Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Teacake

The Sunday Telegraph has been running a correspondence on the origin and nature of teacakes. One reader averred that in the north no smear of jam is permitted to spoil one. On this, the earliest quotations found by the Oxford English Dictionary do not help, indeed — heavens! — they almost suggest an American origin. The first (1832) is in The American Frugal Housewife, by Lydia M. Child. Her recipe is: ‘Three cups of sugar, three eggs, one cup of butter, one cup of milk, a spoonful of dissolved pearlash, and four cups of flour, well beat up.’ Pearlash (pearl-ash, rather than pear-lash) is potassium carbonate, used as a raising

Pabulum

2376: Somewhere XI

On 15 September somewhere bordered by 31 and 5, and whose capital is 40/10 (ignore an accent), celebrates its 43 from 35. Its main exports are 36 and 19D and, unusually, it has no 1 (two words). Its IVR (2) appears downwards in the completed grid and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore one accent.   Across 12    Dippy Irish auntie’ll like Bond’s boss’s name (10) 14    Plump and very well indeed (3) 15    Turning eighteen, Romeo is too theatrical (8) 17    Some unwill the sorry state of Ruskin (5) 18    Upper second from Leeds? (7) 19    Sing like Bing about Earl Jonathan’s hamper (6) 22    Fluttering organ-bird bypasses big old

Nathalie Spencer

Top money tips for a new school term

It’s that time of year again – the air is turning crisp and pencils are being sharpened. Back to school. Many will be starting off a new chapter at university. While juggling the demands of course work and lectures with parties, Fortnite, and beer, who has time to think about finances? But if there is something worse than getting your card declined at the late night take-away, it’s having to ring up mum or dad asking for a loan. So here are some ways to approach the new academic year to set yourself up for a semester of financial wellbeing. Don’t be an ostrich. It can be tempting to live

Rick Wilson

What Trump hath wrought

 Washington, DC Republicans observing a rising wave of liberal and progressive candidates, policies and election results in the United States may wish to blame Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or billionaire donors like George Soros or Tom Steyer. They’re missing the mark. The real cause of political disaster coming at the GOP like a Cat 5 hurricane is none other than President Donald J. Trump. Everywhere American Republicans turn, they see progressives and liberals more energised than in any election cycle in recent memory and for one reason: Trump. Like so much of what Trump does, the effect he promised to have on American

The Spectator

to 2373: Susurrus

The theme was The Wind in the Willows (suggested by the title). RATTY defined 9, 13 and 22; MOLE defined 7, 11 and 16; BADGER defined 3, 31 and 41. MR TOAD was to be highlighted.   First prize Steven Reszetniak, Margate, Kent Runners-up R.J. Green, Crickhowell, Powys Alexander Caldin, Houston, Texas

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Skripal suspects say they were in Salisbury ‘to see the Cathedral’

Last week, the UK government released CCTV footage of the two Russian men suspected of poisoning Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March. Since then, there’s been no sign of the alleged Russian secret agents, who had returned to their home country after the attack. Until today. Now, the men have come out of hiding and given a bizarre interview to state-backed television channel Russia Today. In it, they deny that they work for the Russian secret service and explain that they only were in Salisbury on a fly-in visit ‘to see the Cathedral’: Q: “You honestly look very tense,” A: “And how would you look after all of

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why an insurgent Remain could win a second vote

Cold calculation suggests there won’t be a second referendum. It could destroy both the Tory and Labour parties, and in any case, we appear to be heading for a classic EU fudge that will postpone hard choices. But as all predictions in 2018 are likely to be false, and the Tory right appears determined to provoke a crisis, it’s worth understanding why the People’s Vote campaign thinks that next time it will be different. They will be the insurgents and the Brexiters will be defending the status quo. Running against a failed establishment has always been a good tactic, but never more so than in the 2010s. Remain campaigners find

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The new Swedish lesson: populism can be kept at bay by listening to voters

The world’s press was all geared up to write “Rabble-rousing Sweden Democrat breakthrough” but Sweden’s voters have not obliged. The populists were aiming for first place, but remain in third place, behind the conservatives. The Christian Democrats (led by Ebba Busch Thor, pictured, above) and the Centre Party gained more seats between them (16) than the Sweden Democrats did (13 seats, to a total of 62). The governing Social Democrats had their worst result for decades, but have still ended up the largest party by far. Swedes woke up to find parliament looking like this:- V: LeftParty (ie, former Communists). S: Social Democrats. MP: Greens. SD: Sweden Democrats (in the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Serena Williams isn’t the victim of sexism – she’s just a sore loser

Serena Williams’s epic tantrum in last night’s US Open final wasn’t a noble stand against racism or sexism. It wasn’t about her being black, or a woman, or a mother — although of course it very quickly became about that, as tweeters and sports hacks climbed over each other to defend the Queen of Women’s tennis because she is a famous mega brand and her brand is about being black, a woman, and a mother. But in our hearts we all know what really happened. Williams behaved like a bad loser then pretended to be a victim of societal injustice to justify her bratty performance. It was a pathetic and

Bruce Anderson

The depths of tranquillity

Peace came dropping slow. I have never regarded west Flanders as part of la France profonde, but here we were, only a few miles from Lille, in the depths of tranquillity. Earlier in the summer, there had been an excitement. An enormous wild boar had erupted into the garden. Our host shot him, and excited littlies promptly renamed their grand-père: Obelix. I had entertained Yves at a club table. His reciprocity was embarrassingly more generous than his excuse for it. Inevitably, the conversation meandered into politics. The house had a complex history. Vauban is said to have billeted himself there before fortifying Lille. It suffered some damage in both world

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The weird world of Silicon Valley

Which is more diverse: London or Devon? That’s not a trick question. London is much more diverse than Devon. But let’s tweak the question slightly. Which is more diverse: a pub in London or a pub in Devon? Here the answer is not so easy. Though low in ethnic diversity, a pub in Devon might contain a more representative mix of ages, educational backgrounds, earnings, wealth, sexual proclivities and political opinions than a pub in central London. London, for all its vaunted diversity, is a place where you can practise extreme homophily — spending your time exclusively with people nearly identical to you. People largely socialise with contemporaries from work.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My thoughts on the Serena Williams controversy

[Update: Mark Knight, the Australian cartoonist accused of racism for drawing Serena Williams, has deleted his social media accounts after receiving death threats to his family. References to his social media accounts have been removed from this article]. I have spent the morning trying to draw a cartoon of a black person without it being racist. It’s bloody difficult. Especially the lips. Make them too big and anti-racist people will accuse you of being a white supremacist peddling, in their words, the old ‘sambo’ myth. But too small and they don’t look like the lips of very many black people. It’s the same with the colour. At first, on my

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The Tiger trap

There is a Tiger on the loose. It is stalking our high streets. It is prowling our train stations. It has cubs in every shopping mall. It is the Tiger of Tat. And when it roars, it roars: BUY. Tiger, a home accessories chain which opened its first UK shop in 2005, is an emporium of the ephemeral, a grand bazaar of the banal. Here is everything you never needed: oddments and sodments, party bits and barbecue bobs, plastic flotsam and cardboard jetsam. Come buy, come buy! Whoopee cushions and avocado stress-balls, spangled hula hoops and fingerless yoga mittens, cheerleaders’ pompoms and sequinned bow ties. There are walls of coloured

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Ten years after Lehman’s fall, how close is the next crash?

Our cinema is showing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and I’m reminded of a remark attributed to Mark Twain, that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes’. On 3 October 2008, three weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, treasury secretary Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout for the US banking system was passed into law at the very hour when I was watching the original Mamma Mia! movie and observing the impact of a mass inoculation of feelgood on a crowd battered by frightening financial news. And it was early the following Wednesday that I heard of chancellor Alistair Darling’s de facto nationalisation of RBS and Lloyds-HBOS and

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Must ‘the will of the people’ always be respected?

I’ve always respected Alistair Darling and cannot imagine him saying anything ill-considered. But listening to him interviewed last Monday on the Today programme I heard him offer, as though it were obvious, an assumption so much less obvious than he appeared to recognise, that it set me thinking: not about the admirable former chancellor but about a real divide among civilised people that our age is perhaps insufficiently aware of. The presenter, Nick Robinson, had asked Mr Darling if he supported a second (or ‘people’s’) referendum on Brexit. No, said Darling: ‘You ask people what they think and clearly you’ve got to live with it.’ Seconds later, still speaking about

Lucy Vickery

All’s well that ends well | 13 September 2018

In Competition No. 3065 you were invited to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel.   Nahum Tate (the worst poet laureate ‘if he had not succeeded Shadwell’, according to Robert Southey) gave King Lear a cheery ending: Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and Edgar joyfully declares that ‘truth and virtue shall at last succeed’. Charles Lamb hated it, but Samuel Johnson was a fan and so were the punters, it seems: Tate’s 1681 The History of King Lear is thought to have replaced Shakespeare’s version on the English stage, in whole or in part, for some 150 years. In a generally mediocre entry,

Jonathan Meades

What you see is what you get

The Wellcome Trust puts on some of the most engaging exhibitions in London and holds in its permanent collection a number of fine works. Its roots are in biomedical research, but those roots have, with modification, sprouted so many disciplines and areas of tangential enquiry that it makes perfect sense to have commissioned Iain Sinclair to write about the physical and psychological effects of buildings and places on the health of the people who inhabit them, pass through them, long to get out of them, represent them, think about them. Sinclair’s approach is not that of a sociologist, an off-the-peg analyst of urbanism (density good, sprawl bad) or a travel

Wednesday

Jamie Bartlett

Lucy Powell’s bill is the wrong way to tackle online hate

Politicians and the internet still don’t seem to get on. Yesterday Labour’s Lucy Powell put forward a bill proposing two peculiar new suggestions for tackling online hate: first, that moderators and administrators (the people that run online groups and forums) be held legally responsible for what’s posted in their groups. Second, that the name of any large Secret Facebook group, and the number of members it has, be made public Powell has pulled together an impressive array of signatories, including David Lammy and Jacob Rees-Mogg. It’s nice to see that bi-partisanship is still alive and well, even if the proposal itself is completely unworkable. I understand the aspiration – we

Andrew Montford

Why is the British government stifling nuclear innovation?

The government’s announcement last week of a funding package for feasibility studies into a range of modular nuclear reactors went largely unnoticed by the media. However, as a report published this week makes clear, the news actually represents a significant reversal of policy, and one that achieves the remarkable feat of making the UK’s energy future look even bleaker than it does already. George Osborne, for all his faults, showed commendable vision when he launched a government competition to design small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in 2015. SMRs are a new approach to nukes that would involve building large numbers of small reactors rather than a few enormous ones, like