Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Is a cow always a cow?

I’ve noticed a tendency among townies like me to call all cattle cows (which they feel they must mention in discussing Brexit). You’d think that a cow was an obviously female creature. (Didn’t Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part, shown from 1965, call his wife Else a ‘silly old moo’?) But that doesn’t stop them. Indeed the main character in an American cartoon film called Barnyard (2006) was a cow by the name of Otis with a milk-giving udder. He was reckoned male and wooed a (female) cow called Daisy. This was not presented as any daring exercise in gender fluidity. One critic recommended that parents should take

The Spectator

The G7’s doomed effort to preserve the hegemony of white power

When the G7 was first convened in 1976 it made sense for those countries to gather. In a world divided between democratic capitalism and authoritarian socialism, as well as between industrialised countries in the West and an almost universally poor ‘developing world’, the US, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Canada were the wealthy nations who could best solve problems. After the age of imperialism, a summit of the powerful seemed to symbolise a more enlightened way of doing things. More than four decades later, a meeting of the same seven countries is an anachronism. What right have Italy and Canada (respectively the world’s eighth and tenth largest economies) to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Prorogation fury, cricketing glory and the PM’s pork pie

Home The government sought to prorogue parliament on 10 September and have the Queen’s Speech opening the new session of parliament on 14 October. The Budget would be brought forward to 4 September. The prorogation caused much fury among Remainers. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, had met other opposition party leaders to hatch a plan to pass legislation to stop Britain leaving the European Union on 31 October without a withdrawal agreement. Mr Corbyn had proposed becoming prime minister for a bit, but few fancied that prospect. Bury was expelled from the English Football League after the company trying to buy the club pulled out. England won the third Ashes

Prue Leith

Prue Leith: My plan to get real catering back into hospitals

Picture the scene: we are filming the opening link for The Great British Bake Off. Here I am in the woods, dressed in a lion suit; Paul Hollywood is the Tin Man, Sandi Toksvig the Scarecrow, and, guess what, Noel Fielding is Dorothy. I leap out on to the yellow brick road, roaring — I feel a hammer blow to my ankle, and end up whimpering like the Cowardly Lion I’m portraying. I have snapped my Achilles tendon. Danny the medic, who has had nothing more exciting than bakers’ cut fingers to deal with for three years, finally gets to use his ambulance, wheelchair and considerable skills. He doses me

Taki

My guide to being a man

Gstaad   I was reading in these here pages Julie Burchill’s review of Candace Bushnell’s Is There Still Sex in the City? when one of Julie’s pearls struck me like a stiff left jab in the noggin: ‘Those who have persisted in carrying on creakily have become increasingly embarrassing.’ Ouch! Could she have had the poor little Greek boy in mind? Of course not, I told myself, but then again… Never mind. A little paranoia at my age is normal. I felt better the next day when a Dutch TV crew of five arrived in the Alps to film a programme called How to be a Man. It stars one

Raymond Keene

no. 569

Black to play. This is from Nepomniachtchi-Anand, St Louis 2019. How did Anand exploit his opponent’s lapse? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 3 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 Bh3 Last week’s winner William Jolliffe, Oxford

Raymond Keene

Peace conference

The classical section of the elite Grand Tour event in St Louis, which ended earlier this week, resembled a peace conference rather than a chess tournament. Well past the halfway stage, less than 10 per cent of the games had been decisive. Something must be done about this tendency and there are various solutions.   The first and most obvious is to switch to considerably faster time limits. There has been a nod in this direction by Grand Tour organisers, with their addition in St Louis of both a rapid and blitz section. Ramping up time limits, however, means sacrificing the games’ quality, which diminishes as the time limits decrease.  

La Jerezana

2423: Redheads

Eight unclued lights are of a kind.    Across 1    Place to take off sari, pants and slip (8) 8    Theatre oddly chucked out piano and mouth organ (4) 13    Barman mixing vodka and rum without hesitation (6) 14    Facade metaphorically protecting the scholarly world (7) 15    Stand our ground round buildings (8) 19    Exercise, sport and vehicles enthralling current South Americans (9) 20    Explosive philanthropist shunning British Christmas (4) 21    Lift man out, taking it slowly at first (4) 24    George I vacuously discusses hypothetical figures (6) 29    Indefinite number are cycling close by (4) 30    Sound of throat-clearing initially after horribly embarrassing moment (4) 32    Lecture wrong old man

The Spectator

to 2420: Crafty

1, 4, 23 and 30 are livery companies (33/22). They are found in The 21 and 2 (the singular of a fifth unclued light). 18 is partly thematic (DYERS), 3 was a high officer, while 7 and 28 show status.   First prize Elizabeth Hardcastle, York Runners-up Angus Ross, Old Portsmouth, Hants; Tim Hanks, Douglas, Isle of Man

Bruce Anderson

Reasons to be cheerful: gardens, Ben Stokes and cold wine

‘The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.’ Is there a more charming passage in the Bible? It makes God sound like an English gentleman, vastly superior to Baal or Ashtoreth or any other rival. But at the end of his stroll, Jehovah would condemn Adam and his descendants to the penalties of original sin. Gods are kittle cattle. In the heat of the day, there is much to be said for gardens, as long as one has shade, a book and cold wine plus, perhaps, the temptation of a pool. I can unstintingly recommend one book. It might seem paradoxical to describe Tim Bouverie’s

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why no one ever moves back to London

In last week’s Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer replied to a couple with a baby who had sought his advice on accepting a low offer for their cramped London flat to buy a house in commuterland. Their fear was that, if Brexit led to a property crash, they could face negative equity. Should they call the whole thing off? Emphatically not, said Martin. ‘Buying a family home is a long-term choice, rarely regretted, in which fluctuating value matters far less than whether you love the house.’ He’s right, I’m sure. But I’d like to add a further thought experiment which may reaffirm their decision. I recently heard of a different property

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Now is the wrong time to tackle rising boardroom pay

The average FTSE 100 chief executive earned £3.5 million last year — 117 times the £29,574 pay of the average full-time UK worker, according to new figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Other sources tell us that at the last count, 54 of those FTSE 100 chiefs were British, 21 held other EU passports, nine were Americans and 16 from the rest of the world. ‘So what?’ I hear you ask. These are global companies competing in a global market for management talent. Has not the average FTSE 100 chief’s pay actually fallen from £5.4 million since 2015, while UK wage rates have been rising this year

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Don’t blame snowflakes – grown-ups are the idiots

San Francisco must be the virtue capital of the world. (The latest: just across the bay, Berkeley’s city council voted this summer that ‘manholes’ must hereon in be called ‘maintenance holes’.) But when the lofty run out of real enemies, they often turn on their own kind. Moreover, too much success in achieving a raft of progressive purposes means a runaway train with no sensible destination careens off the tracks. That’s the only explanation for the disconcerting San Francisco School Board spat over what to do with a series of 13 massive murals on the interior of the city’s George Washington High School. The murals’ now-esteemed creator, Victor Arnautoff, was

Matt Ridley

The most dangerous thing about the Amazon fires is the apocalyptic rhetoric

Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese expert on forests who also plays football, so when he shared a picture online of a recent forest fire in the Amazon, it went viral. Perhaps he was in a rush that day to get out of the laboratory to football training, because it later transpired that the photograph was actually taken in 2013, not this year, and in southern Brazil, nowhere near the Amazon. But at least his picture was only six years old. Emmanuel Macron, another forest ecologist who moonlights as president of France, claimed that ‘the Amazon rainforest — the lungs which produce 20 per cent of our planet’s oxygen — is

Adam Holloway

What I’ve learned from five months sleeping on the streets

Over the years, I have spent around five months sleeping rough on the streets of London, Birmingham and New York, making undercover TV programmes. Matthew, who works in my Westminster office, spent last summer involuntarily homeless after he was cheated by his business partner. I suspect we are the only people within the Palace of Westminster who have been through the unpleasant experience of sleeping rough, and we both have come to the same conclusion. Street homelessness (as opposed to the homelessness of temporary accommodation) is, for the most part, a symptom or consequence of a different problem: addiction to drink or drugs, or mental illness. If politicians want to

Lucy Vickery

Initial impressions

In Competition No. 3113 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem about a politician in which the first letter of each line spells the name of that politician.   While most of set your sights on modern-day politicians, David Silverman (as well as his poignant prizewinning haiku) penned a double-dactylic portrait of Caesar Augustus:   Cheesius Maximus: Augustus Caesar Empowered the People and Senate of Rome. Annexed Hispania; Raided North Africa; Authoritarian — Unless at home… Ian Barker earns an honourable mention, the winners below take £20. Joyless autumn day: Falling like cherry blossom, Killed from grassy knoll David Silverman   Wily old warhorse, you made your name great

Wednesday

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

The problem with Greta Thunberg’s sea crossings

Greta Thunberg’s yacht, the Malizia II, has delivered her to the UN climate conference in New York – two weeks after she first set sail from Europe. The transatlantic trip was a masterstroke in PR, with every major media outlet broadcasting updates on the journey and detailing the hardships Thunberg has endured – no toilet, no shower and sea sickness. The accusations of hypocrisy have also rolled in thick and fast, criticising everything from the plastic water bottles used by the crew, to the long-haul flights taken by the sailors responsible for returning the yacht to Europe. Thunberg has discovered the perils of pursuing such an ideologically pure cause: if you preach

Tuesday

Toby Young Toby Young

The Royal Mint’s transphobic decision to snub Enid Blyton

Who knew the Royal Mint, of all places, had been captured by the cult of political correctness? According to the Mail, the Mint’s Advisory Committee decided not to put Enid Blyton on a 50p coin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death because she is ‘a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer’. That’s an odd statement, since it suggests that had she been a better-regarded writer, her racism, sexism and homophobia would have been overlooked. Perhaps that’s the Mint’s rationale for not removing Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare from the £10 note and £20 note respectively, in spite of their liberal use of anti-Semitic caricatures. The

Monday

Toby Young Toby Young

I’m back on the ‘public humiliation diet’ – thanks to my kids | 26 August 2019

I’m on holiday with my family in Turks and Caicos, and maintaining my current weight is proving difficult. Regular readers will recall that I lost about half a stone at the beginning of 2018, after an army of offence archeologists started sifting through everything I’d written, dating back more than 30 years, looking for evidence that I was an unsuitable person to be involved in education. Since then, this type of inquisition has become much more common — scarcely a day passes without someone being defenestrated from public life on account of having said or done something imprudent in the past — but 18 months ago it was sufficiently distressing