Society

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Elon Musk: Genius or jerk?

Elon Musk, the California-based entrepreneur behind the Tesla electric car, the SpaceX commercial rocket venture and several other wacky start-ups, made a fool of himself with his attempt to intervene in the Thai cave rescue and subsequent Twitter spat, but there’s no doubt he’s an original thinker and a remarkable businessman. If the futuristic Tesla is a fine feat of technology, what’s more impressive is that the company is not only still in business after 15 years without turning a profit and having lost at least $3.5 billion since 2015, but that its market capitalisation, at $52 billion, is bigger than Ford’s at $42 billion. Tesla built more than 100,000

Friday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Are female prisoners at risk from transgender inmates?

Earlier this week, it was reported that an inmate in HM Prison New Hall, a women’s prison, had been charged with sexually assaulting four female inmates. According to the Sun, the inmate is transgender. Born male and still possessing male anatomy including male genitals, she now identifies as female. Because of that “identification”, the inmate was housed in the female prison estate; in broad terms, the Ministry of Justice says that transgender prisoners should be housed in the part of the prison system that corresponds to their gender identity.  That policy has many implications, one of which is that it is possible for a person with male anatomy, hormones and outlook, to be confined

Mark Mason

How ‘safe’ is the Bank of England?

‘Safe as the Bank of England.’ So goes the old phrase. And yes, with walls 8ft thick, the Old Lady is pretty impregnable. Even the keys to her vaults are more than a foot long (the locks also now incorporate voice-activated software). Until 1973 the building was guarded at night by soldiers from the Brigade of Guards, who received a pint of beer with their dinner there. With all this security, how can you hope to get in? One answer came in 1836, when the directors received an anonymous letter inviting them to meet the letter writer in the bullion room late one night. At the agreed hour they heard

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The importance of ethical banking

When I first visited Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was struck by a set of black-and-white posters in the shopping concourse advertising the Co-op Bank’s ethical banking stance: essentially, no lending to arms, tobacco, gambling or oil companies, or to regimes that disrespected human rights. A cynic might have argued that it was all about virtue signalling (before we learned that phrase) in the sense that no landmine manufacturer or brutal Third World dictator had ever been known to pop into a Co-op branch, ask for a loan and be met with a polite refusal and a copy of the policy. But it was a smart exercise in

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Mental sport

Sporting commentators frequently resort to chess metaphors to convey the flavour of a particular contest. In the case of football, chess tends to be wheeled out as a comparison when nothing much is happening. Tennis commentators, in contrast, and somewhat more perceptively, deploy the chess metaphor to convey mental toughness.   I have for some time regarded Judit Polgar as the Serena Williams of the chessboard. A major difference, though, is that on the physical battlefield Serena would stand no chance against Djokovic, Federer or Nadal. On the mental plane, however, Judit has defeated, among others, Carlsen, Kasparov, Anand, Korchnoi and Short.   A new book, Strike Like Judit!, by Charles Hertan (New in Chess)

Raymond Keene

no. 515

Black to play. This is from Carlsen-Polgar, Mexico 2012. Judit had been struggling in this game but when Carlsen slipped up she was quick to spot the opportunity. Black’s next destroyed the white position. What was it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 24 July 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 … Rc7 Last week’s winner Markus Kobler, Sevenoaks, Kent

Peter Jones

Strangers and brothers

Everyone talks about the importance of ‘charisma’ in a politician. But while it may take one a long way with the voters, it does not necessarily cut much mustard in parliament unless bolstered by other strengths. The Romans provided a useful checklist. Boris, still popular in the country but now, despite high office, in self-exile after failing to win over colleagues to his Brexit views, might care to contemplate them. Top priority were amici, political allies among the great and good. These would automatically include those joined by blood, marriage or other associations, but needed to spread much further into networks of relationships incorporating men from a wide range of

David Starkey

Diary – 19 July 2018

It was blessedly cool inside the Romanesque nave, its massive arches resisting the heat as they had done everything else that history had thrown at them in the past thousand years. Through the great west doors, which had been left open for ventilation, I could glimpse the ruins of the adjacent Norman castle, bleached white by the intense sunshine. In front of me were the serried ranks of prep school pupils at their speech day and I was presenting the prizes. The boys were in blazers; the girls in boaters and the staff were gowned. The head opined sensibly and the dean prayed. The organ thundered; the choir sang exquisitely

Toby Young Toby Young

The rebirth of Radical Chic

Are we witnessing the rebirth of Radical Chic? That was the term coined by Tom Wolfe in his 1970 essay about the party given by Leonard and Felicia Bernstein for the Black Panthers at their 13-room penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. It described a weird trend, beginning in the late 1960s and peaking in the early 1970s, whereby the crème de la crème of New York’s moneyed elite embraced radical left-wing causes, such as the anti-war movement and black power. They did so without irony, seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of trying to ‘stick it to the man’ while living on trust funds established by their robber baron forefathers. It

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 July 2018

Home The administration of Theresa May, the Prime Minister, staggered on, as Conservative MPs exchanged angry words in the Commons, with supporters of Brexit and its enemies voting in turn against government bills. The government even failed to shorten the parliamentary session by five days to avoid trouble, instead provoking threats of defeat on the adjournment debate. An amendment to the Trade Bill seeking to impose a customs union on the government was defeated by 307 to 301, thanks to four Labour MPs who voted with the government. Guto Bebb resigned as minister for defence procurement to vote against the government on amendments that it accepted to the Customs Bill.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 19 July 2018

Q. A dear friend of my husband, a shy bachelor, is an acquired taste. Once you acquire it you are addicted, but he can make a bad impression on first meeting. This is because he normally always has dried food or some other kind of detritus which seems to collect around the corners of his mouth. None of his old friends notice this any more, nor do we tease him — as I said, he’s a tiny bit shy and rather ‘paranoid’. We adore him but do refer to him as ‘Sir Les’ (Patterson) among ourselves. The problem is that he and I are shortly both scheduled to meet someone

Dot Wordsworth

Living with

I’m not at all sure about the formula a person living with, followed by something unwelcome, such as Alzheimer’s disease, HIV or psoriasis. Perhaps I should describe myself as a person living with my husband. The formula is recommended by many Aids organisations that follow the ‘terminology guidelines’ of the UN Programme on HIV/Aids. Instead of saying that someone is infected with HIV, we should call them a person living with HIV. It is meant to be less patronising and avoids suggesting someone is ‘powerless, with no control over his or her life’. No one should even be called a patient, but must be called a client, which is ‘more

Taki

High life | 19 July 2018

New York I am seriously thinking of moving back to London. The family insists on it. New York, they say, is much too far away and much too shabby. Basically, the Bagel’s attractions are the karate, the occasional judo session, and the weekly Brooklyn parties chez Michael Mailer. The women are better in London, but the real draw are the friends. I have many in London, very few in New York. The past fortnight in London was magical. Then the scene went sour, as parasites and social-justice warriors such as Bianca Jagger and Ed Miliband jumped in to hog the headlines, joining protesters in calling Trumpa racist, a sexist, an

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 19 July 2018

Saturday morning. Quarter to 12. Sit-down fish and chips at the Silver Grill: me, Oscar and Oscar’s cousin Atticus. Atticus lives with Oscar because his life is arranged by social workers and the courts. He is a year younger than Oscar, which is to say seven, and they share a bedroom with another, older boy. This is Atticus’s first weekend with Oscar’s grandfather (me) acting as host and entertainments officer, and it could be termed an experiment. The relationship between Atticus’s little bottom and the seat of his chair suggests opposing magnetic fields. ‘And what to drink?’ said the waiter. ‘Tango or Fruit Shoot?’ Atticus chose Tango. Oscar peached that

Melissa Kite

Real life | 19 July 2018

Instead of carpeting the upstairs of the house, I had grass fragments removed from the dogs’ ears. I can’t say I enjoyed the grass removals as much as I might have enjoyed having carpet to walk on. I had picked out a lovely stripy pattern that wouldn’t show the dirt, and was really looking forward to not slashing my feet with splinters every time I stepped out of bed on to bare floorboards. But then Cydney and Poppy managed to coordinate the shoving of razor-sharp pieces of vegetation down their lugholes, hospitalising themselves just a week apart. Cydney was first, dashing around the green outside the house and diving headlong

Robin Oakley

The turf | 19 July 2018

For Coleridge, ‘…the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us’. Not in racing it isn’t. However sharp the instincts of bright young apprentices on the way up, however exciting the pace shown by a novice horse on the home gallops, there is simply no substitute for racecourse experience. Odd, then, that English trainers have mostly been slow to make use of one of the world’s most battle-hardened front-line jockeys, who has chosen this season to base himself in Britain. Gérald Mossé, whose strong Gallic features and courteous charm would never have him taken for anything but a Frenchman, now

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 19 July 2018

Last Friday, merrily on my way to Young Chelsea (still the best IMPs duplicate in town), I couldn’t know that my very dull outfit would cause offence. I found a seat, and was sitting with my back to the room getting settled when the lovely new manager, Louisa, beckoned me over. There had been a complaint, she said, about my trousers! Apparently, someone had asked her to tell me that they were too low-cut, which resulted in a wardrobe malfunction visible through the cut-out in the chair. I can’t remember if she said they were distracted, disgusted or disturbed — let’s go with distracted — but what can he/she/they have

Doc

2368: Cobbled together

The unclued lights (two of two words, and the rest paired) are of a kind.   Across 1    Book with smears around comments on jackets (6) 7    Fashions in stationers (6) 11    Made supple, brewing old-time ale (10) 14    US novelist left out, downstairs (5) 15    Wife and marine attacked telegraph fitter (7) 17    One of England’s winners in Moscow — or loss! (7) 18    Articles on Monteverdi’s first choral work (6) 19    Tax is small on poet’s little home (4) 22    Boy rejecting green and gold in France (6) 24    Jumpers touched, we’re told, by president (9) 25    Short film translator leaves passenger plane (5) 26    Athenian cavalry commander

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Who governs Britain?

There are moments that cut through the din of braggadocio, vindictive utopianism and arrant stupidity surrounding Brexit. Anna Soubry has provided one in an impertinence during yesterday’s debate on the cross-border trade bill. She let into Jacob Rees-Mogg and his European Research Group (ERG) for coercing ministers to abandon much of the substance of the Chequers Brexit blueprint. Then, standing mere metres from the Treasury benches, she enquired: ‘Who is in charge? Who is running Britain? Is it the Prime Minister or is it the Honourable Member for North East Somerset? I know where my money’s sitting at the moment.’ Before the crazy set in, an MP taunting the Prime

Colin Brazier

Last rights

My wife died earlier this month. We knew it was coming. A lump in the breast begat bone tumours, begat liver lesions. In the end, cancer in the brain carried her off quickly. A ‘good death’. I keep staring at my wedding ring and its redundant metallurgy. In one of our final lucid conversations my wife urged me to be ‘sensible’. No tantrums. I don’t rear up when another call centre executive offers me condolences for her ‘passing’. Someone exercising similarly benign thoughtlessness called me a single parent recently, and that didn’t feel quite right either. Rather, I have entered a world of Victorian melodrama. I am the widower. I