Society

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry’s strange concussion anecdote

Emily Thornberry took to the stage today at Labour conference to try and make the case for her party backing an unequivocally Remain position ahead of a potential second referendum. Perhaps wisely, the Shadow Foreign Sec opted to ditch her EU themed outfit from yesterday, but Thornberry still managed to cause a stir with her conference speech. In one section, Thornberry recounted the unfortunate moment that she was hit by a cab earlier this year, before segueing into a slightly salacious tour of her past: ‘When I got knocked off my bike by a black cab in July I was lying in a gutter near Westminster Central Hall, after my

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

‘That’s Life’ podcast – a sideways look at the news agenda

In the new That’s Life podcast, comedian Simon Evans joins journalist Benedict Spence and Spectator Life contributor Andy Shaw to give you a sideways look at the events, people, words and ideas that shape the news agenda. Andy and Benedict talk to Simon about cancel culture, Boris’s hospital debacle and why Guy Verhofstadt is his unlikely hero (or villain) of the week. Simon has performed stand-up comedy at Live at the Apollo and the Edinburgh Fringe. He also hosts and writes Radio 4’s Simon Evans goes to Market. As well as writing for Spectator Life, Andy is the co-founder of London’s free-thinking comedy club Comedy Unleashed. Benedict is a regular

Sunday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

If Richard Dawkins loves facts so much, why can’t he get them right?

Professor Richard Dawkins has written a book called Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Its aim is to save children and young people from belief in the sky fairy. A couple of weeks ago he was plugging it on Channel 4 News. ‘Facts are so wonderful… and such a treat!’, he trilled, sounding not unlike the late Queen Mother. Indeed. Which is why a thread that appeared on Twitter on Saturday is so delicious. It was written by George Heath-Whyte, a researcher at Cambridge. It begins: ‘Reading @RichardDawkins new book “Outgrowing God”, and as an Assyriologist I’ve had a couple of major face-palms moments.’ In a chapter called ‘Goodbye God’, Dawkins

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Mogg-friendly memos

Your latest challenge was to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with the approval of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Leader of the House recently sent his departmental staff a list of rules regarding grammar and vocabulary. The words ‘ongoing’ and ‘hopefully’ are out; imperial measurements are in. All non-titled males are henceforth to be referred to as ‘esquire’. Although Mr Rees-Mogg takes a dim view of words such as ‘very’, ‘got’ and ‘lot’, mischief-makers at the Guardian have pointed out that, according to Hansard, the honourable member himself has used one or other of the proscribed words or phrases on more than 700 occasions. Adrian Fry,

Saturday

James Morris

The ‘Mondeo man’ myth

In the run-up to every election, newspapers fill with articles about the handful of voters that will supposedly swing the result – ‘soccer moms’, ‘NASCAR dads’, ‘Worcester women’, even ‘pebbledash people’. Occasionally this analysis is useful. Normally it is not. In the past six UK elections, 84 per cent of demographic groups swung in the same way as the population as a whole. A common trick to make a target group sound like it’s worth focusing on is to highlight what is distinctive about them, at the expense of what is important. For example, Guardian readers are more likely to be Labour voters (73 per cent voted Labour in 2017) than

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

School climate strikers should answer these two questions

“The Earth is dying”, “the world is on fire”, we’re undergoing an “environmental extinction”: just three of the sentiments which have been expressed by today’s climate “strikers” and which, unlike even moderate expressions of scepticism on matters of climate science, seem to escape without challenge. While it is tempting to think of today’s climate “strike” by schoolchildren around the world as a case of truants finding an ethical excuse to skip lessons, I think many are acting for genuine reasons: they are traumatised. They are the reflection of the hyperbolic coverage of climate change by Al Gore, Hollywood and even, latterly, David Attenborough – films where footage of fires, hurricanes

Douglas Murray

The white lies of the gay press

Readers may be unaware that I have a new book out this week (which readers might purchase from Amazon or anywhere else where books are found). The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity came out on Tuesday with a big bash at The Spectator’s offices in London. But the thing I was hoping for most – the thing that has made me happiest about the reception of the book – is neither the plaudits of the friendly nor the congratulations of the wise. The thing that I anticipated most eagerly were the attacks on me from what remains of ‘the gay press’. True, I have not been kind to them

Thursday

Taki

Why I prefer cows to humans

Gstaad   The cows are coming down, the cows are coming down, and I’m off to the Bagel. My Swiss neighbours have cut, raked and baled the grass that the sweet four-legged ones with bells around their necks will be eating all winter while indoors. They will parade through the town next week, and it will certainly be an improvement after the kind of tourists we’ve been getting of late. Give me four-legged beings any old day — and I really mean that. I’ll give you a brief example. Last week, when I was in the Gstaad local bank, a couple came in and went to the teller next to

Jeremy Clarke

Semi-recluse (me) seeks dilapidated cottage on Dartmoor to rent

So now I must find somewhere else to put my books and live sometimes. Dartmoor, I thought: one of the wildest places left in England yet just 20 minutes to Exeter St David’s station, if my car starts, and another 20 to Torbay hospital along the new bypass for appointments and treatments. What I have in mind is a miner’s cottage with bracken growing against the granite walls and an indefatigable little stream passing close by for use when the pipes freeze. There would be no wifi, no phone signal, no BBC radio or television. Final demands would be left in a postbox at the end of the unmade track

Melissa Kite

What Brexiteers can teach Remoaners about good manners

‘If we are going to Westminster to riot,’ I told my Brexit-voting friends over dinner at the Thai restaurant at our local pub, ‘then we are going to have to work out where to park. I don’t want to get a ticket.’ We shifted our noodles around our plates and chewed our sizzling beef strips thoughtfully. Outside in the country lanes of Surrey, the dark September evening was settling down, the owls hooted, and the screaming Remoaners in their EU berets seemed very far away. ‘Maybe we won’t have to go to London,’ said one of us, a farmer. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s a good idea. We could just take

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can I ask my vegan friend to buy eggs and bacon when I stay with her?

Q. The other day a dear friend rang from her car with all the time in the world to burn as she crawled along the Hammersmith flyover. I was at my desk working, as I politely told her. Now she has described me as unfriendly. How can one appropriately deal with the frequent asymmetry on the leisure-work spectrum of two interlocutors as a result of the use of the mobile when walking or in a car or train? — O.R., London SW1 A. The busy one should say: ‘How lovely to hear from you. Can I ring you back later when I’m alone?’ The suggestion that there is someone else

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

It’s so easy to go mad in Oxford: Chiang Mai Kitchen reviewed

Oxford is a pile of medieval buildings filled with maniacs, and is therefore one of the most interesting places on earth. It is easy to go mad in Oxford — it’s the damp — or grow other worlds, like John Tolkien, whose Middle Earth, I suspect, was largely an emotional defence against the conversation at High Table. I found the cognitive dissonance between the landscape and its purpose so alarming, like finding David Cameron riding an Ent, that I went mad, and so know far less about Tudor foreign policy than I should. It was more awful than it sounds — that is youth’s anguish — and I could not,

Dot Wordsworth

The link between politics, moisturiser and your air conditioning unit

I asked my husband if I should spend £59 on 20 millilitres of Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Intense Reset Concentrate. He laughed and said: ‘Try chicken soup.’ This did not quite answer my question. An ingredient of the concentrate is hyaluronic acid. It is not, as far as I can tell, an acid. It is named after the vitreous humour of the eye (hualoeides being the Greek for ‘glassy’). It is not derived from animals’ eyes, but from cocks’ combs. It can also be produced by Streptococci and genetically modified Escherichia coli, alarming-sounding sources not, I think, used by cosmetics firms. We humans produce it naturally, and, having boiled

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: EU negotiations, genderless babies and Brexit in court

Home ‘I will uphold the constitution, I will obey the law, but we will come out on 31 October,’ Boris Johnson told the BBC, adding that the EU ‘have had a bellyful of all this stuff’. After a lunch of chicken and pollock at the Bouquet Garni in Luxembourg with Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, he found noise from British protesters made it impossible for him to join Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, in an open-air press conference, so Mr Bettel continued on his own, gesturing angrily to an empty podium and saying what a ‘nightmare’ of uncertainty Britain had left Europe in. A couple

Nick Robinson

Nick Robinson: is the country ready for Hexit?

The nation is deeply divided. We can, it seems, talk of almost nothing else. Passions could scarcely be higher. No court or parliament can block or postpone it. Hexit is happening. That’s right. Hexit. Humphrys is leaving the Today programme after 30 years. On learning the news, one of more than seven million loyal listeners revealed his outrage and sense of loss, tweeting: ‘Who will I shout at on the radio in future?!’ My friend and companion in the Today studio Justin Webb replied with his characteristic charm. ‘Oh, that’s simple. Nick Robinson.’ I have been warned. John is famously irascible. His on-air harrumphing has often been preceded by off-air

Raymond Keene

no. 572

White to play. This is from Nguyen-Alekseenko, Khanty-Mansiysk 2019. White’s queen and rook are both attacked. How does he maintain material parity? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 24 September or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. 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 Ne6+ Last week’s winner Colin List, Canterbury

Raymond Keene

Adopt a hero

I am often asked which players I admire most and which grandmasters, writers and champions exerted the most influence on my own chess development. In general I was most impressed by the strategists and writers such as Richard Réti, whose games were brilliantly elucidated in an anthology by grandmaster emeritus Harry Golombek OBE, and Aron Nimzowitsch, who expounded his own theories in the two didactic masterpieces, My System and Chess Praxis. Others who fall into the strategic category are Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian; and two superlative tacticians in the persons of Alexander Alekhine and Mikhail Tal.   In the weeks ahead I will be coupling creative achievements by these heroes

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 19 September 2019

The bridge world championships are underway in Wuhan in China, and I’m obsessively following the action online. Fortunately it’s taking place in a different time zone, which means play is over by midday UK time, and I can emerge from my bunker. What makes it even more compelling is knowing all the England players — some are friends and occasional partners. In fact, I was lucky enough to be playing with the superstar of our open team, Andrew Robson, just two days before he left. We were guests of our friend Stuart Wheeler, who hosts an annual rubber bridge week and spoils us all to the hilt. The stakes are

Mr Magoo

2426: Her love

The unclued lights (including one of three words, two of two words, and a pair) are names for or are connected with a character. Two further four-letter names hidden in one row must be highlighted.   Across 1    Discharge sailor to work out (7) 6    New mums with potential addition (7) 11    Bravo, cool dude (6, two words) 12    Worldly nun made merry (7) 14    Senior statesmen have records (5) 15    One given Celtic name in English by American (5) 17    Singer’s volume is turned to zero by English girl (6) 19    Driver of workings girls reversed where Will lived (9) 21    Noise of bird is heavenly phenomenon (7) 24    Shut up a

Mat Vaillancourt

My love-hate relationship with Greta Thunberg

Like many people, I am fascinated with Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise. For me, her appeal is not to do with her environmental campaign: it’s because she is a well-known figure on the autistic spectrum. Like Greta, I have Asperger Syndrome. I was diagnosed when I was a young teenager in 2002, before Greta was born. While I admit that I have mixed feelings about Greta Thunberg, I find the hatred she engenders disturbing. Some of Thunberg’s detractors on social media say she is ‘mentally unstable’, ‘used by others’ and ‘fragile’. This taps into the dangerous stereotype that people with her condition are incapable of being autonomous individuals who can make