Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 2 May 2019

The last straw Sir: In his vindication of Sir Roger Scruton, Douglas Murray quite rightly refers to the affair as ‘a biopsy of a society’ (‘The Scruton tapes’, 27 April). It was also a biopsy of the Conservative party in particular, and a dispiriting one at that. It is notable that while a good slice of the conservative commentariat came to Scruton’s defence, Conservative MPs were conspicuously silent, except for those who rushed to excoriate Scruton. This response was indicative of the gap between the party in the country and the Parliamentary Conservative Party, which has seen an attenuation of the conservative instinct and — as has been argued in these

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 May 2019

Home Of those who voted Conservative in 2017, 53 per cent intend to vote for the Brexit party in the EU elections on 23 May, according to a YouGov poll. Brandon Lewis, the Conservative party chairman, said: ‘As a government, our first priority is not to have to fight the EU elections,’ adding that there was still time to cancel them if parliament approved the Brexit withdrawal agreement reached by Theresa May, the Prime Minister. Labour’s National Executive Committee agreed party policy should be to hold a referendum (with a question yet to be decided) if it could not get changes to the government’s deal or precipitate a general election.

Taki

High life | 2 May 2019

Charlottesville is an enchanting Virginia college town graced by the neoclassical architecture of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. I flew there with two friends, the talented photographer Jonathan Becker and the Vietnam Special Forces Silver Star winner Chuck Pfeifer, all of us close buddies of the deceased. It was the memorial service for Willy von Raab, scourge of drug dealers and illegal immigrants while commissioner of customs for eight years under Reagan. The humorist P.J. O’Rourke and I were the two speakers, and after a rousing ‘America the Beautiful’ we retired for an afternoon of southern hospitality and University of Virginia co-ed watching. This is not woke, I know, but

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 2 May 2019

Santino was unusually short in the leg and, in his mid-twenties, was already rapidly losing his hair. He had recently come from Argentina to France to train as a tourist guide. He was earnest about his vocation and hoped one day, he told us, to become a guide specialising in Unesco World Heritage sites. To this end he was studying every night into the small hours, cramming into his head as much French history — and whatever else guides have to learn to pass the rigorous guiding exams — as he possibly could. When Santino smiled, his eyes closed automatically and the effect was endearing until one saw the abjectness.

Melissa Kite

Real life | 2 May 2019

A leaflet came through my door from the NHS inviting me to take part (if that is the right term) in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. What a kind offer, I thought. They must know I’m stressed. Fine, so I didn’t think that. I thought: what a blasted cheek! This leaflet is a mailshot, clearly, and has been distributed to every home in my area at a cost of goodness knows how much. I looked at the glossy thing in all its impudence and presumption and decided to chase after the postman. He was three doors down when I caught up with him and he wore a cheery smile as usual. ‘Can

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 2 May 2019

‘You know what people say about you?’ Zia Mahmood told me the other day. ‘You play really well but then go berserk. Good-good-good-berserk.’ He’s absolutely right, and I love him for telling me straight, in typical Zia fashion.   I’ve been struggling for a long time to overcome my sporadic lapses of concentration at the table. Of course, it happens to many of us: we get tired, we lose focus, we do silly stuff. But I’m determined to minimise these blips, and, like several of my friends who play competitively, have decided to take myself off to a sports psychologist.   This will come as good news to some of

Toby Young Toby Young

The hypocrisy of the Charity Commission

On Monday, I appeared on Good Morning Britain to debate President Trump’s forthcoming state visit with Asad Rehman, the executive director of War on Want. I was surprised to learn that War on Want, a charity in receipt of lottery funding, is a partner in the Stop Trump Coalition, the group behind the anti-Trump demonstration last year. It is hoping to organise an even bigger protest next month. The reason this came as a shock is because the Charity Commission issued an ‘official warning’ to the Institute of Economic Affairs in February for a report on how to create a prosperous post-Brexit UK that wasn’t sufficiently ‘balanced’ and ‘neutral’ and

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 2 May 2019

Q. A university friend and I want to get an invitation to a very good shoot owned by a colleague of my father. To this end we thought we could make better friends by inviting him to my club for lunch or dinner. This club is the sort of stuffy, traditional place he would approve of. I was only able to become a member because they had a special five-year deal for people who joined it the year they left school. The problem is that, as the member, I am the only one allowed to pay. How can I make sure that my friend, who is vague and disorganised, pays

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The dark side of Soho

Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when I invaded the Colony Room, twitching, and took a fag off Sarah Lucas. It is that I was. This was the view of a friend after I last wrote on Soho restaurants. We once ran holding hands through the sprinklers in St James’s Park laughing at Peter Mandelson, who was passing with his dog, and that is my memory of the Blair years. So Soho, which is thick with metaphor anyway — its very name is a hunting call: death for one and ecstasy for another — is a district

Dot Wordsworth

Lapwing | 2 May 2019

Some birds seem inherently comical. I can’t help being amused by the duck taking its name from its habit of ducking. In English it has enjoyed this name for some time — a thousand years or so. Before that it was called ened, a word related to the Latin anas, anatem. Similarly, the swift is so called because it is swift. That name seems to go back fewer than 400 years, and I’m not sure what it was called before that. Swallow, perhaps, since it has something in common with it. But there are some false friends among the feathered tribes. The lapwing was itself friendless last week, when Natural

Pabulum

2406: Heptad

Clockwise round the grid from 6 run the names (9,5,7,6,8,7,8) of the leading members of a group. The unchecked and corner letters could make SILVER INVENTORS RUN AROUND and 18 is an anagram of the group’s name (two words). An English version of the name (two words) the group gave to a seminal work will appear diagonally in the completed grid and must be shaded. Ignore one accent.   Across 9    Stunner somersaults with worried screech (7) 10    Work encapsulating dry painter’s charm (7) 11    Dancing display (skipping tango, of course) (4) 13    Letter to the Hebrews in honour of religion (6) 15    Enzyme with round shape? No chance! (5)

Annunziata Rees-Mogg

Diary – 2 May 2019

Sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. So it was for me a few weeks ago when, driving up the A1 on my way home to Lincolnshire, I saw some graffiti that made me think. The words sprayed on to a bridge support were as simple as they were powerful: ‘DON’T VOTE. ACT.’ It scared me that some people were so disillusioned they felt they had to take things into their own hands. But then again, if acting means standing for election, would it be such a bad thing? I tried it before, most recently as a Tory candidate in the general election of 2010. I can’t say I loved the

Moby

The ideal brunch

Los Angeles has its shortcomings. Some are shared with almost all big cities (traffic, more traffic), while others are unique to this weird desert city (rattlesnakes on hiking trails, winters that are too sunny and warm). But despite its shortcomings, LA is also the place where the sublime can easily and surprisingly wrap itself in the clothing of the utterly banal. A few weeks ago, I woke up on a Sunday morning, went for a hike (dodging a few sleepy rattlesnakes), did some tai chi in the sun (please keep in mind that since moving to LA, I’ve become a perfect little LA cliché; a sober middle-aged vegan who alternates

Chris Daw KC

A bitter pill

I have been a defence lawyer for more than 25 years. I have defended clients charged with almost every crime there is. I have argued against convictions for robbery, rape, sexual assault, murder, manslaughter, copyright theft, perverting the course of justice, perjury, serious fraud, international illegal fishing, money laundering, causing death by dangerous driving, grievous bodily harm, blackmail… and the list goes on. Of all the crimes and misdemeanours I have seen, all the improbable tales and shocking lies in the witness box, what sticks with me most about the criminal justice system is the utter simplicity of the one thing that lies behind almost all of it. People want

The Spectator

to 2403: Hexad

The second and fourth letters of six unclued lights gave abbreviations of the states forming New England: ACATER (13) Connecticut, ERNIE (24) Rhode Island, AMBEROID (27) Maine, ANCHOS (1D) New Hampshire, KVETCHED (22) Vermont and SMEAR (34) Massachusetts. NAG/LEND (17/36) is an anagram of ENGLAND suggesting ‘New England’.   First prize Mike Conway, Grantham, Lincs Runners-up John Sparrow, Padbury, Bucks; G.H. Willetts, London SW19

Julie Bindel

Straight talk

Lesbian tourism has long been a thing — women who once kissed a girl trying to appear more interesting while living a heterosexual life. Anne Heche, Madonna, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande have used lesbian/bisexual hints to titillate fans and sell more records. But nothing riles me like the Miley Cyrus approach which is to be heterosexual, married to a man, but claiming to be ‘queer’ and edgy. In a recent interview about her marriage to Liam Hemsworth, she said: ‘We’re redefining, to be fucking frank, what it looks like for someone that’s a queer person like myself to be in a hetero relationship.’ What a load of pretentious baloney.

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Coronation Street is no match for Elland Road

Say what you like about Elland Road — and in my experience it is not a place to linger — but Leeds United is the soap opera that just keeps on giving. The sainted Marcelo Bielsa, their coach, has won himself massive plaudits and double page spreads in the press for the near-miraculous feat of making The Damned United vaguely likeable, even momentarily. Bielsa gifted Aston Villa a goal after Leeds had scored a controversial opener. Villa thought that play had stopped for an injury; Leeds didn’t kick the ball out, and scored. Cue general handbags, after which Bielsa ordered his players to let Villa score. In the general moral

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 2 May 2019

Laikipia, Kenya   ‘An elephant has fallen over,’ said the man running up to me. My first thought was that poachers had killed the animal for its tusks. ‘Has it been shot?’ The man shrugged. ‘He was eating leaves, then he just fell over.’ As Claire and I made our way to the place, I was worried. Around our home, where we see elephants almost daily, I have come to learn that our destinies are closely interwoven. Meet a calm elephant who goes on browsing while gently billowing his ears because his herds are not being hunted and we know our valley is at peace. A skittish elephant is a

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Nature’s real enemy: squeamish greenies

This is the time of year when the English countryside reaches peak incredible: when we rural folk mentally pinch ourselves in disbelief at our extraordinary good fortune in inhabiting the most beautiful landscape on earth. On every walk you see something to delight the eye and lift the spirits. First the blackthorn exploding in the hedgerows like cascading white fireworks; then the ramsons pushing their lance-shaped leaves through the floor of the dingle, pleading with you to turn them into wild garlic pesto; then the lambs — so wobbly, white and cute when newborn — which turn surprisingly quickly into boisterous adolescents gambolling and head-butting and racing one another in