Society

Thursday

10 Jan 2019

Peter Jones

New year, old truths

At this time of year the media urge us all to turn over a new leaf and believe that we can become and do whatever we want. Those tempted by this idiotic advice would be better advised to turn over a 2,500-year-old one with a stiff dose of Aesop’s fables. A shadowy 6th-century bc figure, Aesop turned animals into literary figures by giving them simple black-and-white human characteristics — the timid mouse, the deceitful fox, the stupid donkey, and so on — and putting them in situations illustrating aspects of the human condition. Theon called them ‘fictitious stories picturing a truth’ — usually truths about human folly. One lesson they

Taki

High life | 10 January 2019

Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read that one Ted Widmer is a ‘distinguished lecturer’ at a New York university and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. The Ted I knew was anything but ethical and dressed rather strangely. Never mind. Whether or not he was a schoolmate, Widmer has written a treatise on the year 1919 and called it ‘1919: the Year of the Crack-up’. It’s very good. Basically, he says that what took place in 1919 shaped the world for the rest of the century. One hundred years later,

Toby Young

Save the male

For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) has issued guidelines for mental health professionals working with men and boys. That may not sound like a momentous event, but the APA is a powerful body in the US. It has 117,500 members, including the vast majority of practising psychologists, and an annual budget of $115 million. Its guidance documents carry the imprimatur of scientific authority and are hugely influential when it comes to policies and behaviour in public institutions. This edict will be referred to by university administrators when policing sexual interactions on campus, by the courts when deciding who to award custody to in divorce

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 10 January 2019

We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would guess, of around 500. A quarter of the company — two of the men — had been officially diagnosed as suffering from one form or another of dementia. We whose brains still neatly fitted the inside of our skulls were instead prey to all the usual anxieties, delusions, depressions and addictions typical of those wealthy, late middle-aged English people who exist in the strange limbo of expatriation. We sat there facing each other across the dinner table on the last day of the year, knackered, it’s true, each drifting aimlessly

Melissa Kite

Real life | 10 January 2019

Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge: ‘If you are calling to cancel your BT service, please press one…’ It would have been more accurate to say: ‘If you never use your landline and have only now, while doing your New Year financial panicking, noticed you pay twice as much for your broadband and phone package as you thought and have had a mild stroke from the shock, press one.’ I pressed one and the voice said I was in the queue for an adviser. The line then went dead-sounding, possibly to make me give up. But

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 10 January 2019

For those of us who play rubber bridge at TGR’s, the New Year began with the very sad news that Maurice Esterson had died. He was 89, but it was still completely unexpected. He was part of the club’s furniture — perhaps its most comfortable and precious item — and had been playing with his usual vigour just days earlier. On the whole, we rubber bridge players are a grumpy lot, with fragile egos. Maurice was a rarity: a fine player (he represented England three times) with an even, kind temperament, always full of good humour, and universally liked and respected. When I last saw him, we were

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 10 January 2019

Q. What is the current etiquette regarding chasing an opinion from a publisher to whom, by agreement and via a shared acquaintance, I submitted a manuscript six weeks ago? Other than acknowledgement of receipt and an expression of enthusiasm at the prospect of reading it, I have heard nothing further from her. I am aware that the days when a rejection would take the form of an encouraging lunch and, at worst, a rejection slip have long gone. But what is the digital equivalent of a rejection slip for today’s writer? Must I assume that if, after three months, I hear nothing, the answer is no? How will I know

Tanya Gold

Bob, booths and buttons

In January, you could go to Bob Bob Ricard in Soho. I do not know why it is called Bob Bob Ricard; and I do not really care. I am currently reviewing cars for another magazine and cars’ names make restaurants’ names sound reasonable. Perhaps Bob Bob Ricard is always slightly drunk and needs to mumble its name — ‘Bob?’ — for fear of forgetting it, like the people in the VIP field at Glastonbury. I do know that it is a restaurant for affluent halfwits, of which there is an infinite supply in Soho. I wonder if it might have been Jimmy Savile’s favourite restaurant. It occupies the ground

Dot Wordsworth

Illeism

Someone has been putting about reports that Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary, refers to himself in the third person as ‘the Sajid’ or ‘the Saj’. This habit has a long history. Xenophon entered his own Anabasis 2,400 years ago with the words: ‘There was in that host a certain man, an Athenian, Xenophon.’ Caesar played the same game, as Shakespeare must have noticed at grammar school, later making him die with his own name on his lips: ‘Then fall, Caesar.’ In The Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil (who, like Henry James, but in rather a different way, is the Master) does it: ‘Tom was here before the river and

Helen Pluckrose

The trial of Peter Boghossian

When James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and I spent a year writing nonsense academic papers on topics such as ‘dog-park rape culture’ and ‘fat bodybuilding’ and submitting them to journals known for producing a similar standard of ‘scholarship,’ one question came up repeatedly: ‘What are they going to do to Peter?’ James and I were relatively safe because neither of us work in a university. We anticipated smear pieces and online abuse which is unpleasant, but ultimately survivable. Peter though, was much more vulnerable. Portland State University (PSU), where he works, is notorious for its Social Justice culture, its student protests and its Antifa presence. The surrounding city frequently features political

Stephen Daisley

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the left’s Sarah Palin

When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly — all that standing to attention, Hail to the Chief stuff — but their slobbery swooning over every Great Progressive Hope that comes along is just creepy. There was the White House correspondent who offered to fellate Bill Clinton and the New York Times writer who blogged her shower dream about Barack Obama and claimed ‘many

The Spectator

to 2388: Sea rocket

The quotation was ‘IN MY BEGINNING IS MY END’ (12/15) from East Coker (an anagram of the title), second poem of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Remaining unclued lights are words whose first half is the same as their second half: 5, 16, 42, 43, 10 and 13. ELIOT (diagonally from the twelfth row) was to be shaded. First prize Mike Conway, Grantham, Lincs Runners-up Edward Staveley, London SW15; S.C. Daneff, London SW18

Lavatch

2390: Tea shop

Unclued lights, all confirmed in Chambers or Collins, are three sets of four words of a kind, each set relating differently to a theme word which must be shaded in the completed grid. Across 11 Religious devotee keeping a church in shade (6) 12 Sloth in tangles in New Zealand trees (6) 13 Country moving forward area for us in Jamaica (5, doubly hyphened) 17 Muppet grabbed by squirrel-monkey (4) 18 Physicist’s ally, one protecting university (5) 19 Ending operation led by twit (7) 23 Message from paperweight? (8) 24 Recent clothing still a youngster’s outfit (7) 25 A bit downcast, I jeer about fools (6) 30 Record one

Freddy Gray

Wrinkled, white, and wrong — this is the face of the Democratic party

Ignore the colourful and fresh-faced Democrats filling up your social media feed. The new face of their party is the same as the old one. It is a white, wrinkled face that no amount of plastic surgery can reconfigure. It is Chuck & Nancy; Schumer and Pelosi, the dinosaurs who don’t die. They aren’t likable, to use a word Democrats really don’t like. Trump’s first Oval Office speech was flat, in the end — he didn’t drop a news bomb. He didn’t call a national emergency. He reiterated his position with lots of facts and figures about illegal immigrant crime. He sniffed a bit (this seems to be a regular feature of

Fraser Nelson

The three scenes from Ch4’s Brexit film that show why Remain lost

As soon as Channel 4 announced Benedict Cumberbatch had been cast as Dominic Cummings in its Brexit film, a hatchet job was expected. Some might still see it this way. I found it balanced, gripping, and at times funny, even moving. Plenty will be written about which parts were accurate and which not, but this was drama, not documentary. The story it tells is perhaps the most important story of our times: how politicians had become stuck in a late-90s time warp using a Clinton-era playbook, and thought Remain would easily win the referendum. But they lost because politics changes and the new energy was coming from forgotten voters who

Nick Cohen

What Corbyn’s far left has in common with Trump and the Brexit right

Even though Jeremy Corbyn and the men and women who support him are often shabby and occasionally reactionary figures, the rarest criticism you hear of them is criticism from the left. Political commentary in Britain runs like water through pipes. Conventional opinion holds that if you are left wing, you support the Labour leadership, and if you are not, you don’t. Even though there is an essential left case to be made against the degeneration of Labour into conspiracy theory and personality cults, authors who make it are ignored because they do not fit into the familiar pattern. More than any formal censorship, this control of thinking is the most

Rod Liddle

The National Trust and the evils of heteronormative history

There is a satirical website called ‘Guardian headline generator’ which purports to offer a service to aspirant journalists who wish to be published in the floundering, godawful rag. Press a button on the site and it will give you your subject matter for a typical article, such as: ‘Islamophobic white men will soon be widening the gender pay gap. This shouldn’t happen in 21st-century Britain.’ It even gives you a suitable name for your byline — in this case Jessica Veryangry. The problem, however — as the website rather forlornly admits — is that increasingly it is out-satirised by real Guardian headlines. It simply cannot match the woke idiocy and

Cosmo Landesman

A class act | 10 January 2019

The English love a story of posh people behaving badly, especially one that involves sex, drugs or drink — preferably all three at once — in some stately home or Mayfair pad. In 1963, following the Profumo scandal (yes, the one involving Christine Keeler) the nation was gripped by tales of sex parties involving prostitutes, pimps, peers and cabinet ministers. And then there was the infamous photograph of the Duchess of Argyll with something in her mouth that definitely wasn’t a silver spoon. The Denning Report — Lord Denning’s 1963 inquiry into what he referred to as ‘perverted sex parties’ — was a smash hit, selling more than 4,000 copies

Ross Clark

Project Fact

Food shortages, diabetics going without insulin, outbreaks of salmonella and swine flu: a no-deal Brexit has become a dystopia of the imagination that gives even the Old Testament a run for its money. To lend it extra credence, the doomsayers are not muttering men with long white beards but business leaders and figures from respectable-sounding thinktanks. Yet in just 11 weeks’ time, a no-deal Brexit could become a reality. Will we really be impoverished, hungry and living in fear of infectious diseases? Or is it just Project Fear, ratcheted up to a new level by those who see the clock ticking down and have become ever more desperate to persuade

Roger Alton

If ever a man deserved his gong it’s Sir Chef

Here’s a date for the diary: if you’re in south London on 11 April, head for the Oval. It’s going to be nippy for sure, certainly a four-sweater day, and it might even be snowing, but you can count on the free coffee Surrey generously lays on for members, not forgetting a few pastries as well. More than that, though, you should be able to see a real copper-bottomed English knight of the realm strapping on his pads. With a bit of luck Sir Alastair Cook should have said cheerio to his lambs and be playing in the County Championship for Essex in what must be his gazillionth season of