Society

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Real life | 22 November 2018

Lying in bed one night as the rain pounded down, I became aware of a yellow patch forming on the bedroom ceiling. It took shape as I lay there watching it, and before long it had spread into a glorious stigmata of impending ruin. This would happen. Because it’s not as though for the first year of living in this house I was living with a boyfriend who was a builder, whose original specialist trade was roofing. I must have imagined that. I did of course ask the builder boyfriend to get up and check the roof but with his usual reverse logic he insisted on starting work in the

Robin Oakley

The turf | 22 November 2018

Trainer Dan Skelton and his jockey brother Harry have 100 winners on the board already but for most of us the jumping season proper has only just begun. It wasn’t long, though, before I was reminded of one essential difference between the Flat and jumping codes: the sheer fun element of the winter game. In the Agetur novices’ hurdle at Newbury, the 40-year-old owner-rider David Maxwell looked like being beaten to the line on his French import Ecu De La Noverie when he was headed as the post loomed by the 13–8 favourite Mister Fisher, ridden by the teenage wunderkind James Bowen. Instead the determined amateur conjured one last thrust

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 22 November 2018

DO NOT DOUBLE PARTSCORES WHEN PLAYING TEAMS. Here is Geir Helgemo somehow fooling his expert opponents into defending like total muppets… The bidding was only the beginning of Geir’s wizardry. He managed to bid not one but both of his three-card suits, North giving desperate preference to 2♥. The opps were then led a very merry dance. West led a trump and East won his ♥K and switched to the ♦7 covered by the ♦10. On the bidding this couldn’t be a singleton (South couldn’t have five diamonds and bid two other suits) so West put in the ♦Jack, won in dummy with the King. Next Geir played a cheeky

Toby Young Toby Young

A golden era has ended

When I proposed to Caroline back in 2000, she was a trainee solicitor and I was a freelance journalist. In my mind’s eye, I pictured myself enjoying several years as a DINK — Double Income No Kids. Imagine my horror, then, when she got pregnant as soon as she qualified and showed no intention of returning to work. Three years later, I had become a SITCOM — Single Income Two Kids Oppressive Mortgage. So much for my dreams of eventually retiring as a GLAM — Greying Leisured Affluent Married. For years, I’ve been complaining about this in a half-serious, half-jokey way, by which I mean I needle Caroline about it

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 22 November 2018

Q. I am organising my 30th birthday party weekend at a large country house kindly lent to me by friends of my parents. The house sleeps 25. I’m drawing up a plan for bedroom distribution, and find myself in a predicament because there is a large disparity regarding the luxuriousness of the bedrooms. Some have stunning sea views with four-posters, claw-footed bathtubs and chandeliers, while others are converted servants’ rooms, have sloping attic ceilings, single beds, shared bathrooms and views of the car park. How do I allocate the bedrooms without causing offence to the ‘losers’? The truth is that the grander ones would suffer much more from the discomfort

Dot Wordsworth

Cakeism

Latest despatches from the Dictionary Wars bring news of Oxford’s words of the year, a counterblast to last week’s words from Collins dictionaries. Collins’s winning word was single-use — feeble, I thought. Its runner-up, gammon, is on Oxford’s list too. But the Oxford champion word is toxic. This, with its connotations, is interesting, but not so interesting to me as a runner-up: cakeism. In November 2016, an aide to Mark Field MP was photographed in Downing Street with a handwritten note about Brexit reading: ‘What’s the model? Have cake and eat it.’ I thought this a splendid aim by the British negotiators. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, did

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 22 November 2018

Home Five pizza-eating cabinet ministers — Andrea Leadsom, Penny Mordaunt, Liam Fox, Michael Gove and Chris Grayling — put it about that Theresa May, the Prime Minister, could be persuaded to amend the draft withdrawal agreement with the EU before she signs it at a summit this Sunday. But Mrs May said that she had a deal and was determined to ‘deliver’ it. Having warned that if her Brexit withdrawal agreement was rejected Britain could end up either with no deal or no Brexit, Mrs May went off to Brussels, leaving the new Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, behind. Jacob Rees-Mogg had declared that he had sent a letter to Sir

The Spectator

In place of strife

France has been in a state of organised uprising this week, with 300,000 motorists taking to the streets and autoroutes to protest against rising fuel taxes. One protester has died, more than 400 have been injured and even more disruption is on the way. Watching Emmanuel Macron, you wouldn’t know it. He travelled to Berlin to commemorate Germany’s war dead, launching for the second time in a fortnight into his proposal for a single European army, and saying it was Europe’s duty to prevent the world ‘slipping into global chaos’ — apparently unable to recognise the chaotic scenes he had left behind. It is not out of character for France’s

Doc

2386: Outside what we know

Three unclued lights featured the remaining ones, two of two words, the others paired. Two of them do double duty. Elsewhere, ignore one circumflex.   Across 7/7D Part of microscope under old coach (8) 11    Country house’s grand spread (6) 15    This is very slow, taking only a second to catch (5) 16    Pretentious fellow taken to court, reportedly (5) 17    Hold prisoner and bury at noon (6) 18    Rubber rope (5) 20    Possibly 22’s special ceremony (6) 21    Entrance halls where amateur match gets cut (5) 22    Upset goldminer spurns do for troublesome creature (7) 27    Mathematical array from graduate taking a moment (7) 29    Put to use some cheap

European Commission

Political declaration between the EU and UK: full text

POLITICAL DECLARATION SETTING OUT THE FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE UNITED KINGDOM INTRODUCTION 1. The European Union, hereafter referred to as “the Union”, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, hereafter referred to as “the United Kingdom”, (“the Parties”) have agreed this political declaration on their future relationship, on the basis that Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) provides for the negotiation of an agreement setting out the arrangements for the withdrawal of a departing Member State, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. In that context, this declaration accompanies the Withdrawal Agreement that has been endorsed

The Spectator

to 2383: Flagged

The unclued lights are presenters of BLUE PETER: individually at 39; pairs are 3/2, 7/22, 15A/15D, 15A/17, 25/14, and 32/31, with PETER at 15A doing double duty.   First prize C.E. Christison, Edinburgh Runners-up Alison Burban, Turkdean, Gloucestershire; Greg Watson, Great Chesterford, Essex

Mary Killen

Dear Mary’s money matters

Dear Mary answers some of your financial dilemmas: Q. A friend’s niece who got her first job last year and still lives with her parents is coming from Belgium to stay with him in his London flat. She has asked him to book a table for three (herself, my friend and his partner) at one of the most expensive restaurants in the capital. How can he make sure that she intends to treat them, as there is no way that they can afford a massive restaurant bill at the moment? R.T., Shropshire A. He should act daft and email or ring to say, ‘It’s a very generous thought but are

Matthew Lynn

Has Mark Carney just ended the campaign for a ‘People’s Vote’?

The headlines will inevitably write themselves. The Bank of England backs Theresa May. The Prime Minister’s beleaguered and precarious deal is the best of all the options available and the economy may well get through the next few months largely unscathed. Following the testimony this morning from the Bank’s governor Mark Carney, most people will pick up on the support he has given to the Prime Minister and his reassurance that the economy will survive our departure. And yet there were two more significant points that emerged from his testimony. The Bank is finally willing to concede that leaving without a deal wouldn’t be so bad after all. And just

Steerpike Steerpike

The top 40 horrors lurking in the small print of Theresa May’s Brexit deal

This week, Theresa May’s government teetered on the point of collapse over her proposed Brexit deal. The withdrawal agreement between the UK and Brussels led to Dominic Raab and Esther McVey resigning in protest. However, May’s remaining ministers have since attempted to rally around her at least in the short term. Speaking on Friday, Liam Fox – the International Trade Secretary – gave a speech in which he declared ‘a deal is better than no deal’. This is rather different to May’s old claim that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’. So, is Fox right? Mr S thought it best to let readers decide for themselves. In theory,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Jeremy Corbyn is as deluded about Brexit as Jacob Rees-Mogg

Now that the coup of the plastic spoons appears to have failed – Jacob Rees-Mogg and his accomplices could not even synchronise their pocket-watches – Theresa May finds herself back where she has been all along: strengthened by her weakness. This is a remarkable situation for any prime minister but not, for May, an unprecedented one. It helps that her enemies are so utterly incompetent. The sallow men of the European Research Group are not only not a government in waiting but not a collection of kingmakers either. Just as Voltaire quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was in fact none of these things, so we may say something similar

Bruce Anderson

The paradox of Burgundy

I was trying to remember what I once knew about the theology of the Reformation and especially the various factions’ arguments about good works. Some of them thought that good works were a testimony to Grace. To others, they were a route to Grace. To the Calvinists, they were a mere irrelevance. All that mattered was the inexorable, terrifying verdict of predestination. That at least is my recollection. Choosing a via media, if not necessarily Anglicana, I prefer a phrase from the 1990s, ‘the active citizen’. Whatever its relationship to Divine Grace, that sounds a useful goal, and I occasionally try to pursue it, especially in relation to a club

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Trump may have a point about fake news

In recent years, much scrutiny has been paid to the workings of social media algorithms. Driven by escalating competition for human attention, social media sites became filled with negative or controversial posts, because these attract more protracted engagement than anything else. Since reader attention attracts revenues, any profit-seeking algorithm will learn to highlight divisive content at the expense of more important topics. So a story about Hawaiian pizza might be more lucrative than one about human trafficking, since the idea of pineapple on pizzas polarises opinion more than a story about something universally agreed to be bad. But this problem is not confined to digital media. What sells newspapers, or

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 24 November

I take something of a head-in-the-sand approach to Christmas. Despite the bloody supermarkets and high-street stores trumpeting the forthcoming festivities pretty much from the August bank holiday onwards, I feel that if I ignore it, it might just go away. It never does, of course, but it’s worth a try. We’re not even into Advent yet, but I guess we have to bite the bullet and prepare ourselves. And so it is that I am delighted to present to you a Christmas-appropriate selection of own-label vino from our sainted friends at Corney & Barrow. Own-label wines are notoriously tricky to get right and if anyone has cracked it, it’s the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Run, Beto, run

 Washington, DC   Ever since America elected Donald Trump, Democrats have fantasised about removing him from power. They’ve dreamed of impeaching him; of declaring him insane; of arresting him and parking tanks on the White House lawn. They’ve even thought about assassinating him. If you think that is an exaggeration, look up Kathy Griffin, the feminist comedian, who held up a severed Trump head, Isis-style. She wasn’t joking. The latest fantasy is more democratic in spirit. It takes the form of Texan congressman Beto O’Rourke, a skinny former punk-rock guitarist who oozes star appeal. Progressive America is going wild for him. Beto is now widely talked about as the man