Society

Thursday

Cheesecracker

2400: Unclued

All unclued entries are, unusually, not all unclued; all are different and there are no proper nouns. A repeated cryptic clue fixes not only once such entry, but also the central 2×2 block and, as a result, another such entry. Ignore one accent. Doc writes: we welcome Cheese-Cracker to the compiling team.   Across 1    Son getting money from uncle having worked hard on source of new ideas (14, hyphened) 9    New group of drinkers starts to fade in canteen (5) 11    Yes, fly over for a quick look (5) 12    F1 driver once heard making a bigger noise (6) 13    In time, shouting annoys non-EU nationals (5) 14    Depiction

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The new banality of evil

‘Remember, lads: Subscribe to PewDiePie.’ With these words, the killer began broadcasting his slaughter of 50 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, live on the internet — and a new form of terrorism was born. For those unfamiliar with internet subculture, PewDiePie is a Brighton-based videogames blogger whose YouTube channel, the largest in the world, is known for its politically incorrect humour. His crown is about to be snatched by T-Series, a Bollywood music channel. The rivalry has sparked the ‘War against T-Series’ — online gamers all speak like semi-ironic Dr Strangeloves — in which PewDiePie’s ‘Bro Army’ of adolescent fanboys pull off stunts of varying taste and

Cameron Bennett

New Zealand Notebook

In a blink, everything has changed and yet nothing has changed. Life goes on. The long, hot days of a record summer are lazily tumbling into autumn, gridlock has returned to the motorways, the kids are back at school. But the murderous events in Christchurch last Friday have distorted everything for us as a nation. This far-flung little haven of ours — we’ve been so proud of its unspoilt coastlines, its quirkiness, its outsized achievements (in our minds, anyway), its inclusiveness and safety. Bad stuff happened somewhere else. We thought we were different. We thought distance protected us from global extremism. The horrendous events have left us questioning so much

The Spectator

to 2397: Obit V

Albert Finney, a fine ACTOR (13), died on 7 February 2019. His legacy includes SATURDAY NIGHT (10) and SUNDAY MORNING (9), and TOM JONES (1), THE DRESSER (27/24) and SKYFALL (28). BYTE (20), FAR (17) and LINEN (40) give an anagram of ALBERT FINNEY. LINEN was to be shaded. First prize Andy Wallace, Coventry Runners-up John Fahy, Thaxted, Essex; Frank Maslen, London W1

Toby Young Toby Young

Cambridge’s shameful decision to rescind Jordan Peterson’s visiting fellowship

According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s ‘Freedom of Expression’ guide for higher education providers and students’ unions in England and Wales, no speaker has a right to be invited to speak to students on a provider’s premises, but once someone has been invited they should not then be disinvited. It even suggests this may be a breach of Section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986, which places a legal duty on universities to take ‘reasonably practicable’ steps to protect freedom of speech. Please, God, let Jordan Peterson sue Cambridge University for having invited him to take up a visiting fellowship, only to rescind the invitation after

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the DUP are worried about Tory succession

It is the morning after the Bercow before, and it seems pretty much certain that there won’t be a meaningful vote 3 until after the European Council. Whatever is decided there on an extension, should be enough for the government to say that the package is different enough to justify bringing it back for another vote. But there is no point in the government bringing it back for another vote unless it has a chance of winning that vote, and it won’t have that without the DUP. I understand that these negotiations are going relatively well. But one of those familiar with DUP thinking tells me that one concern they

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The journalist investigated by police for ‘using the wrong pronouns’

Here we go again. Another woman is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence — because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender. So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a journalist over words that she published. Caroline Farrow, 44, is the subject of an investigation by Surrey Police over tweets she sent referring to the adult child of Susie Green, head of Mermaids, a charity concerned with transgender children. Farrow says the investigation arises because she ‘misgendered’ the child, who was born male but now

Douglas Murray

Who should we blame for the Christchurch atrocity?

A frequent complaint heard from Muslim communities in recent years has been irritation and anger over any suggestion that Muslims – as a whole – need to apologise for attacks carried out in the name of their religion. I have sympathy for this irritation, tying as it does innocent people to the actions of guilty ones. But since the attack in New Zealand was carried out by a non-Muslim who was targeting Muslims, whether or not it needs to be said still it should be said – indeed must be said – that non-Muslims abhor, are disgusted, outraged and sickened by somebody going into a place of worship and gunning

J. Meirion

Wanted: UK doctors

For years, Britain has been failing to train enough doctors and has been importing them instead. This has been a well-known and much lamented fact, raising several ethical issues. Is it right for us to rob developing countries of their much-needed medics? Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said at the Spectator’s health summit this week that Britain should stop ‘denuding low-income countries of health professionals they need’. Quite so. Which makes it all the more shocking that last year, for the first time ever, the UK imported more doctors than it trained. And the problem Stevens highlights has, under his leadership, been getting steadily worse.  Look at the

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Scotland the bravest

Outside the rugby superhighway of the A316, linking Richmond, Rosslyn Park, the Quins and HQ, it’s hard to imagine anyone who cares about rugby not on their feet cheering Scotland’s miraculous recovery in the Calcutta Cup finale to the Six Nations. To say England are disliked by the rest of the rugby world doesn’t really do justice to it. On Lions tours, the English are famous for being outsiders — apart from Martin Johnson, and we know how well he got on with the blazers. So how on earth did a tiny rugby nation like Scotland humiliate mighty England (and though it was a draw, make no mistake: England were

Ben Goldsmith

Beavers in Britain

There is a particularly magical West Country woodland that I know, through which a sunlit stream meanders, braided by a series of neatly dammed pools that hum with life; dragonflies and mayflies, swallows, swifts, kingfishers, amphibians and small fish teem here in numbers rarely seen in Britain. The birdsong is cacophonous. The water’s edge is lined with the fresh growth of willow, hazel and alder, artfully coppiced as if by a skilful gardener. This wood happens to be home to a family of reintroduced beavers. Beavers were eradicated from Britain centuries ago, hunted for their fur and for the valuable castoreum oil which is found in sacs under their tails.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Bigness in banking isn’t a virtue, so beware of defensive mergers

It never works to take two unhappy companies and blend them into a bigger pile of misery. That’s the way it looks at the investment giant Standard Life Aberdeen, known to some as ‘Staberdeen’, where Aberdeen Asset Management founder Martin Gilbert seems to have just lost a power struggle with his former co-chief executive Keith Skeoch from the Standard Life side. And that’s certainly the way in Frankfurt, where Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are being shoved together by pressure to create what German finance minister Olaf Scholz foresees as a national champion that would be the second largest lender in the eurozone (after BNP Paribas of France) and impregnable to

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The new age of the apothecary

A few months ago I had possibly the best massage I’ve ever had. My masseuse, Anouschka, had learned her skills in a remote village in Thailand where she’d lived for a year in a mosquito-infested hut with the local medicine woman. I asked how she’d survived the mozzies. Anouschka explained that she’d just done what the villagers do: eaten a diet heavy in chilli and garlic which seeps through your pores in the night and stops you getting bitten. Whenever she travels to exotic climes, she seeks out the nearest cow and drinks its raw milk. This, she explains, is the perfect prophylactic against the local stomach bugs. I can’t

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Which 21st century noise annoys you the most?

I live with a ghost, or rather, I share an address with a man who’s been dead for many years. My house was his before I bought it, and such was the thoroughness with which he embedded himself in Royal Mail’s records that it’s impossible to remove him. Almost every letter I’m sent has his name on it; ‘Dr Dale Beckett?’ says each delivery man. I’ve called Royal Mail repeatedly to explain, but nothing doing. The doctor’s not for moving. And besides, I’m used to him now. Dr Beckett gets my mail, but he also gets his own — each one a jigsaw piece of his former life. He was

Paul Wood

‘The Islamic State will never die’

 Beirut As I write, Isis is still holding out on a few hundred square yards of dirt in the village of Baghouz in Syria. This is all that remains of a ‘caliphate’ that was once almost half of Syria and a third of Iraq. The fighting has now gone on twice as long as the battle for Mosul, a city of a million and a half. Isis has just sent a taunting message to President Trump, saying he spoke too soon when he tweeted: ‘We have defeated Isis in Syria.’ But they know that the end is inevitable and coming fast. An Isis video apparently filmed in Baghouz shows people

Lucy Vickery

The big reveal | 21 March 2019

In Competition No. 3090 you were invited to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes us see him or her in a new light. Step forward, Philip Larkin, flower arranger, Slough fan John Betjeman and knickers-on-fire Emily Dickinson. Congratulations all round are in order this week, but I especially admired Alanna Blake’s palinodic villanelle from Dylan Thomas:   Calm down, relax, accept the dying light, It will be unaffected by your rage, For all our sakes, give up this futile fight…   And G.M. Davis’s Tennyson revealing what he really thought of her maj:   What a prissy old Queen is Victoria! She looks like

Wednesday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: how does the world look through a different language?

My guest on this week’s books podcast is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri. Someone whose own fiction has negotiated the cross-cultural territory of her Bengali-American identity, Jhumpa in the last few years has been negotiating a new crossing of cultures after settling in Rome with her family and starting to write fiction and memoir in Italian. She joins me to discuss the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, which she edited, and talk about what a new language gives a writer, how the war shaped Italian literature, and why – as a professor of creative writing at Princeton – she refuses to teach creative writing.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The journalist investigated by police for ‘using the wrong pronouns’ | 20 March 2019

Here we go again.  Another woman is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence — because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender. So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a journalist over words that she published. Caroline Farrow, 44, is the subject of an investigation by Surrey Police over tweets she sent referring to the adult child of Susie Green, head of Mermaids, a charity concerned with transgender children. Farrow says the investigation arises because she ‘misgendered’ the child, who was born male but now identifies

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

With Rachel Johnson

28 min listen

Journalist and author Rachel Johnson joins Lara and Livvy on this episode to talk about what it was like to share with a student house with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, then budding student chef, about cooking rice found in a Greek bin for her children, and why ‘American food’ is an oxymoron.