Society

Thursday

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

Steerpike Steerpike

Michael Gove: The Prime Minister is doing a great job… at the moment

As the European Research Group breaks out in to open revolt and rumours of no confidence letters abound, it seems like Theresa May’s hold on power is looking precarious at best. So, when in trouble, send Michael Gove on the airwaves. The Environment Secretary attempted to prop up his leader with an appearance on the Today programme. Only Mr S thinks his performance only added fuel to suggestions that the jury is still out on her premiership. Speaking on Radio 4 this morning, the ever-loyal MP let slip that: ‘The Prime Minister is doing a great job at the moment’ Hardly a ringing endorsement…

Laurent Pillet

Autumn Budget: the importance of UK spirits

UK spirits are key to our economy. Take, for instance, Scotch; sold in 200 markets worldwide, it supports 40,000 jobs and is our single biggest food and drink export, with 39 bottles exported each second. Or how about gin? The UK exported half a billion pounds of gin in 2017; a figure that could top £600 million this year, with markets including the USA, Australia, and Europe growing rapidly. The UK accounts for 67 per cent of all gin traded around the world, in what is a booming category. At Pernod Ricard, we employ more than 2,000 Britons, exporting the likes of The Glenlivet, Chivas and Beefeater to 160 countries

Tuesday

Spectator Money

Best Buys: Fixed-rate cash ISAs

ISAs have fallen from grace in recent years, and are now being ignored by many savers. ‘One of the biggest influences on the ISA market has been the disrupting force of the PSA since its inception in 2016. Savers have also faced the blight of Government lending initiatives, which decimated the savings market and forced interest rates to plummet’, comments Rachel Springall, of Moneyfacts.co.uk. However, there are still some good rates to be had if you search hard enough. Here are some of the best three-year fixed-rate ISAs on the market at the moment.

Liam Halligan

Why do banks and governments seem to have learned nothing from the financial crash?

With September marking a decade since the Lehman Brothers implosion, stand by for a slew of economic retrospectives. Any meaningful analysis, though, needs to get beyond historic balance sheets and plunging share price graphs — however dramatic the data. For the most significant impact of the biggest financial and economic upheaval since the Great Depression has been the growing loss of faith in western liberal capitalism. Politics has been upended by the 2008 crisis — doing much to explain Trump, Corbyn and the broader shift away from centrist parties towards extremes. The demise of Lehmans, a once-impregnable investment bank, exposed a US financial sector riddled with chronic debts and fraud.

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why is Sandi Toksvig on 40pc of Stephen Fry’s pay? It should be 10pc

Shocking news emerges that Sandi Toksvig is paid 40pc of what Stephen Fry was on to present the lamentable programme QI. Really? It had never occurred to me that Toksvig was paid anything at all. She is boring, smug and bereft of wit. I assumed she did it out of delight at being beamed into our living rooms, knowing that everyone was quickly turning off the TV. I’m no great fan of Stephen Fry – an idiot’s conception of what intelligence is, frankly. But he presented that programme with chutzpah and humour, both qualities patently absent from Sandi’s make-up. As is make-up, of course. Sandi also complained that she was

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The functional, quiet nobility of Alastair Cook

No-one ever bought shares in Alastair Cook because they were sexy. No man has made so many runs with so little flash. But no Englishman has made as many as 12,472 runs in test cricket either. If the quantity of test cricket played these days helped Cook build his own mountain of runs, it remains the case that no-one, from any other country, has ever made as many test runs while carrying the burden of opening the innings. The opener is a breed apart. Few people want to open; not all those charged with doing so enjoy it. The position requires a very particular set of skills. There is never

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The myth of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Syria

To be honest, it’s hard to think of a report by a select committee that is so well-meaning as the one issued today by the Foreign Affairs Committee, headed by Tom Tugendhat, or one that’s more misguided. The gist is that Britain’s non-intervention in Syria has been disastrous for Syria itself and for its neighbours, from Lebanon to Turkey. And the moral is that if humanitarian intervention has a price, so too has non-intervention. As the report says: ‘There has been a manifest failure to protect civilians and to prevent mass atrocity crimes in Syria. This failure has gone beyond the heavy toll paid by the Syrian people to the

Sunday

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

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: ‘a tomato is nothing more than a bordello of suggestibility’

The inspiration for the latest challenge, to submit a newspaper leading article exposing the corrupting influence of a seemingly innocuous everyday item, was the revelation, in a recent letter to the Times, that patent leather shoes were outlawed at a British girls’ public school as recently as the 1980s, lest they reflect undergarments and ‘excite the gardeners’. In a smallish field with a narrow focus, you divided fairly equally between those who consider fruit (bananas, in particular) to be the Devil’s work and those who reckon that the real threat to vulnerable young minds is cutlery. As usual with this type of challenge, the entries that stood out were those

The Spectator

The rise of Sajid Javid

Since being appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid has taken a series of bold and overdue decisions. On immigration, he understood that most people would like skilled doctors and nurses to come and work for the National Health Service, so he removed them from the cap that Theresa May had imposed on skilled workers coming to this country. In his response to the case of Billy Caldwell, the severely epileptic boy whose fits were eased by cannabis oil, Javid brought political nous to a department that all too often lacks it. He recognised that if heroin could be prescribed for medical purposes without further undermining prohibition, the same could be true

Saturday

Gary Shteyngart

How Brexit has changed London

London! Since Brexit, this town feels a little different, not as intimidating as before, no longer the capital of the universe. At breakfast at my nice hotel, a Russian is screaming to his business partner back home: ‘Well, they got this fucking democracy here. It’s hard to do business.’ I tweet that dialogue out and am told to watch my tea and sushi consumption. Tonight’s reading is at the London Review Bookshop with the writer Adam Thirlwell, who happens to be my OBF, or oldest British friend. At the book signing, a watch geek brings me a watch strap to sign. Also, a young man tells me I’ve won a

Friday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Macron vs Salvini

This week antagonism between Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Matteo Salvini ratcheted up over immigration – are they the leaders of an ideological battle in Europe? But pro-immigration or not, both Macron and Salvini smashed through conventional politics in the global surge of populism. As we reach the tenth anniversary of the 2008 crash, we ask, did the financial crisis lead to greater populism? And last, why have Americans been boycotting Nike? First, is there a battle brewing in Europe over immigration? On the one side, Emmanuel Macron seems to represent the ideals of a globalist EU, the natural successor to Merkel’s liberalism; on the other, Italy’s Matteo Salvini is bringing

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Justin Welby’s plan for solving inequality wouldn’t work

Ronald Reagan famously proclaimed that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” With the ‘most terrifying’ words already attributed, the pledge of a commission to transform the economy through increased intervention and higher taxes will simply have to be chalked up to misguidance and bad policy. The IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice, released this week, puts forward 73 recommendations for ‘better and more sustainable growth’. Yet a look through the proposals suggests that the commissions members – including the Archbishop of Canterbury and trade union reps – are more interested in tackling perceived issues around inequality than they are

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Why was a transgender rapist put in a women’s prison?

If you were deciding where to house a convicted sex offender accused of repeatedly raping a woman, where’s the last place on earth you would put that person? How about a building full of vulnerable women, many of whom had previously suffered sexual assault and abuse? A building locked and secured so that those women could not get out and could not get away from that convicted sex offender? This is not a thought experiment. This is not a clever debating point. This is a simple factual description of something that happened in England in the last year. This is the case of Karen White, a multiple rapist who was

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Peaceful solution

In the recent super-tournament in St Louis, Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Lev Aronian opted to share the laurels. According to the regulations, any tie for first place should have been resolved by a playoff. But the three co-victors decided that they would prefer to share the trophy. This peaceful solution was in line with the tournament as a whole, where no fewer than six of the ten contestants remained undefeated, with two of them, the former world champion Viswanathan Anand and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, drawing all their games. A staggering 82 per cent of the games were draws. As noted in this column last week, if this state of affairs continues, classical

Raymond Keene

no. 522

White to play. This position is a variation from Caruana-Karjakin, St Louis 2018. Can you spot White’s classic mating finish? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 11 September or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Qf5 Last week’s winner Iain Chadwick, Edinburgh