Society

Thursday

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 1 November 2018

For most bridge players, defence is the hardest part of the game. Not only do you need to visualise declarer’s hand, you also need to visualise your partner’s — and then you have to make sure you’re in step with each other. What if he inadvertently sabotages your plan? Worse, what if you sabotage his? Nothing stresses me so much at the bridge table as when I’m partnering a top-class player who, midway through defending, stops to think for ages. I quickly lose confidence in whatever plan I had formulated; my job now is to try and figure out what on earth he’s plotting. The longer he thinks, the worse

Dot Wordsworth

On the wagon

Radio 3 tries to distract listeners from music by posing little quizzes and hearing quirky details of history from a ‘time traveller’. Last Wednesday we were assured that on the wagon, meaning ‘abstaining from alcohol’, derived somehow from condemned prisoners being taken from Newgate to Tyburn and having a last drink at St Giles’s. This is definitely not the origin of the phrase. That reliable philologist Michael Quinion gave the true version in his blog World Wide Words in 1998. The journey to Tyburn was a staple of popular miscellanies such as Hone’s Year Book and Chambers Book of Days, and earlier of fictionalised histories like Jonathan Wild (1725) and

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 1 November 2018

Q. Previously a long-term and content single man, earlier in the year I began a relationship with a wonderful girl, despite warnings from friends that she had a reputation for suddenly and crushingly breaking the hearts of a string of boyfriends. I reassured myself and my friends that this was different and special. Months later, and happily committed to what I thought was a long future with her, with no signs to the contrary, inevitably I have been tossed aside via WhatsApp messages and a phone call. How can I avoid the pitying looks from those who warned me? — Name withheld, London SW3 A. As soon as you enter

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 1 November 2018

Home Austerity was ‘finally coming to an end’, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in the Budget. He was helped by what he did not call a magic money sapling, in the form of revised estimates of public borrowing in 2018, £11.6 billion lower than forecast. Debt as a share of GDP, from a peak of 85.2 per cent in 2016-17, would still be 74.1 per cent by 2024. Mr Hammond repeated a pledge of an extra £20.5 billion for the NHS over the next five years, with an extra £2 billion a year for mental health services. Councils would get £700 million more for care. The personal

The Spectator

Unhealthy spending

Since the Budget, economists have pointed out that Britain is turning into a health service with a government attached. The NHS was protected from what Philip Hammond calls ‘austerity’, yet it has emerged as the big winner from his abandonment of the old Tory idea that government should live within its means. The plan is for more debt, more spending, more tax and a lot more NHS. At the start of the last decade, the NHS accounted for 23 per cent of government spending on public services: this figure is now set to rise to 39 per cent. And then, no doubt, further still. Simon Stevens, the chief executive of

Toby Young Toby Young

I like the idea of meritocracy as much as my father hated it

Last week I spoke at an event at Nottingham University to commemorate the 60th anniversary of The Rise of the Meritocracy, the book by my father that added a new word to the English language. A dystopian satire in the same mould as Nineteen Eighty-Four, it describes a nightmarish society of the future in which status is based on a combination of effort and intelligence rather than inherited privilege. That sounds like an improvement and, to my father’s annoyance, the word ‘meritocracy’ has come to stand for something politically desirable when he intended the book to be a warning. As a lifelong socialist, he didn’t like meritocracy because he thought

Doc

2383: Flagged

The unclued lights, one of two words, and the others when paired are of a kind. One individual unclued light does double duty.   Across 1    Women’s painting seen initially returning by tube (5) 4    Look about, right and left, in a jaunty manner (9) 9    Home I leave — priests’ centre’s defining acts of wickedness (10) 11    Give address that’s fancy, not new (5) 12    Porcelain broken, lacking no true copy (7) 16    Trojan horse finally gains access to a stable backwards (6) 21    What is going beyond The Pale? (8) 24    Fair during the 70s (4) 27    Nemesis from Bremerhaven, Germany (7) 28    Fielder at opponent’s ground has to

Fred Baker

The Dengie Hundred

J. A. Baker, an arthritic and short-sighted birdwatcher from Chelmsford, compared the British wilderness to ‘the goaded bull at bay, pierced by the lance of the picador’. Baker found solace in the unblemished solitude of the Dengie Hundred, where he wrote one of the strangest and most influential nature books ever written, The Peregrine, which tracks the daily lives of a pair of peregrine falcons. He died in the 1980s but the wilderness of the Dengie Peninsula, 50 miles east of London, where Essex marshland meets the Northern main, is still largely as it was. Here, wildfowl still come and go in their thousands. Waders take refuge in the glasswort

Daniel Butler

Picky eaters

Autumn’s wild bounty is a cause for celebration across the Continent. In France and Germany, people rush into the woods, motivated largely by greed. Families drink, eat and forage, while the elderly show their grandchildren what is — and isn’t — safe to eat. In Britain, attitudes are different. Even conkers now seem suspect. We are particularly nervous about fungi, because we are told that picking mushrooms is both dangerous and bad for the environment. This is a shame. Britain has the perfect climate for some of the most flavoursome wild mushrooms known to man. They grow in our woods, pastures and hedges, yet almost all of us ignore them.

Iain Dale

Can’t pay, shouldn’t pay

You probably haven’t heard of the loan charge. I hadn’t until a couple of months ago, when I told listeners to my LBC radio show that I would soon be interviewing Mel Stride, the financial secretary to the Treasury. Following this, I was bombarded by texts and emails from something called the Loan Charge Action Group and its many, many sympathisers. I then became acquainted with what might be the next storm to hit the government. The messages, many of them emotional and some borderline aggressive, told the same story: hundreds of what politicians like to call ‘hardworking families’ were facing unpayable and unjust tax bills as a result of

The Spectator

to 2380: Dedover

The unclued Across lights are US state capitals and the unclued Down ones are the states. The title refers to DELAWARE (DE) and its capital DOVER.   First prize D.P. Shenkin, London WC1 Runners-up Margaret Lusk, Fulwood, Lancs; Lynne Gilchrist, Willoughby, NSW, Australia

Toby Young Toby Young

Will making jokes about vegans soon be a hate crime?

Well done to Sara Thornton, a senior police officer who has warned against extending the definition of a ‘hate crime’ to include misogyny, misandry and ageism. Yesterday, she told a conference of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners that they should be allowed to focus on ‘core’ crimes like burglary, rather than being forced to increase the already ridiculous amount of time they spend investigating hate crimes. In 2016, British police detained and questioned 3,300 people for making ‘offensive’ comments on social media – roughly nine arrests per day. Meanwhile, West Yorkshire Police, the fourth largest force in England, is failing to investigate 56 per cent of cases – and these aren’t minor crimes, but include things like theft, assault and

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What the rise of the Poppy refusenik tells us about Britain | 1 November 2018

Is there anyone smugger than the poppy refusenik? I don’t mean people who don’t wear poppies. That’s absolutely fine. Knock yourselves out. I mean people who don’t wear a poppy and who tell everyone they don’t wear a poppy. At every opportunity. ‘It’s poppy-fascism time of year again but I won’t be falling for it because I actually have a brain, unlike you idiots’, they don’t quite say but definitely mean. Poppy refuseniks have replaced poppy fascists (Jon Snow’s uncouth phrase) as the most irritating people of the Remembrance Day season. Sure, the poppy police who take to internet discussion boards the second they spy a newsreader or celeb sans

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Budget shows the Tories are now fighting on Corbyn’s turf

When Theresa May announced at this year’s Tory conference that she would put an end to austerity, it’s safe to say that her Chancellor hardly looked thrilled as he clapped from the front row of the hall. Philip Hammond is regarded as a fiscal hawk and rather averse to loosening the purse strings. At today’s Budget, Hammond tried to get on board with No 10’s ending austerity message. But in doing so, he also attempted to put some clear blue water between ‘end austerity’ Conservatives and anti-austerity Labour. Firstly, Hammond defined what he sees as ‘ending austerity’. The Chancellor said that ending austerity meant an above-inflation increase in departmental spending.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

How Cameron’s misreading of Merkel led to Brexit

It is impossible to overstate Angela Merkel’s significance, to Germany, to the EU, and to Britain. Others are better qualified than me to talk about the first two of those, but as she announces her (slow, deliberate) departure from office, I offer a thought about Merkel and Britain, which is that the modern history of Britain’s European policy has been a story of misunderstanding Angela Merkel, and therefore Germany. This story starts in 2005, when David Cameron stood for the Tory leadership. As a moderate, he was keen to woo the Right, especially on Europe. So he promised to pull the Tory MEPs out of the European People’s Party grouping

Douglas Murray

Should it be illegal to insult Mohammed?

Should you be allowed to say that the founder of one of the world’s largest religions was a paedophile? According to the European Court of Human Rights the answer is ‘no’. In a decision issued this week the Court in Strasbourg ruled that this statement is defamatory towards the prophet of Islam, ‘goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate’ and ‘could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace.’ Details of the long-running case can be read here. I will come to the civilisational problems with this in a moment. But first allow me to point out what a difficult position this puts my book collection in.

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Barbour-clad southerners vs the whippet brigade

Leader in the clubhouse for top rugby try by an Englishman in 2018: Oliver Gildart. Oliver who? Oliver Gildart, only 22, scored a corker of a try on his debut, sprinting from well within his own half, with several sidesteps and a blinding turn of speed, to secure an 18-16 win over New Zealand in a brutal first rugby league test at Hull. If you missed it please catch up: it doesn’t take long to watch, trust me. I remember once getting into a steaming row with a rugby pal who had dared to suggest that rugby league was better to watch than union. But who really does get the

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 1 November 2018

Laikipia   My two Jersey bulls Halcyon and Hosanna were grazing happily on the lawn in front of the house when a pride of lion breached the 7,500-volt high-security fence enclosing our garden, pounced on the cattle and broke both of their necks. I am down by 24 sheep so far this year thanks to the old leopard who patrols the hillside above us. A cheetah boldly tried to grab a calf in the valley the other day. The pasture grass I planted at huge expense has attracted great numbers of oryx, buffalo, zebra, eland, gazelles and warthog. The electric fences I placed around the perimeter of the farm have

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

How to trap a journalist

Shortly before his death, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that capitalism crushed the integrity of artists and intellectuals. Assessed only in terms of their commercial appeal, they became ‘a sub-department of marketing’. In a touching display of filial loyalty, Julia Hobsbawm seems to be proving her old dad right. The former head of New Labour’s favourite PR agency, Hobsbawm Macaulay, now runs an outfit called Editorial Intelligence, ‘a tool for… bringing together key journalists and PR professionals through networking clubs’. Journalists once had a vague notion that their job was to tell the truth whatever the cost, while PRs believed they must protect their institution whatever the cost. There