Society

Thursday

Taki

High life | 21 March 2019

New York   Goodbye, snow-capped peaks; hello, swampy brown East River. So long, fresh alpine air; greetings to choking diesel fumes. Adios, cows and cuckoo clocks; welcome, filthy island packed to the gills with angry, mean, squat Trump haters who live in decrepit buildings they share with rats. Yes, I’m back in the city that never sleeps, and whose residents are perennially offended. That is the bad news. The good news is that the word Brexit means nothing over here — nada, as our Hispanic cousins say. Instead of the B-word we have the S-word, as in the college admissions scheme that turned into a scandal. More than 50 people

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 March 2019

I said my goodbyes and went outside with my trolley bag to wait for the taxi. While waiting, I looked across the sheep field at the sea. The wind direction had changed from due east to south-west and the surface of the sea, formerly turbulent, was placid. For the past ten weeks I’d been my mother’s full-time cook and carer. I’d put in a decent stint; nevertheless I felt guilty about leaving. Mum isn’t a great talker and, given the opportunity, neither am I. For ten weeks we had coexisted in amicable and introspective quietness, while outside one Atlantic gale after another shook the house. When I came here back

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 March 2019

‘Don’t touch anything sharp. Don’t saw anything or drill anything or sand anything,’ said the builder boyfriend as he left the house. ‘I generally agree,’ I said, mindful of the fact that this is what the keeper used to say. ‘But I’m disappointed you include sanding, because I think I made a very good job of the living room floor, and now I’m going to sand the dining room.’ I truly believe there is nothing a deranged woman with a sander can’t achieve. The builder b and I are trying to get the last bits of the house finished so it is in a fit state to be sold. We

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 21 March 2019

It’s exceptionally rare to pick up an 11-card suit. You might think it would happen at least once in a lifetime. But according to Tom Townsend, who’s a genius at calculating odds, you can expect to hold one every 2,722,762 deals — that’s once every 287 years if you play a 26-board duplicate every evening. So the hand below was naturally the talk of the recent Lederer tournament. If you had just one guess, who would you say managed to get the best score holding this freak distribution? Of course, that master of mind games, Zia Mahmood:   At every table, East opened 1♠ and South ended up in 6♦

Toby Young Toby Young

The Tories are in thrall to trans rights

On Monday, the government announced that Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equalities as well as the Secretary of State for International Development, had appointed an advisory panel on LGBT health. Needless to say, it immediately attracted criticism on social media for being insufficiently diverse: the 12-person panel is 90 per cent white, 66 per cent male, etc. I don’t subscribe to the dogma that the composition of official panels, boards, committees and so on should exactly mirror the UK population, but even by that logic those criticisms miss their target. The UK is 87 per cent white and BAME people are less likely to identify as LGBT, so

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 March 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, asking for a delay of the date for Brexit. She had been wondering whether to solicit a third ‘meaningful vote’ before or after going off to the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. Heaps of money had been put aside to buy off the DUP and unreal talk had been launched about the Vienna Convention providing a way out of the Irish backstop. But now, asked if Britain was in a crisis, a No. 10 spokesman said: ‘That situation has come to pass.’ The tragicomedy of Brexit had taken an unexpected turn after John

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 21 March 2019

Q. My wife’s closest friend and her husband visit us every couple of months or so. Without fail he will make lewd comments and is not even deterred in public places, where he will speak loudly so that others will hear what he considers to be witty ‘end of the pier’ humour. He is never funny. We don’t laugh at him and try to stifle our embarrassment by completely blanking him. However, his wife appears unshaken and makes excuses for him. We can only assume that she has failed to reform him and minimises his pathetic behaviour by glossing over it. It would be a relief if we never saw

Douglas Murray

Diary – 21 March 2019

It isn’t easy getting around the Gulf these days. The blockade on Qatar means no direct flights from most of its neighbours, so I spend hours of layover looking at the great mountain ranges of Muscat from the antiseptic tedium of my transfer terminal.     My main reason for coming to the region is to speak in Doha for the newly revived ‘Doha Debates’. After my speech, a more than usually aggressive interviewer demands to know why Britain and other European countries have not taken in more Syrian migrants. The Emir’s sister and others are in the audience and I cannot pass up the opportunity to poke my hosts in the

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.