Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 March 2019

Trolley dollies Virgin Atlantic dropped its requirement for air hostesses to wear make-up at work. What was required of the first air hostesses? — United Airlines introduced hostesses in 1930 on its multi-leg flights from California to Wyoming. They had to be registered nurses, aged 25 or under, weigh no more than 8st 2lb and be no taller than 5ft 4in. — The first UK airline to introduce hostesses was Air Despatch in 1936. They were expected not only to be able to cook and mix cocktails but also to be able to type letters for businessmen on the flight. On a knife edge Is knife crime rising everywhere? Offences per

Taki

High life | 7 March 2019

Gstaad   As everyone knows, the definition of serendipity is searching for a needle in a haystack, and instead finding a farmer’s daughter. Not so fast, as they say. I live among farmers and haystacks up here in the Alps, and I’ve yet to run into a farmer’s daughter who is worth the buckshot in the bottom. I was thinking of such matters all last week while skiing with my son and his two children. How happy I feel now, surrounded by wife and children and grandchildren — something I’ve avoided throughout my life while chasing daughters. Incidentally, the little turd Taki (just turned 13) is now so good a

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 7 March 2019

Standing in a messy kitchen at the tendril tip of a county line at three o’clock in the morning, Trev was applying his concentration to the intricate business of washing the coke in a dessert spoon with acetone and a lighter flame. When the impurities had burnt away, Trev goggled with incredulity at what remained in the spoon. Then he swore in a low, disbelieving voice because the washed remainder was the most he’d ever seen. Three were a crowd in the small, narrow kitchen. Our hyperactive host, whose eyes were out on stalks and whose voice was hoarse from shouting, was carrying on two conversations at once. He would

The Spectator

Letters | 7 March 2019

The point of Article 50 Sir: I read Paul Collier’s article in your 23 February issue, which has just reached me in la France profonde, with interest. The principal author of Article 50 was John Kerr, aka Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I have known John for quite a long time, and enjoyed his company: when I became chancellor in 1983 he was my principal private secretary. He explained to me some time ago, before the referendum, that the purpose of Article 50 was to make it as difficult as possible for a country to leave the European Union. A clever man, he did a good job. Nigel Lawson House of Lords, London SW1

Toby Young Toby Young

Why the squeezed middle are poorer than their parents

It won’t be news to readers of The Spectator that one of the long-term effects of globalisation is the hollowing out of the middle class. In a study of wage growth in ten advanced economies published a few years ago, the Resolution Foundation found that median pay lagged behind growth in GDP, with the gap between the middle class and the highest-paid growing and the gap between them and the lowest-paid shrinking. The phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the US. There, the top 10 per cent of income earners have seen their share of national income increase since the 2007-08 recession, while the remaining 90 per cent have seen their

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 March 2019

Q. I run a very small mail-order company from home. Recently I received an exceptionally rude email from a disgruntled customer. On discovering that the problems arising were her own fault, I sent a polite email proving this. Her response was even ruder. I know this woman socially and she obviously doesn’t realise I am the owner of the company. She would be mortified to realise I know about this ‘fishwife’ side of her character, but of course she inevitably will find out if she continues to escalate things. I would not want to humiliate her so how should I handle this? — Name and address withheld A. Write to her

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Ducks and bills

Imperial Treasure is a restaurant in the part of St James’s where Leopold von Hoesch, the German ambassador to George V, buried his dog Giro after Giro electrocuted himself by eating a cable. (Everyone is a food critic. Giro was merely an unlucky one.) And this seems apt. Because it’s rare to see people in St James’s these days. Dog bones and tourists and BBC crews shooting dramas in which actors are spying or arguing about politics are multiple. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Benedict Cumber-batch pretending to be Liz Truss pretending to be Josip Tito. But not real people. They have all gone, presumably to Zone

Dot Wordsworth

One fell swoop

The Sun, reviewing a new laptop from Huawei, mentioned a combined fingerprint sensor and on-switch that lets users ‘power up and log in in one fell swoop’. Logging-in is not usually a fell act, but one fell swoop has long been a cliché, rather than a quotation from Macbeth, where Macduff, on hearing of their murder, asks: ‘What, all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop?’ The phrase at one swoop was in the Jacobean air, for Webster in his White Devil has Lodovico declare: ‘Fortune’s a right whore. / If she give ought, she deales it in small parcels, / That she may take away all

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 7 March 2019

Home Two 17-year-olds were stabbed to death in London and Manchester, bringing the number of teenagers killed in knife crime this year to ten. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that there was ‘no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers’. Next day, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said: ‘There is some link between violent crime on the streets obviously and police numbers, of course there is.’ The owners of Giraffe and Ed’s Easy Diner are to close 27 of their 87 restaurants. The family that has owned the British sports-car maker Morgan for 110 years is selling it to an Italian venture capitalist firm, Investindustrial. The philosopher

Andrew Roberts

Diary – 7 March 2019

John McDonnell might think Churchill a villain, but he’s beloved in America. I’ve just returned from a ten-week, 18-state, 27-city, 87-speech book tour there, and can report that the enthusiasm for all things Churchillian in the USA is stronger now than at any time since his death. Merely bringing out a new biography of him secured me interviews on all the major TV morning news shows, invitations to speak at three presidential libraries, and a place on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks. There are active Churchill appreciation societies in 14 states and more being set up. Of course it can go too far: in Coral Gables,

Susanna Gross

Susanna Gross

Geir Helgemo is the most revered bridge player in the world — and that isn’t about to change just because he failed a drug test at the World Bridge Series last September. You probably read about it at the weekend; some newspapers found it positively comical that the No. 1 player had been suspended for ‘doping’. Yet ever since bridge was recognised as a sport by the International Olympic Committee in 1998, players have been subject to random drug tests. Helgemo tested positive for synthetic testosterone. There’s no evidence it improves anyone’s game — indeed, no drug has been shown to do that. But it’s a substance that’s been banned

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 7 March 2019

A kind billionaire called Jeremy Hosking, whom I do not know personally, has invited us to join the Britannia Express, a steam train, on 30 March, the day after Brexit. The train will traverse Wales and England, starting at Swansea and ending in Sunderland. In an unspoken rebuke to the metropolis, it will not travel via London. The train will, says the invitation, commemorate ‘the UK’s exit (or non-exit) from the European Union’. This is the opposite, I suppose, of the European train which people like the late Sir Geoffrey Howe constantly exhorted us to climb aboard. What to do? The most likely situation on the day is that we still

Doc

2398: All steamed up

The unclued lights (five of two words, two pairs and a singleton) are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer.   Across   11    Ore obtained by worker underground, a trainee (7) 12    DJ due to broadcast around ten (6) 16    Bound by discretion, one is silent (5) 19    Quandary of back-cover girl (7) 21    Bridge closure? (4) 23    In France the one certain time for relaxation (7) 24    Second bird in winter nest (4) 25    Setter’s quick riposte around the end of June — does it get on your nerves? (7) 31    Crossing-point for number of French (4) 32    Treads that are relative (7, hyphened) 34   Top of robe that’s

Daniel DePetris

How Steve Bannon tried – and failed – to crack Europe

When Steve Bannon was ousted from the White House as president Donald Trump’s chief strategist, the populist provocateur and former Hollywood executive was back running staff meetings at Breitbart less than 24 hours later. The rumpled, grizzled, grey-haired Bannon – who has a fondness for philosophy, history, political bloodsport and green camo jackets – is constantly on the move for a new project. In the United States, the big project was getting Trump elected and ensuring the New York billionaire never forgot about the part of America that loved him and the part that cringed at the mention of his name. But ever since he left the Trump administration –

Mark Lehain

Don’t blame school exclusions for knife crime

For too many people, schools are the solution to every one of society’s problems. Last year my campaign group Parents & Teachers for Excellence – which campaigns to raise standards in state schools – logged 213 calls in the media for schools to teach something extra to address a perceived issue. When something is going wrong, we look to teachers to fix it. Less common, but even more pernicious, is the phenomenon of blaming schools for causing societal problems in the first place. Now I accept that problems like illiteracy can be blamed on educators – we get paid lots of money to teach kids to read and write. But pinning

James Kanagasooriam

The Brexit paradox that spells doom for the Independent Group

When I quit investment banking in search of daylight in 2014 I thought my life was going to be little easier crunching numbers for political campaigns. It wasn’t to be. Over the last few years, I’ve worked on the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the 2015 general election, the Scottish Holyrood election in 2016, the EU referendum and the 2017 snap election. What I’ve never been able to wrap my head around through all these campaigns is why we’ve seen so many political upsets. Just why has the political consensus been wrong so often these past five years? When I worked on the Remain campaign, the upending of the consensus

The Spectator

2395: Concise Crossword

The seven concise clues lead to: heALth centre (3,31), HEARTbreak (9), midrIFf (26), last of alL (40), out of afRIca (14/2), wild WEST (21) and false DAWN (7,24).   First prize Margaret Lusk, Fulwood, Preston, Lancs Runners-up G.H. Willett, London SW19; E.C. Wightman, Menston, W. Yorks

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why can’t Prince Harry be more like the Queen?

Are you feeling better? Anyone who’s seen Prince Harry address the WE Day – Me into We! – gathering in London yesterday of woke young people, chiefly teenage girls, may have taken time to get over the sheer emetic quality of the performance, but I’m there now, thank you. But have you ever heard more unvarnished drivel? “You are the most engaged generation in history!” Harry told his audience. “You have the incredible opportunity to help reshape mindsets, to empower those around you to think outside the box and to work with you, not against you, to find solutions”, one cliché at a time presumably. The rumours about Meghan helping write

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Let’s calm down about Amber Rudd’s ‘coloured’ gaffe

If you want to see the detrimental impact political correctness has had on our society, you could do worse than examine the scandal swirling around Amber Rudd today. Rudd is being mauled for using the undoubtedly antiquated word ‘coloured’ to describe Diane Abbott. On Radio 2, she referred to Abbott as a ‘coloured woman’. Cue fury. ‘Told you the Tories were racist’, everyone is saying, to such an extent that Rudd has now issued an apology. But here’s the thing: when she used the word ‘coloured’, Rudd was speaking out against racism. She was condemning it. Does the context of people’s words, their actual meaning, count for nought now? It