Society

Sunday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: it started with a tweet…

For the latest challenge you were asked to submit a poem or a short story that begins ‘It started with a tweet…’. Hats off to Philip Machin for an appropriately pithy submission: It started with a tweet — There’s nothing wrong in that — But, sadly, indiscreet: It ended with a cat. Elsewhere, in a varied and engaging entry, there were echoes of Shelley’s skylark, Lear’s owl and Hitchcock’s Birds. The winners below are rewarded with £25 each. W.J. Webster It started with a tweet, a joke at his expense, okay, but just a quip intended to provoke a smile or some quick counter-thrust: instead he opted to deplore its

Toby Young Toby Young

We shouldn’t lower our expectations for white schoolchildren

The Department for Education (DfE) published its finalised data on the 2018 GCSE results last week, revealing that, for the second year running, white pupils are doing worse in English secondary schools than any other ethnic group. According to the new Progress 8 measure, which assigns a score to GCSE entrants based on how much progress they’ve made between the ages of 11 and 16 relative to children of similar abilities, Chinese pupils do the best, with a score of 1.08, Asians are second (0.45), then blacks (0.12), mixed race (-0.02) and, bringing up the rear, whites (-0.10). What that score means is that on average white children are behind

Saturday

Malcolm Coady

It’s not just the UK that has been fooled by Huawei

In reading your recent leading article on Huawei (‘Red-handed’, 2 February), I feel I should point out that it is not solely the British government who have been wrong-footed by the rise of China. Here in Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau has long desired to open up Canadian markets to Chinese companies, going so far as to express admiration for the country’s ‘basic dictatorship’. The Chinese press even bequeathed him with a charming nickname: the Little Potato. Now, in the face of the Huawei charges, Mr Potato has been forced to change course and has fired his ambassador, John McCallum, after he defended Huawei’s Chinese executives rather than supporting Canadians who have recently been imprisoned

Douglas Murray

This week’s FGM prosecution raises deep questions which cannot go unaddressed

The first successful prosecution in the UK for the crime of female genital mutilation (FGM) has been widely covered. Not least because the laws that made this barbaric practice a crime have been on the books since 1985 without a single successful prosecution until this week. So the fact that a 37-year old mother from east London was convicted of the crime at the Old Bailey this week is significant. But there is something about this case that still needs to be noted. Campaigners against FGM are rightly saying that they hope that this prosecution will lead to more people coming forward to report the crime. One of the reasons

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

HS2 doesn’t work, but one simple tweak might make it worthwhile

In past years, I have been a critic of HS2. I might now change my mind. One simple tweak might make HS2 worthwhile — while saving the taxpayer most of its £60 billion cost. For this to work, all you need to understand is that 1 x 200 is not the same as 200 x 1. To put it another way, commuting is not commutative. At present, all transport investment is driven by an economic model based on the purported economic value of overall time-savings for passengers. This, as David Metz shows in his excellent book Travel Fast or Smart? is a daft way to plan transport. Never mind that

Friday

Siva Thangarajah

The Spectator Podcast: can Theresa May persuade the EU to renegotiate?

It’s been a hectic week in Westminster. After the Brady amendment passed on Tuesday, Theresa May finally got a second chance to get her Brexit deal through parliament. But can she persuade the EU to renegotiate? James Forsyth writes in this week’s cover article that there is good reason to think the EU will budge, but persuading Brussels is only one of the challenges May faces. To finally pass her Brexit deal, she might have to reach across the aisle for some Labour votes. And does the ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg–Len McCluskey strategy’ have any chance of success? James is joined by Peter Foster, the Europe editor of the Telegraph, calling us

Luke de Pulford

The Foreign Office’s toothless review into Christian persecution

This week Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt launched his Independent Review into Christian Persecution. Except nothing was actually launched. Nothing published, precious little announced, and it doesn’t look like much has been agreed between Foreign Office officials and the Bishop of Truro, Philip Mounstephen, who Hunt appointed to chair it. Instead a picture is emerging of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) stitch-up. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Foreign Secretary actually wants to do this. It won’t have been easy to get his new department to go along with the idea, and even harder to make the review independent. But government sponsored reviews are never truly independent. As the Bishop

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

We should salute the very rich who stay onshore and pay their taxes

Paying tax — which many of us have been doing this week before HMRC’s 31 January deadline — is a citizen’s duty, not an act of virtue. But for the very rich it is also a choice, since with the help of expensive advisers they can duck it or pay very little of it by using complex avoidance devices and offshore havens. So if they stay onshore and pay up, we should salute their good citizenship — if only to encourage others like them who might lighten the tax burden for the rest of us. In that context I was pleased to see two of this column’s controversial heroes of

Thursday

Raymond Keene

A tale of two tournaments

The start of the year sees the elite of the chess world divided between Wijk aan Zee in Holland and the Gibraltar Masters. In Gibraltar, from where I am writing this column, grandmasters such as Wesley So, Lev Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura cross swords with the British aspirants Michael Adams, Gawain Jones and Nigel Short. In Wijk aan Zee, the world champion Magnus Carlsen reasserted his authority with a decisive victory. Leading scores were: Carlsen 9/13; Giri 8½; Nepomniachtchi, Ding and Anand 7½.   Van Foreest-Carlsen: Wijk aan Zee 2019 (see diagram 1)   Here the Dutch grandmaster made a brave (possibly foolhardy) decision to take Carlsen on in the line

Raymond Keene

no. 539

Black to play. This is from Howell-Bilguun, Gibraltar 2019. How can Black play for the win? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 5 February or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Rxh7+ Last week’s winner Phillip Gardner, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Peter Jones

Trophies for everyone

All over the world, from Armenia (the Silver Apricot) to India (the Golden Conch) and the UK (the Shaftas, honest), the film industry award season is in full swing — more than 100 festivals and ceremonies for weeping luvvies to hand out prizes to each other. It was ever thus. Ancient Greeks, who from the 6th century bc invented the genres we know as tragedy and comedy, staged them in competitive annual festivals, all paid for by the richest men in Athens. As well as awards for the best play, there were prizes for best producer and best actor too (interestingly, the most famous Greek tragedy, Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus, was

The Spectator

Letters | 31 January 2019

Vegan excess Sir: As a lifelong vegetarian I am heartily sick of vegans and of the amount of attention that is being paid to them. (‘The great carniwars’, 26 January). Vegan food is everywhere, in places where it used to be difficult to find vegetarian dishes. Often it tastes of nothing much and has the consistency and flavour of sawdust. Their principles of not harming animals seem to me to be a little warped. I accepted long ago that animals have to die to provide meat for people and pets. Vegans would do well to campaign, if campaign they must, against factory farming and cruel methods of slaughter. Issuing death

Ian Rankin

Diary – 31 January 2019

For legal reasons I shouldn’t say much about the Alex Salmond case, but it does bolster the argument that the world right now operates beyond most fiction writers’ (and readers’?) imaginations. Fiction needs to be credible; I should persuade the reader that the events in my stories could happen, if they haven’t already. Reality, however, seems otherwise inclined. Salmond’s journey — from taking Scotland closer to independence than many thought possible to RT chatshow host — would test the mettle of most contemporary novelists, before even adding the cocktail of charges against him. Salmond, a shrewd operator and orator with a side-order of braggadocio, might seem a gift of a

Taki

High life | 31 January 2019

‘The British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.’ This is a direct quote from a recent New York Times, a newspaper that is known for being anti-heterosexual white male, anti-Christian, and now anti-British ruling class. Mind you, normally when someone attacks the British I smile. And more often than not I mumble that no one hits the Brits harder than themselves. This time, however, let’s take a second look as to why the venom. Under the headline ‘The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class’, some clown I’ve never heard of takes up half a broadsheet page denouncing Britain’s past in

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 31 January 2019

‘The whole of my life I’ve had difficulty.’ I heard Sylvia say this through the door, which was slightly ajar. ‘Sometimes it’s absolute torture.’ I knocked and entered my mother’s small sitting room unctuously, bearing a tray on which were two gold-rimmed Royal Worcester cups and saucers, the cups filled with steaming, freshly poured Yorkshire tea. On a reclining armchair, with her legs stuck out, and she herself thickly covered in a colourful variety of thin and thick blankets, my mother was listening to the monologue, or perhaps soliloquy, being delivered by the woman in the reclining chair opposite, also with her legs stuck out. My mother was keeling hard

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 January 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal agreement after the Commons voted by 317 to 301 for a government-backed amendment by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, proposing unnamed ‘alternative arrangements’. Mrs May said there was ‘limited appetite for such a change in the EU’ and hardly had the words passed her lips before Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, said: ‘The withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.’ An amendment by Dame Caroline Spelman to rule out no deal passed 318 to 310, but lacked legal force. Amendments from Yvette

Melissa Kite

Real life | 31 January 2019

Under a blood moon, that was how Tara went down in the end. The old chestnut mare sure knew how to make an exit. She knew how to do most things, having lived 35 years entirely on her own terms. The builder boyfriend and I stood speechless in the field afterwards, marooned in that strange moonlight. Then the other two horses, standing by the round bale a few feet away, did something I shall never forget. Seconds after she passed, Darcy and Grace put their noses together and breathed. Perhaps they felt her spirit leaving, perhaps they wanted to comfort each other. Either way, they were perfectly silent, touching faces

Toby Young Toby Young

The problem with measuring progress

The Department for Education (DfE) published its finalised data on the 2018 GCSE results last week, revealing that, for the second year running, white pupils are doing worse in English secondary schools than any other ethnic group. According to the new Progress 8 measure, which assigns a score to GCSE entrants based on how much progress they’ve made between the ages of 11 and 16 relative to children of similar abilities, Chinese pupils do the best, with a score of 1.08, Asians are second (0.45), then blacks (0.12), mixed race (-0.02) and, bringing up the rear, whites (-0.10). What that score means is that on average white children are behind

Robin Oakley

The turf | 31 January 2019

Last Saturday morning, Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google, was on the radio explaining his algorithm for happiness, apparently a publishing sensation. Happiness, it seems, is equal to or greater than the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. That was a tricky proposition for the 20,000 of us on the way to Cheltenham Festival’s trials day likely to have a few bets and facing a fiendishly difficult racecard. Trials day is the final opportunity for trainers to test out their best prospects for a desperately prized win at the Festival in March. Could this one stay an extra four furlongs? Can that

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 31 January 2019

The Norwegian Bridge Press Association’s annual prize for the best-played hand was a particularly hard-fought contest in 2018. Boye Brogeland and Geo Tislevoll (both Norwegian although Tislevoll now lives and plays in New Zealand) had already won the International Best Played and Best Defended titles, which made it likely that one of them would take their national honour as well. However, into the mix was thrown Tom Johansen, whose genius declaring a partscore in the final of Norway’s most prestigious knockout tournament gave him the title. The hand he played was stone-cold off on top and yet Tom found a way of disguising and camouflaging his cards so imaginatively that