Society

Thursday

Pabulum

2397: Obit V

We recently lost a fine 13, whose legacy includes 10 (two words) and 9 (two words), and four other unclued lights (including one of two words and a pair). A further two unclued lights combine with a clued one to give an anagram of the 13’s name (two words); the clued light must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across 6    Hussies cooked no English dishes (6) 12    Liberal started gobbling bananas (10, hyphened) 14    Musicians once in depression about dead uncle (7) 15    Made ordinary valuer happy with digs (10) 16    Revolting hymn snubbed by a Swedish city (7) 22    Pleasantness of little woman having Spike back (7)

The Spectator

to 2394: Opening time

‘Never eat an oyster unless there’s an R in the month’ (Brewer). Eight unclued lights (in appropriate order) start with abbreviations of the months said to be safe for OSTREOPHAGES (1): SEPTIME (18), OCTANDRIA (26), NOVICE (34), DECELERATING (43), JANIFORM (11), FEBRIFACIENT (13), MARION (19D) and APRICOT (28).   First prize Dennis Cotterell, Carlisle Runners-up Peter Tanner, Hertford; Neville Twickel, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit betrayal is complete

Let us consider the gravity of Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement that Labour will push for a second referendum. In siding with the so-called People’s Vote lobby, Corbyn has betrayed Labour’s traditional working-class base, who tend to favour leaving the EU. He has betrayed his party’s own manifesto in the 2017 general election, which promised to respect the outcome of the referendum. He has betrayed his old Labour mentors, most notably his hero Tony Benn, who was the left’s most articulate critic of the EU. And he has betrayed himself. He has betrayed his own longstanding and correct belief that the EU is an illiberal, undemocratic, anti-worker outrage of an institution. Has

James Kirkup James Kirkup

What MPs are still getting wrong about the trans debate

I am a little late in coming to the recent report on community cohesion by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hate Crime. It was published earlier this month but drew little attention at Westminster: yet another example of Brexit smothering the domestic policy agenda, I suppose. The report has lots to say about lots of different types of nasty behaviour. Among the topics it covers is the gender debate, the discussion of trans rights and their potential impact on the rights of others. One one level, this is a good thing. It is the job of MPs to debate and discuss matters of contention and controversy. This is one

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

In praise of speaking ill of the dead

There’s quite a few writers who are sensitive souls, and the worst are those who like to dish it out but reach for the smelling salts and swoon when anyone so much as gives them a funny look. Luckily I was born with the Sensitivity Gene missing, especially when it comes to dissing, and I find that like with gifts, I’d just as soon receive than give. Say nasty things behind my back, to my face – or both ways in bed – and not only will I not get upset but I’ll derive a mild kick from it. Just a little one, mind you – I’m not kinky! I’ve

Matt Ridley

Beware pseudoscience

‘The whole aim of practical politics,’ wrote H.L. Mencken, ‘is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ Newspapers, politicians and pressure groups have been moving smoothly for decades from one forecast apocalypse to another (nuclear power, acid rain, the ozone layer, mad cow disease, nanotechnology, genetically modified crops, the millennium bug…) without waiting to be proved right or wrong. Increasingly, in a crowded market for alarm, it becomes necessary to make the scares up. More and more headlines about medical or environmental panics are based on published scientific papers, but ones

Bruce Anderson

Glyndebourne in the City

Early last century, an impoverished youth emerged from the East End. Able and hard-working, he discovered — as many had before him — that the City offered an open route to opportunity and riches. By the early 1950s, Rudolph Palumbo decided he could afford a family office. So he commissioned a Queen Anne building on Walbrook. Although it could not compensate for the City’s grievous architectural losses during the war, it was a reassertion of old values: of a long tradition that finance and the fine arts could march together. Forty years on, Rudolph’s son Peter was having lunch with Mark Birley at the Connaught. Mark, son of Oswald, a

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Back to the future | 28 February 2019

The Romans never invented the stirrup. It took 50 years after the invention of canned food for someone to invent the can opener. And we put a man on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. This seems silly. But it is worth understanding each invention in context: often, a concatenation of other events has to occur before an invention can become widely adopted. The stirrup was of no use until the invention of the saddle-tree, which more evenly spread the rider’s weight across the horse’s back. The can opener had to wait for thinner cans: early tins were too hefty to submit to anything less than a chisel.

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 2 March

Chateau Musar is beloved of Spectator readers, thanks largely to my sainted predecessors — Messrs Waugh and Hoggart — both of whom adored its wines. As a result, the Speccie has forged a bond with this Lebanese winery and, owing to the diplomatic exertions of our partners at Mr Wheeler, we are in the enviable position of being able to offer the latest Musar vintages exclusively to readers before anyone else has even had a sniff or a whiff of them. The 2010 Chateau Musar White (1) is nothing if not quirky, produced from ungrafted old vines grown in the Bekaa Valley that were first planted almost 5,000 years ago.

Andreas Campomar

Cricket in Buenos Aires

For most Latin Americans, who are themselves no strangers to sporting eccentricity, cricket remains a baffling proposition. The game is dismissed as being far too English (for that read ‘bizarre and snobbish’) and is often confused with croquet. Ignorance, however, does not preclude peculiar theories on how the game is played. I remember a Uruguayan diplomat attempting to explain the rules to a colleague who had recently arrived in London. ‘It’s very simple, che. All you need to know about el críquet is that when the ball hits those three little sticks, it’s a goal.’ Nowadays it tends to be forgotten that in the 19th century, cricket was played across

Mary Dejevsky

Ashes to ashes | 28 February 2019

It is cold, dank and muddy and I’m contemplating a barely defined path from the paved road into an ever-darkening wood. I should have brought a torch, but I didn’t, and before the light fades completely I need to find the ‘idyllic’ woodland burial ground I have shortlisted as a possible resting place for my late husband’s ashes; and also, when the time comes, for my own. When I get there, the site is glorious: on a slope, on the edge of a real forest — the sort of place the woodland-obsessed Germans probably have a special word for. The colours are sombre in the evening light and flights of

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Make an example of Shamima Begum

The three most popular justifications for punishment under the law all (as it happens) begin with R. They are retribution, rehabilitation and removal. But the fourth and to my mind the most important seems to have fallen rather out of public consideration. Yet that fourth, deterrence, is by far the best reason for the investigation and interrogation of Shamima Begum and — if there is a case against her to answer — her detention and trial. Leading all other reasons for the prosecution according to due process — and, if convicted, the punishment — of those who may have committed a criminal offence is deterrence: the discouragement of others who

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why I game

By day, I’m a mild-mannered book-world hanger-on; by night, I roar through the streets of Gotham in my heavily armed Batmobile, soar above it on the outstretched wings of my cape, and swoop down to bash multiple armed thugs into unconsciousness with a crunching series of ‘Fear Takedowns’. No, I know. When you write it down like that, my enthusiasm for Batman: Arkham Knight doesn’t sound very grown-up at all. (Never mind that I was first tipped off to the games in this series by the now deputy leader of the Labour party.) As the Spectator’s literary editor, I probably ought to cultivate an image of high-minded devotion to the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Will women’s sports cease to exist?

Congratulations to Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood for sweeping all before them in the Connecticut girls’ high school track races last week. Yes, of course they are men. There were some anguished complaints from the various girls these two speedy lads defeated, but these were of course brushed aside in a country where women’s sporting events may one day soon consist entirely of men. Already a Democratic party representative, Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), is insisting that the US powerlifting tournaments allow transgender women to compete, so that people who look very much like Geoff Capes, and have the same chromosomes as Geoff Capes, and the same bone structure and musculature, can

Lucy Vickery

Haikick

In Competition No. 3087 you were invited to submit haikicks. We already have short-form hybrids such as the clerihaiku (here’s one from Mary Holtby): Peter Palumbo Cries, ‘Mumbo-jumbo!’ and rails At the Prince of Wales   And the limeraiku:   A haiku will do   For a limerick trick, called A Limeraiku. That was by Arthur P. Cox.   Now Bill Webster, veteran of these pages, has come up with a new version of the haiku-limerick combination. Hence this challenge. You responded to it with your customary vim and wit, and with the help of such notables as William Spooner, Abraham Lincoln and Jeremys Clarkson and Paxman.   The winners,

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why I hate ‘the n-word’

One of the depressing aspects of writing a column attuned to social hypocrisy is so rarely running short of new material. Any pundit keen to highlight the grievous injustices committed haughtily in the name of justice these days is spoilt for choice. So: Augsburg University, Minneapolis, Minnesota. A student reads aloud a quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time: ‘You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.’ The last word causes a stir. When the white professor, Phillip Adamo, asks the class what they think of the student’s reciting of the quote verbatim, he repeats the word. The next

Wednesday

Matthew Addison

Why zero deposit mortgages will make the gap between rich and poor worse

A common opinion in today’s media is that millennials have it all – flexibility in jobs, a greater freedom to travel, and all the information they need at their fingertips. However, if you dive a bit deeper into the statistics, things don’t appear to be as rosy as we first thought. Today’s young face longer commutes than those before them and are confronted by an increasingly out of reach property sector. Over the last 20 years we’ve seen nothing short of a collapse in homeownership amongst younger people. In 1995-96, sixty five percent of those with incomes in the middle twenty percent for their age owned their own home. In 2015-16

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Netanyahu’s desperate bid to cling to power

He struck at dawn, 25 years ago this week. As Jews marked Purim and Muslims Ramadan, Baruch Goldstein walked unchallenged into Yitzhak Hall in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Here the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried and here Muslims worship in what they call the Ibrahimi Mosque. Surveying the Muslims praying the Fajr, Goldstein opened fire, emptying his Israeli-made Galil of three and a half magazines in two minutes, a rate of almost one round per second. When his rifle jammed on bullet number 112, the Palestinians took their chance and overpowered the gunman, beating him to death with a fire extinguisher. Twenty-nine Palestinians lay