worms, newts and so on) of 275 million wild

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Vampire squids are killing Britain’s B&Bs

More and more of us are staying home for our holidays — but even so, our small hotels and B&Bs are folding at a scary rate. UK hotel insolvencies are up 60 per cent, it was reported last week. Why? Competition bites, said the papers, blaming Airbnb. But there’s another biter, too — more sinister for seeming more helpful. The majority of hotel bookings are now made on the internet, and most of those via one of the two enormous internet travel companies: Booking Holdings and Expedia. It might seem to you and me, as we click away the January blues, that there’s a swarm of jostling online travel agencies

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We want one thing from our royals: patriotism

There is a fascinating social media group which I think we should all join. It is called ‘DeMOCKracy — 2019 12/12 UK Election Was Undemocratic’. I hadn’t realised, but apparently the election was ‘rigged by Tory billionaires’ to ensure Jeremy Corbyn was defeated. This was done with the aid of fraudulent postal votes, Tory lies, a media which was unanimous in rooting for the Tories — including the BBC and the Guardian! — and will lead, ineluctably, to fascism and the gassing of millions. Where is the evidence for this chicanery? One woman on there, called Lisa, who had campaigned with the appalling Laura Pidcock in Durham North West, contributed

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Anyone for a Sussex Royal potato?

Earlier this week, we accompanied our daughter-in-law, Hannah, to her British citizenship ceremony, she having passed the necessary tests. (Hannah is American, from the great state of Montana. She retains her American citizenship.) She had been offered the opportunity of attending a free ceremony with about 20 others, but this fell on the due date for her second baby. She was not allowed another date unless she paid £100 for a private one. This means, in theory at least, that the authorities could earn £600 an hour if they moved fast. So there were only four of us — Hannah, my wife and I, and our granddaughter Elizabeth, who is

The Spectator

Letters: I was once on Prince Harry’s side. Not any more

On child care Sir: Your recent editorial deplores, among other things, the cost of child care, to which you attribute the loss of female skills to the workplace (11 January). I would agree that pursuing a career is easier if one has no children. I also agree that the cost of child care is a significant drain on the income of young families. I am less convinced by the implicit suggestion that cheaper child care is the solution. I speak from experience and with hindsight. My son was born in 2000. For women of my age and education, at that time it was almost imperative to shove your baby into

Peter Jones

Does ‘equality’ mean the same to Rebecca Long-Bailey as it did to Plato?

The candidates battling for the leadership of the Labour party never stop banging on about ‘social justice’ and ‘equality’. But they never define them. Plato did. In his final work, Laws (c. 350 bc), three men, led by the unnamed ‘Athenian’, discussed general principles behind governance and the law. The Athenian then applied them to the proposed new Cretan city of Magnesia. Plato defined ‘equality’ as (i) numerical or (ii) proportionate. This gave people what they merited, resulting in justice. So in Magnesia, private land-holdings were abolished and under (i), each household was given exactly the same amount of inalienable, heritable land, whose produce would serve the whole state. But,

The Spectator

How can Harry and Meghan cash in?

Royal flush The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have registered the trademark ‘Sussex Royal’ as part of their plan to become financially independent. Some ideas from eBay for how they could make their brand pay:   Photograph of Harry, Meghan and Archie (from the couple’s Christmas card) £2 China thimble from the Duke and Duchess’s South Africa tour £3.95 Royal wedding mug £6.69 Box of 40 English breakfast teabags with Duke and Duchess on front £7.49 ‘Funko’ figurines of the couple £19.89   Down the line What do second children in other countries’ monarchies do for a living? Netherlands: Princess Alexia is 14. Her father, King Willem-Alexander, moonlights as a

David Frum

I was joking about Meghan and Harry becoming king and queen of Canada

Washington, D.C. On 8 January, I tweeted about the Sussex-Markles: ‘Obviously the plan is to return to Canada, lead a revolt against British rule, and establish an independent Canadian monarchy.’ Two days later, the New York Times opened a story about the Canada-bound Duke and Duchess of Sussex: ‘Some have suggested they could become king and queen of Canada.’ IT WAS A JOKE! Otherwise, I’m going to have Canadian security surveilling my cottage in Ontario as a node of Sussexite sedition. Yet maybe I had glimpsed something. A poll has suggested that 60 per cent of Canadians would support the appointment of Prince Harry as governor general. When the Sussexes

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Harry and Meghan quit, America avoids war and the Labour leadership race begins

Home The Queen agreed to ‘a period of transition’ during which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would spend time in Canada and Britain. The Queen had summoned a family conference at Sandringham five days after the Sussexes issued a statement saying: ‘After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as “senior” members of the royal family and work to become financially independent.’ Since the plan had not been agreed with the Queen or the Prince of Wales, royal incandescence tended towards the white

The Spectator

Treating oil companies as pariahs will kill off any green revolution

When fossil fuel divestment was merely a gesture by universities, the Church of England and the Prince of Wales it was easy to ignore; it is rather less so when the head of the world’s largest fund management company says that he is going to start ‘exiting investments’ in coal producers and other companies he claims represent a ‘high sustainability–related risk’. That is what Larry Fink of Blackrock, which manages £5 trillion worth of investors’ money, did in a letter to business leaders this week, citing last year’s climate change protests as evidence that attitudes were changing. This fits a more general trend of ‘woke capitalism’, whereby companies that would not

Mark Mason

What is the only London Underground station to share no letters with ‘mackerel’?

Don’t worry, this isn’t a piece about fishing quotas. It’s about the word ‘mackerel’ itself. Specifically, the fact that St John’s Wood is the only London Underground station to share no letters with it. Really? Half a page in The Spectator, just about that? Well, yes. The fact has gathered a life all of its own. It’s been doing the rounds in pub quizzes for ages. At least 20 years: in a trailer for his 1999 TV chat show, Jeremy Clarkson promised to reveal the answer (and then didn’t). No less an authority than Only Connect host Victoria Coren Mitchell calls it her favourite quiz question ever. ‘It’s the comic

Cosmo Landesman

I spent Christmas Day helping the homeless – and I was bored out of my mind

When I told friends that I would be spending Christmas Day helping the homeless at a Crisis at Christmas centre in north London, they all congratulated me for doing something good for someone else. And then they congratulated themselves for having already done Crisis at Christmas years ago. Volunteering at a Crisis at Christmas centre is, I discovered, the Glastonbury of good causes. Crisis veterans all told me about what a ‘rewarding experience’ it had been for them; some claimed it had been their ‘best Christmas ever’. Some take their teenage children along and they, I’m assured, love it too. And now when they ask me, ‘How was it?’ and

The Spectator

‘A perfect knight’: Remembering Roger Scruton

Daniel Hannan Roger Scruton changed the course of my life. He addressed my school’s philosophy society when I was 16, speaking so compellingly about Wittgenstein and language that, when he finished, no one wanted to ask the first question. So, more to fill an awkward silence than anything else, I stuck my hand up and asked him what he saw as the role of a conservative thinker. ‘The role of a conservative thinker,’ he replied, in his charmingly diffident manner, ‘is to reassure the people that their prejudices are true.’ That beautiful aperçu never left me. It animated my career in politics, not least during the Brexit referendum. I spent

Cressida Bonas

Cressida Bonas: Everyone seems to have very strong opinions about my wedding

White House Farm began last week on ITV; a six-part factual drama about the notorious murders. I play Sheila Caffell, Jeremy Bamber’s sister and one of the victims. She was initially thought to have committed the crimes, and was described in the tabloids as ‘crazed’ and ‘deranged’ — an unfair portrait of a mother who was suffering from schizophrenia. I hope people who see it understand the turmoil she had to go through in life. There’s a lot of talk about mental health these days. Researching the part, it occurred to me that we have as a country become much more understanding on the issue. That’s a good thing. I hope

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How long until there are no Jews left in France?

Two years ago I wrote on this platform that France is the most ‘dangerous European country for Jews’ – and so it remains. Anti-Semitic attacks in 2018 soared by 74 per cent on the previous year and the figures for the beginning of 2019 have revealed a 78 per cent increase on the same period in 2018. ‘Jews, who make up less than one per cent of the population, are subjected to more than half the racist acts committed in France,’ said Francis Kalifat last week. Kalifat, who is president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), believes the number of victims is actually higher. ‘A lot