Society

Thursday

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 11 April 2019

When did International Women’s Day become an official fixture? I have never been aware of it before this year and I fumed noisily thinking how patronising it was, ranting on that men don’t have a special day as every day celebrates their importance. Wrong again. There is an International Men’s Day and, if you want to prepare early, it’s in November. ‘What am I getting for IWD,’ I asked my team before playing a fairly early round of the Gold Cup. ‘You get to play ONE hand,’ they replied (almost in unison), ‘in the match tonight. Try not to stuff it up.’ Today’s hand was (mis)played by both expert declarers

Toby Young Toby Young

The Tory tipping point

The news that 83 per cent of Conservative voters are over 45, compared to 53 per cent of Labour voters, is depressing. That was a finding of a poll carried out by Hanbury Strategy for Onward, a right-of-centre think tank that’s just produced a report called ‘Generation Why?’. More alarmingly, Hanbury discovered that the ‘tipping point age’ — the median age at which a person is more likely to vote Conservative than Labour — is 51. That’s up from 47 at the 2017 general election and 34 just beforehand. ‘Yikes!’ as Lynton Crosby might say. No doubt the Tories’ close identification with Brexit and its stumbling attempts to get over

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 April 2019

Q. We sent out email invitations to our drinks party and have had too many acceptances. The venue has said that due to fire regulations we will have to reduce numbers by 20 people. What should we do? — T.L., Wantage, Oxon A. Email again, explaining the issue and asking for 20 volunteers to identify themselves as willing to attend a second drinks party on another specified date. Say the first 20 to reply will win places. You will find you are inundated, since people of your age group don’t like crowded rooms as they can’t hear anything. All the deaf friends will come forward immediately and the problem will

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 April 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, asking for an extension until 30 June of the period under Article 50 for which the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union. She hoped for parliament to agree to an ‘acceptance of the withdrawal agreement without reopening it’, perhaps through reaching a consensus by means of ‘a small number of clear options on the future relationship that could be put to the House in a series of votes’. She thought her talks with Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, might reach such a consensus. Not only that, but she hoped that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 April 2019

In his famous speech to both Houses of Parliament in March 1960, General De Gaulle praised Britain: ‘Although, since 1940, you have gone through the hardest vicissitudes in your history, only four statesmen [Churchill, Attlee, Eden and Macmillan] have guided your affairs in these extraordinary years. Thus, lacking meticulously worked-out constitutional texts, but by virtue of an unchallengeable general consent, you find the means on each occasion to ensure the efficient functioning of democracy.’ De Gaulle admired us and disliked us, and concluded that we threatened France if we joined the EEC. So he blocked our entry. He was right about us, wrong about the effect of our joining. By

Dot Wordsworth

Augury

Was the cascade of water that made the Commons suspend its sitting an omen or augury? When I asked that in conversation last week, a friend of my husband said that ‘strictly speaking’, augury is to do with divination from the behaviour of birds. I’ve since discovered that even more strictly speaking, it isn’t. Dear old Isidore of Seville reckoned that auspices are avium aspicia, examination of birds. Augury, he says, is one kind of such divination, since auguria comes from avium garria, ‘chattering of birds’, or else augurium comes from avegerium, because aves gerunt, birds reveal.  Sir Thomas Browne, who lived 1,000 years later, warns against Isidore because, though he

Pabulum

2403: Hexad

The second and fourth letters of six unclued lights (defined by surplus single words in six clues) form a set whose name is cryptically suggested by the remaining pair.   Across 1    Acknowledged 500 vatu due (6) 5    Raptors seek rats chandler set free (8) 10    Seabird collecting books about one UK fleet? No way! (14, four words) 11    Fellow has our love (4) 16    Poet’s winter? He lodges in Mauritius (5) 19    Lass interrupts stock debate (marathon) (9) 20    Clan conceals one huge cuttle-bone (7) 23    Dizzy top-sawyer with no head for aerial lifts (8) 25    Units succeeded led by very old soldier (5) 30    Parodist metal track bears

Roger Stone

Diary – 11 April 2019

Undisclosed location, Florida In January, when heavily armed FBI agents swarmed my south Florida home to arrest me for a series of process crimes, it changed my life far more than I ever imagined. The judge in my case has issued a gag order so I am not permitted to discuss the case, the prosecution, the court or the specific charges against me and will not do so here. As the judge said, the place for talking is in court — and that time will come. *** A vast American television audience was allowed to view the spectacle of my arrest, because CNN arrived 15 minutes before the FBI swat

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The transgender agenda is collapsing

It is a great disappointment to me that my phrases don’t get picked up by other writers and then society in general before ending up in the Oxford English Dictionary. Chuck Palahniuk is credited with the use of ‘snowflake’ as a pejorative term, for example, and James Bartholomew claims (despite some evidence to the contrary) to have made up ‘virtue-signalling’. Both are now very familiar and even overused — but mine all get ignored. I came up with what I thought was a decent neologism while being interviewed by Peter Whittle for his programme So What You’re Saying Is… Peter had been lamenting, as we all do, the endless hierarchy

James Kanagasooriam

Eight reasons why young voters are turning away from the Tories

It’s plain to see that the Conservative party has a youth problem. Millennials are turning away from the party in their droves. But what is actually causing this dire Tory performance among young voters? There are eight reasons, any of which on their own would present a problem. Together, their combination is creating a conveyor belt towards oblivion for the party. Part of the reason why youngsters are not voting Tory can be explained by the higher number of them who come from an ethnic minority. Only two in 100 voters aged 85 or over are black or ethnic minority; this compares to around 20 per cent of those aged

The Spectator

to 2400: Unclued

The preamble suggests that unclued entries are partial anagrams of UNCLUED. The ‘repeated cryptic clue (= anagram of CLUE)’ ‘fixes not only’ LUCE ‘but also’ the central 2×2 block as [CE/LU] and ‘as a result’ LUNE.   First prize Sue Topham, Elston, Newark Runners-up Ben Stephenson, London SW12; Phillip Wickens, Faygate, West Sussex

Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton: An apology for thinking

I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings. Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The problem with no-fault divorce

It looks as if I’m the only one who wants to keep fault in divorce then. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen so many divorces where there was actually fault, usually one of the parties running off with someone else. I can see why the adulterous party in the business should want to remove the distasteful fault element; I can’t quite see how it improves the situation for the cuckolded or otherwise wronged spouse. Some women I know whose husbands have moved onwards and upwards to marry their mistress have referred to them in a fashion that would make that poor woman who was banged up in Dubai for saying that

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have been undone by Brexit

One could almost look on Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn and see a story of frustrated love. They could be happy, the soppy observer might think. If only they could get some time on their own, and unburden their hearts, they would find they were in perfect agreement. Alas, their inability to be honest with each other keeps them apart, and prevents them knowing their true feelings. Brexit is not a romance but a national tragedy. But in one respect at least it matches stories of unrequited love. Brexit is being defined by the inability of political leaders and much of the media to be honest with themselves – and

Rachel Johnson

Kiss off | 11 April 2019

It’s out of control! If I play doubles first thing, have a lunch, then go to perhaps two parties in an evening, I can be embracing more than a hundred people in the course of my day. It’s so unhygienic — especially in the flu season, when someone gives you a sticky peck before telling you in the next breath how ill they are. It all makes me envy the royals, who have a trusty and time-honoured system of self-protection from this imposition. Princess Anne sticks out a white-gloved hand. You curtsey to the Queen and other members of the royal family, unless you know them a bit, where —

Bruce Anderson

A toast to independent Dorset

There was a shrewd old Tory MP called John Stokes. He was not on the left of the party. Indeed, I once told him that he was the right pole. He chuckled at the compliment. Others — including some Conservatives — would not have regarded that as a favourable assessment, and often found his views dismaying. He enjoyed that and, to encourage it, would play the role of caricature reactionary. This rarely failed to get a rise. There is a comparison with that consummate ironist Jacob Rees-Mogg, though Jacob is also a serious Tory philosopher. John’s many friends could not have alleged that of him. He once aroused derision in

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The central problem

A once famous question posed to job-seekers at Microsoft was ‘Why are manhole covers round?’ The question was revealing not because there was a single right answer, but precisely because there wasn’t. It helped elicit whether the applicant was someone happy to supply one plausible answer or someone who looked beyond the obvious. At a simple level, manhole covers are round because manholes are round. But there are other reasons. A circular manhole cover cannot fall down the hole beneath; a square manhole, if aligned diagonally, could. Round manhole covers can also be moved easily by rolling and replaced in any orientation. They are probably stronger than square ones. And

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 13 April

Everyone loves the wines of Villa Maria. Its so-called Private Bin range is hugely reliable and, heaven knows, I’ve drunk enough of it in my time. But there’s much more to VM than its entry level vino. Head further up the scale and you will find some corkers in the Cellar Selection, Platinum Selection, Reserve and Single Vineyard ranges, exquisitely made in tiny quantities. Little wonder that Villa Maria is New Zealand’s most awarded winery and that founder/owner George Fistonich was knighted for his efforts. Thanks to Mark Cronshaw of Mr Wheeler, we’ve some top examples here which — so Mark assures me — are priced as keenly as you

Melissa Kite

Uncool Britannia

A famous actor looks tearfully into the camera. It is Michael Sheen, or possibly Ewan McGregor. His voice cracks as he says: ‘For just £5 a month, you could help an MP recover from the shock of having his Brexit amendment rejected. Just £5 will help pay for counsellors trained to help our brave MPs debate EU withdrawal motions. Please donate now so that MPs like Nick Boles know you care. They give so much of themselves, and ask so little…’ I exaggerate, but only a bit. We keep hearing from MPs about how the stress of Brexit is harming them mentally and emotionally. You might think the nation’s elected