Society

The list of business leaders who have damaged their careers with a single word famously begins with Gerald Ratner, who wiped half a billion off the value of his jewellery chain in 1991 by describing one of its offerings as ‘crap’. Then there was Bank of England deputy governor Ben Broadbent, whose chance of succeeding Mark Carney plunged after he picked ‘meno-pausal’ to describe an economy past its productive peak. Now Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters has blighted his remaining time in post by telling shareholders they were ‘immature’ to have voted against his massive pay package. Having built his career with JP Morgan before joining Standard Chartered in

Roger Scruton has been reappointed as head of a government housing body after he was sacked in April following a magazine interview in which his views were misrepresented. The letter from housing secretary James Brokenshire, who fired Scruton, is published below: Dear Sir Roger, Thank you so much for our conversation about the next steps on the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.  As we both recognise, the publication of the Commission’s Interim Report provides an opportunity to consider next steps in finalising recommendations to Government to promote quality and beauty in the built environment.  You have already been so influential in advancing this vision and I hope you will be able to

In Canada right now, a group of female workers, at least one of whom is a migrant, are coming under attack. One has already lost her job. The others fear losing their jobs too. And yet the leftish types who’d normally yell and tweet their backing for such marginalised workers haven’t raised a peep of concern. The Guardian is schtum. The Twitterati hasn’t stirred. The BBC looks the other way.  Why? Because the person confronting these women and putting their livelihoods into jeopardy is transgender. And as we know, criticising trans people is tantamount to blasphemy in the woke era. This is the case of Jessica Yaniv, born Jonathan Yaniv,

The time has come to disestablish the Church of England. As a deeply partisan Prayer Book Anglican – a churchmanship naturally inclined to support the cause of antidisestablishmentarianism – I say that rather grudgingly. But it pains me to admit the established church and mother church of Anglicanism is no longer fit for purpose. Atheists, militant secularists and those of non-Christian faiths have long supported my newly-held position, yet they often do so for other reasons, namely declining church attendance. They might claim that the Anglican expression of Christianity has little creditability as a state church if, practically speaking, nobody goes to services on a regular basis. And they might have

There are little in the way of festivities but today is nonetheless a landmark in Israeli history: Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the country’s longest-serving prime minister, displacing beloved founding leader David Ben-Gurion. Netanyahu has been in charge for 4,876 days, governing for a three-year term in the late 1990s then continuously since 2009. His Israel would be unrecognisable to Ben-Gurion. Where the Old Man presided over an agrarian society surrounded by almighty Arab armies sworn to its destruction, the land of Bibi is the ‘Start-Up Nation’, an economy powered by technology and pharmaceuticals and undergoing a diplomatic spring with the Arab world. Israelis are happy, healthy and prosperous, and deadly terror attacks are at their lowest since 2013. But

The Democratic Party faces a test of character. Most mainstream institutions have failed such tests in recent years but, in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, let’s try again and fail better this time. The trial confronting the electoral vehicle of American liberalism is whether liberals still have a firm grip on the wheel or the extremists in the back are doing the driving. This week, Donald Trump tweeted that Ilhan Omar, a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota’s fifth district and a Somali-born refugee who became a US citizen in 2000, and three other US-born congresswomen should ‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came’.

Sixty years ago, the great Mikhail Tal won the Candidates tournament by a massive margin to qualify for a world title match against Botvinnik, which Tal also won, equally convincingly. This week, in homage to Tal, one of his four zero wipeout games against Bobby Fischer, with notes based on those of eyewitness Harry Golombek from his book Fourth Candidates Tournament 1959 in the Hardinge Simpole edition edited by David Regis.   Fischer-Tal: Candidates Tournament Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade 1959; Sicilian Defence   1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Bc4 e6 7 Bb3 Be7 8 f4 0-0 9 Qf3 Qc7 10 0-0 b5