Society

Chelsea, the most famous flower show in the world, pulled in its devotees once more this week, with its accustomed mixture of colour, scent and glamour. The continuing success of the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘flagship’ show has much to do with the BBC’s need to fill schedules, the foreign media’s enduring fascination with ‘Englishness’ and royalty, and the desire of committed gardeners to worship in the company of their co-religionists. It cannot be any kind of fun for plant nursery people, who stage the exhibits in the Great Pavilion, since the logistical difficulties are fearsome, but they mostly cannot resist the buzz. The ranks have thinned a little in recent

Top politicians are constantly in demand on the lecture circuit, as large businesses and other stakeholders seek their advice on the chaos engulfing Westminster and how upcoming legislation will affect their economic interests. So it’s not surprising that Change UK’s Anna Soubry and Chuka Umunna were the star speakers at a Marketing Group of Great Britain event in Milford earlier this month. Only, it appears that the founders of the fledging Change UK weren’t the ones dispensing wisdom at the event. According to a write-up by the Marketing Group, the pair seemed to receive more sympathy and advice than probing questions when they had concluded their speeches. In a blog

Australian Labor leader Bill Shorten will forever have the ignominious label of the man who lost the unlosable election – Australia’s answer to Neil Kinnock. After six years of the conservative Liberal-National coalition government, and three different prime ministers, Labor were considered the clear favourite to win Saturday’s general election. The government had been wracked with disunity over climate change and same-sex marriage and were governing in a minority for the past nine months. The Liberal party also saw several high-profile retirements in the lead up to the election as MPs started jumping off what they thought was a sinking ship. Newspoll, Australia’s largest political poll, had Labor in front

It has long been obvious to many of us outside Parliament that the government should never have attempted to negotiate our way out of the EU. We voted simply to leave and, after MPs voted to honour the result, it should have been left to the civil service to make the necessary preparations. Let us hope that the party in parliament will finally come to its senses and realise that no deal is the most desirable option — and in fact the only option consistent with its creed. They must find a new prime minister who believes that this is the best way and will abandon the so-called withdrawal agreement,

Australian rugby player Israel Folau has lost his AUS$4m mega-contract for an Instagram post he published in April after a disciplinary tribunal found that his comments were grievous enough to end his rugby career. The three person panel had found that Folau had committed a ‘high level breach’ of the code of conduct, and has today upheld Rugby Australia’s decision to terminate his contract. Folau has serious rugby credentials; he is the joint-third highest try scorer of all time for Australia, and has won the Australian Rugby ‘Player of the Year’ award a record three times in 2014, 2015 and 2017. He is about as gifted as it gets on

This year’s Grand Chess Tour kicked off in the Ivory Coast with a significant innovation, the first ever tournament in Africa involving a reigning world champion. Magnus Carlsen duly triumphed in the overall scores of a combined rapid and blitz event. The champion, however, did not have it all his own way. Carlsen easily won the rapid section but suffered a scare in the blitz when Maxime Vachier-Lagrave twice defeated the champion and won a barely credible eight games in a row. This remarkable parade was, though, insufficient to jeopardise Carlsen’s victory, since his lead from the rapid section was too vast to overcome.   The scores out of a