Society

William Sitwell, the writer and food critic made famous by Masterchef, has quit as editor of Waitrose’s food magazine following the backlash against his response to a vegan journalist. When Selene Nelson wrote to Sitwell to pitch a series of ‘plant-based’ recipes, he replied with another idea: “How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?”. This spirited response – which, if nothing else, suggests some confusion about the ingredients of red wine – has now cost Sitwell his job. For some it will come as no surprise –

How much did Philip Hammond’s giveaway Budget help dying town centres? Not enough, say campaigners, but let’s give the Chancellor some credit. A one-third relief in business rates for retail properties with a rateable value of less than £51,000 means an annual saving of up to £8,000 for a huge number of small businesses; pubs where people still drink beer and spirits in old-fashioned style benefit from a duty freeze that one industry body says will ‘secure upwards of 3,000 jobs’; and there’s money to help convert disused premises into homes. On the other hand, there was a £3 billion sting for the growing army of freelance ‘consultants’ and techies

This week on the Spectator USA Life ’n’ Arts podcast, I’m casting the pod with Matthew Hennessey. He’s an editor at the Wall Street Journal, and also the author of Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from the Millennials (Encounter Books). It’s a fascinating read: part-political obituary of a generation that, squeezed between two larger cohorts, the Boomers and the Millennials, may have missed its historical cue; part-rallying cry because, as Matthew explains in our midlife crisis of a conversation, it’s not over yet. Generation X was raised with the manners and assumptions of the pre-digital world. It came to maturity in a

‘Once is an accident,’ wrote Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, ‘Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.’ That Cesar Sayoc, the Chippendale with a bomb in his pocket, mailed his pipe bombs to leading Democrats is no accident. That Robert Bowers, his paranoia  fanned by online incitement, decided to massacre Jews at Philadelphia’s Tree of Life synagogue is not a coincidence. And who would be surprised if tomorrow there was a third action from these enemies of liberal democracy? The violent actions of Sayoc and Bowers emerge from the long, digitally-enhanced continuum of the right. No president has been more reckless in his public speech than Donald Trump. And most Republicans have followed

For the latest competition you were invited to supply a demotivational poem. This was your opportunity to come up with a bracing antidote to the worldview peddled by an eye-wateringly lucrative self-help industry that feeds on a mix of insecurity and the aspirational narcissism du jour. You came at the challenge from various angles, but the opening to Tracy Davidson’s entry speaks for many: It doesn’t matter what you do in life, It’s just a constant loop of pointless shite. Honourable mentions go to Adrian Fry’s paean to the power of no and to Douglas G. Brown’s 21st-century spin on Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’. The winners, printed below, earn £25

For all the praise heaped on Peter Hain for revealing the details of a legal case subject to injunction, there’s been depressingly little acknowledgement of what this really means: namely that a senior politician has fundamentally undermined the rule of law. Hain – who, unlike many of his peers, has never been a lawyer– has taken it upon himself to usurp the function of the courts. And not just any court – the Supreme Court, where the case was probably heading. In fact, the judge he overruled is Sir Terence Etherton, the head of the Court of Appeal and the second highest judge in the country (after the Lord Chief

The recently concluded European Club Cup, held at Porto Carras in Greece, resembled late medieval Italian warfare — populated by armies of mercenaries who seemed to have no allegiance to the geographical area of the clubs they were representing. Thus the British grandmaster David Howell was on the same Norwegian team as the world champion Magnus Carlsen, while the Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren was playing on top board for the Alkaloid team from Macedonia. The eventual winners were Mednyi Vsadnik from St Petersburg. This week a selection of play from this remarkably powerful event.   Carlsen-Potkin: European Club Cup, Porto Carras 2018 (see diagram 1)   World champion Magnus Carlsen only