Society

Thursday

Taki

High life | 15 November 2018

New York A little Austrian count was born to my daughter last week in Salzburg, early in the morning of 9 November, becoming my third grandchild. Through modern technology, I was flooded with pictures of a blond, fuzzed and pink baby boy less than a day old. The mother of my children, who was flying in from Gstaad, did not make it on time, which was just as well. Like most women, she tends to overreact where babies are concerned. Unlike us tough guys, who tend to hit the bottle and celebrate instead. And speaking of the fair sex, Lionel Shriver is some columnist, the best American writer by far,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 15 November 2018

The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled old French infantryman chiselled on top. His big capable hands are gripping the block’s edge, as though he is peering intently over the parapet of a trench. On Sunday we assembled around him to honour the 53 local men, from a population of 1,800, who lost their lives in the first world war. Schoolchildren queued at a microphone to sing out their names. A ladies choir sang a plangent song about Verdun. The state bell tolled for 11 minutes. The major made an interminable speech in the rain. Everybody sang

Melissa Kite

Real life | 15 November 2018

Left at the Dementia Café, right at the Sleep Office, past the Spiritual Care Centre… This was my journey through the ground floor of my local hospital until I came to the physiotherapy department where the Calf Stretching Education Group was being held. Hospitals are very different places nowadays from the forbidding buildings of my childhood where doctors and nurses in starched uniforms used to attempt to cure people. Now they host Costa Coffee shops and M&S mini food halls and art exhibitions along the walls, which you peruse in spite of yourself as you pass these marvellous new departments. You wonder what happens at the Dementia Café and the

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 15 November 2018

It’s no surprise that so many bridge players are computer programmers or systems analysts; it’s an ideal game for those who excel at logic and puzzle-solving. But at the highest level, a strong imagination is what really gives you the edge. Certain players have an extraordinary ability to visualise their opponents’ cards, put themselves in their shoes, and then persuade them to go wrong. It’s a rare gift that elevates the game almost to an art form. Artur Malinowski, the manager of TGR’s rubber bridge club, is one such player. During a recent high-stake game, he pulled off this coup against two formidable opponents, Robert Sheehan and Gunnar Hallberg: Robert

Pabulum

2385: R and R

The theme is two historic people who were contemporaries. Unclued lights give their forenames, places of birth and death and occupations. A geographical feature (5) linking the two will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore an apostrophe. The solutions at 22 and 27 share the same two unchecked letters.   Across 4    Harmless wag recast an economic principle (11, two words) 11    Eating away, in love indeed with empty oarsman (7) 14    Sarah acquires seemingly good old watch (5) 16    Papa gets behind in river race (5) 19    Many ships fighting lass boards (7) 21    Strange duke whipped lasher (4) 24    Insect sting upset (4)

Harry Curtis

Which MPs backed May’s Brexit deal and who has vowed to vote it down?

Theresa May spent three hours on her feet in the Commons defending her Brexit deal. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister’s perseverance did little to persuade her parliamentary colleagues to back her plan. It was an hour before any Tory MPs publicly supported the PM. A total of 135 MPs spoke during the debate – and only 15 came out in favour, compared to the 109 MPs who vowed to vote the plan down when it comes before Parliament. The debate, where May spent as much time turning to her own benches as to the opposition, confirmed what we already knew. The chances of this deal making it through the Commons in a few

The Spectator

to 2382: A pointed remark

The quotation is 10/11/39. Remaining unclued lights are all daggers.   First prize G. Snailham, Windsor Runners-up Lynne Gilchrist, Willoughby, New South Wales; Kevin Bentley, Anglesey

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How close are we to 48 letters of no confidence in Theresa May?

So, where are we? There is now an open effort to get the 48 letters required to force a vote of no confidence in Theresa May. Personally, I don’t think it is a racing certainty that this succeeds. The ERG WhatsApp group has had some influential people urging caution, and telling people not to put their letters in. But if the letters do go in, the risk is greater to Mrs May than conventional wisdom has it. In the privacy of the ballot box, I think a decent chunk of the payroll would vote against the Prime Minister. Interestingly, one minister who is agnostic on the deal told me that

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Jacob Rees-Mogg says Theresa May on course to face a confidence vote

Theresa May is on course to face a confidence vote according to the Conservative party’s arch-Brexiteers. Senior members of the European Research Group today publicly called for her departure. After Dominic Raab’s resignation this morning, members of the group of Eurosceptic backbenchers gathered in the committee room corridor to discuss their options. Brexiteers were seen raising their hands in what appeared to be a vote. While not everyone present agreed a vote was the answer, a significant number said they had sent their letter to 1922 committee chair Graham Brady. That includes Simon Clarke – the Tory MP who previously publicly retracted his – and Jacob Rees-Mogg who has helpfully

Alasdair Palmer

The stop and search race myth

When I was working as a speech writer in the Home Office, under Theresa May, one of her special advisers told me that she wanted to give a statement to parliament on the police’s use of stop and search. Part of the motive for doing this, he explained, was political: stop and search is a policy which consistently alienates members of the black community. I was told that it would help the home secretary’s standing with Afro-Caribbeans if she made a statement that was critical of the police’s use of stop and search. The grounds would essentially be that the tool was racist, or at least used by the police

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The real reason atheists want to be on Thought for the Day

Oh God. Or maybe not. There’s a letter in the Guardian today from assorted unbelievers asserting their right to a place on Radio 4’s God slot, Thought for the Day. ‘It’s time for the BBC to open Thought for the Day to humanists. Religion doesn’t hold a monopoly on ethical worldviews. Humanists… make sense of the world through logic, reason and evidence, and always seek to treat others with warmth, understanding and respect…’ Etc. It’s signed by Sandi Toksvig, Julian Baggini, the philosopher, agony aunt Virginia Ironside and Peter Tatchell. Plus 29 others. Consider folks. Is there a gap in your life that comes from not hearing enough of Sandi

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Why MPs should back Theresa May’s Brexit deal

Many things about the politics of Brexit are mystifying. Some are minor puzzles: Why don’t people read the documents they say they’re angry about, for instance? And some are major enigmas: Why don’t politicians talk about the economic and social problems that drove the Leave vote instead of fixating on misunderstood abstractions like sovereignty? Yet here we are, staggering into the ‘endgame’ of the most consequential negotiations in our postwar history and the debate has come down to a pair of Old Etonians talking about vassalage. I wonder how many people of Sunderland thought that’s what they were voting for in June 2016. To my mind, Jo Johnson was a

Charles Parton

The fourth weapon

Chairman Mao talked of ‘three magic weapons’ for seizing power: the united front, the armed struggle and construction of the Communist party itself. Now the priority for China’s government is to remain in power. To ensure that, President Xi Jinping’s party is developing a fourth ‘magic weapon’. The social credit system is a part of this, but the ‘weapon’ also extends far beyond it. By combining big data, artificial intelligence, recognition technology and other police techniques, China’s government intends to create a comprehensive method of political and social control. It may not live up to everything that is promised: after all, government-implemented computer systems rarely work as well as intended.

The Spectator

Trial and punishment

From ‘The Kaiser’, 16 November 1918: What is to be done with the Kaiser? For the question must certainly be answered. If we may venture to judge the feelings of our countrymen, we should say that, though there is no trace of a vindictive hostility towards any of the Germans who may seriously be trying to enter upon a better way of life, there is a very strong feeling that the Kaiser must be brought to trial. This is a perfectly logical conclusion. The British government have announced that all persons proved guilty of offences against the laws of humanity during the war shall be duly punished. It is unthinkable,

Juliet Samuel

BlackRock in the spotlight

A few months ago, an aggressive US pressure group called the Campaign for Accountability declared that it had a new target: the Wall Street behemoth BlackRock. Quickly, the American press picked up on this campaign against excessive corporate power. Soon we were reading about how BlackRock, like Goldman Sachs before it, ‘rules the world’. Despite BlackRock’s supposed omni-potence, it is relatively unknown in Britain. It might be the biggest private manager of assets in the world but, in political terms, the company has existed in relative obscurity. That is, until last year, when it handed George Osborne a £650,000 contract for giving ‘advice’ one day a week. In recent months,

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I won’t be turning Catholic just yet

I didn’t get an audience with the Pope when I visited Rome last weekend. But given that he’s a borderline commie, an open borders advocate and an increasingly fervent evangelist for the climate-change religion, we probably wouldn’t have found much to say to one another. Nice art collection, though. Well, it would be if you had it to yourself which of course you don’t. Even in the autumn off-season, the Vatican museums feel like shuffling in the midst of a zombie horde from The Walking Dead. I’m surprised the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel haven’t peeled off by now, what with the collected acid exhalations of the 25,000 tourists who

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Time to waste, money to burn

Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far. Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions

Lucy Vickery

We’re scamming

In Competition No. 3074 you were invited to submit a scam letter ghostwritten by a well-known author, living or dead.   Falling for a scam is costly and tedious (and more easily done than you might think), but the comedian James Veitch found a silver lining when he decided to engage with his persecutors: the ensuing correspondence — lengthy, labyrinthine and often hilarious — went on to form the basis of a popular TED talk and book.   It was a tricky assignment, judging by the smallish postbag, but you made some clever choices of author whose prose style lent itself well to the art of phishing: poor spelling (Molesworth

Patrick West

Watling Street

All roads lead to Rome, the saying goes. Well, all roads except for the Roman road of Watling Street, which at one end takes you to Dover (Dubris) and at the other Wroxeter (Viroconium) in Shropshire. I was always only vaguely aware of this thoroughfare but the name began, in recent years, to nag on my weekly visits to Canterbury (Durovernum Cantiacorum). When approaching the city centre from the station, I would see a street sign bearing the name on the side of a branch of Boots. It took some time to dawn on me that this was the very same Watling Street I had been told about in school