Society

Thursday

7 Jun 2018

Let’s hope RBS emerges as something worth owning shares in

At last the government has restarted the process of selling its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland. A first £2 billion sale in 2015 (of 5 per cent of the bank’s shares) took place at 330 pence per share, against a purchase price of 502 pence in the 2008 bailout. Those numbers looked so embarrassing for George Osborne that the sell-off file was consigned sine die to a Treasury basement; but now that RBS has returned to a slim profit after nine years of losses, Philip Hammond sold another £2.5 billion tranche on Monday, ahead of what his advisers evidently think will be a weaker stock market after the European summit, but at

Andrew Montford

Why weather apps can’t be trusted

The Times reports this morning that Bournemouth business leaders are hugely annoyed with the BBC, whose weather app predicted thick cloud and thunderstorms for the recent bank holiday. In the event, it was sunny and warm, but the damage had already been done, and takings on the seafront were said to be down by nearly 40 percent as people decided to stay at home rather than risk a soaking. While weather forecasting is undoubtedly getting better, it seems fairly clear that ultra-local forecasts of the kind you find on weather apps can be very misleading: reducing the whole forecast to a single icon, as most apps do, removes all the

Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Putin’s Losing Game

In this week’s episode, we talk about Russia’s hidden fragility, and ask, is Putin surviving on luck? We’ll also be getting to the bottom of Trump’s tariffs – is there really no rhyme or reason to them? And last, with all that’s going on in the world, is kindness what we all need more of? The Russia World Cup is due to start in a week, and as the streets of Moscow are cleaned up in preparation, things seem to be going pretty well for Putin’s Russia. Russia has been asked to fill the void left by Trump in the Iran nuclear deal, Russophile parties are wreaking havoc to the

Melanie McDonagh

In praise of Paul Dacre

Eamon de Valera used to say that if he wanted to know the true feelings of the people of Ireland he needed only to look into his own heart. You could say the same about Paul Dacre, shortly to step down as editor of the Daily Mail. When it comes to the sentiments of Middle England, or at least quite a bit of it, he knows what it loves and fears because those are his own sentiments. He doesn’t second guess his readers; he is properly authentic. I knew him from his brief, two year stint at the Evening Standard, and he was the best editor I have ever worked

Harry Mount

Peter Stringfellow (1940 – 2018): the intellectual conservative

When you think about Peter Stringfellow, aka ‘Stringy’, it’s hard to think about anything other than topless women. Stringy, who’s just died aged 77, made a fortune first out of music clubs – early bookings included the Beatles – and then out of women who’d mislaid their tops. Not the most salacious of pursuits, you might think. And the sleaziness of the image wasn’t helped by the foot-long mullet and the taste for leopardskin-print outfits. Certainly, on the outside, all those trashy clichés rang true in 2000, when I interviewed Stringy for The Spectator shortly after his 60th birthday. On his birthday, he sat on a gold throne in his

Nick Cohen

Tommy Robinson and the rise of the new extremists

Other people’s worries are no different from yours. Just as you worry about how to pay the bills, and wonder where you will be in five years, so do extremists. You give them an unwarranted respect if you imagine them to be solely motivated by their ‘ideals’ such as they are. Think instead about the importance of earning a living: the politics of having enough brass to put food on the table. The most mundane reason why communists and fascists did not prosper in the 20th century has nothing to do with the supposed moderation of the British national character and everything to do with money. If you wanted to

Ross Clark

Argentina, why not boycott the entire World Cup?

I am all for taking ethical stands, but if you are going to do so it does help to show a little bit of consistency. Today, Argentina cancelled its World Cup warm-up game against Israel in protest, it seems, at Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. According to striker Gonzalo Higuain, the players ‘have done the right thing’ in refusing to play – and have been warmly applauded by the Palestinian Football Association. So, the Argentinians will miss out their proposed stop in Israel and proceed directly to the World Cup in, er, Russia. Yes, Russia, the country which four years ago annexed the territory of another state, Ukraine, and

Kate Andrews

In defence of Love Island’s Dr Alex George

Love it or hate it, you’re likely well aware that season four of Love Island launched on Monday night. The media frenzy is impossible to escape. Traditional and social media are a-buzz about the contestants, the couplings, and the budding drama that is bound to escalate in coming weeks. But the first episode had its critics – and I’m not just referring those who think the sexual escapades of Brits on holiday shouldn’t be at the top of the news agenda. One of the contestants received particularly intense backlash from the public – presumably not for the same reasons the ladies didn’t step forward to choose him, but because of

Matthew Lynn

Italy isn’t the next Greece. Here’s why

Everyone thinks they know the script of how Italy’s saga will play out. As the populists take power in Rome, they will rail against Brussels, try to fight austerity, come up with some bold plans for reforming the euro, and hold a referendum or two. And then they will meekly cave in as Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank, the euro-zone’s equivalent of Gordon Brown’s ‘big clunking fist’ from a decade ago, bring them to heel. After all, that’s what happened in Greece when Syriza took power. A lot of fighting talk was followed by a dismal surrender, and five years of budget cuts, tax rises, and unending recession.

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron’s challenge for French lesbians

The man who brought France’s Socialist Party to the brink of ruin has no sense of shame. In recent weeks, François Hollande has been plugging his memoirs all over the media and even hinting at a political comeback, much to the “exasperation” of his party, who wish the former president would go quietly into the night. The book, The lessons of Power, is rumoured to have been written with the help of a well-known left-wing journalist, but the delusions are all Hollande’s. His bitterness towards Emmanuel Macron seeps through the prose, and for every swipe at his successor there is also a claim that France’s gradual economic upturn is down

Ross Clark

The battle for Heathrow was over long ago

Whatever happened to the political squall that was Heathrow’s third runway? For several years it looked as if the issue could deeply harm the Conservatives. After all, hadn’t David Cameron ruled out a third runway – “no ifs, no buts” – in 2010. It was deeply embarrassing for him to do an about turn two years later and say well, maybe – even if he did attempt to wriggle out of the charge of hypocrisy by trying to outsource the decision to Sir Howard Davies. West London Tory MPs threatened to rebel, splitting his party. Like John Major on Maastricht, Cameron thought that by endlessly putting off the day of

Brendan O’Neill

Sadiq Khan’s Brexit stance isn’t ‘brave’

It’s always good to remind Sadiq Khan that Brexit is more popular in London than he is. Khan loves to play the role of Mayor of Remainia, the political figurehead of this oh-so-clever capital city that can see through the folly of Brexit that those strange inhabitants of Essex, the North and Wales voted for. And yet while it’s true Londoners voted Remain by 59.9 per cent to 40.1 per cent, the fact is more of us voted for Brexit than we did for Khan: 1,513,232 Londoners want to leave the EU, which is 200,000 more than the 1,310,143 who wanted Khan as mayor. So Brexit was such a massive

Bruce Anderson

Farewell to wine every day

Are there still travelling fairs? In many villages, they used to be part of the annual round. For weeks, the children’s anticipation would mount. Then the great day would come. Clowns, dodgems, candy floss: in those day no one knew about sugar-rushes so the brats grew delirious with excitement while the parents enjoyed themselves more than they let on. Does all that still happen – or do you have to go to Boris Johnson’s office for a similar spectacle? On a smaller scale, I entertain my friends about once a year with a fantasy which does not require so many props. It is called the Anderson diet fair. I announce

Mary Killen

Dear mary

Q. My father has worked pro bono for many years on the advisory board of a certain company with a long established reputation for gentlemanly values. When a new chief executive was appointed, he rang to offer his congratulations and to introduce himself but the assistant who took his call had to ask him to spell his name so she could take a message. When he explained that he was on the board of advisors, the assistant replied that she had no record of him, and she thought the new executive would be ‘getting in his own advisors’. This turns out to have been the case and my father’s telephone

Rory Sutherland

Why most economic models are doomed from the outset

History records many well conceived and apparently logical grand plans for the betterment of mankind. Sadly such ideas almost always fail. Why is this? One possibility is that they fail precisely because they are logical. The dictates of logic require the existence of universally applicable laws. But humans, unlike atoms, are not consistent enough in their affinities for such laws to hold very broadly. For example we are not remotely logical in whom we choose to help. Will wealthy Germans help poorer Germans? Yup. Greeks, however? No chance. Utilitarianism makes perfect sense — right up to the point you try to apply it. As Orwell said, ‘To an ordinary human

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 9 June

There’s something for everyone in the Rhône Valley. And there’s definitely something for everyone in this fine offer from Mr Wheeler: a dozen different wines from one of the region’s finest producers: Etienne Guigal. Goodness these wines are good and so well-priced! When I last looked, Majestic was offering the Côtes du Rhône Rouge for £12.99 a bottle (£10.99 if you mix six). It’s available here at just £10, along with 11 other first-rate wines that you would struggle to find available all under one roof, particularly at these cut-to-the-bone prices. I love the Rhône. It’s neither as snooty as Bordeaux, with its poncey châteaux, manicured lawns and gently crunching

Hugh Pearman

Nucleus

Doubtless Spectator readers based in Caithness will scoff when I say that the old fishing port of Wick (top right corner of the country, close to John O’ Groats) is a bit remote. But for the rest of us, it is. Indeed, its relative isolation is one of the reasons it was chosen to house the archive of the UK nuclear industry, in a brand-new public building called Nucleus. Another is the presence of the Dounreay nuclear plant near Thurso, a big employer in the area, now being slowly dismantled. I went to see Nucleus, relishing the beautiful 110-mile drive up the east coast from Inverness. Nucleus stands in the

Hannah Stuart

The jihadi sisterhood

‘Does the pin make me go 💥?’ Like most 16-year-old British schoolgirls, Safaa Boular was adept at using emojis. She wanted to ask her online mentor if, when she detonated a bomb belt, she could be sure of killing both herself and her target. Safaa was a fast learner and, before too long, was planning to involve her older sister and her mother in an attack on the British Museum, among other targets. So when she was found guilty this week at the Old Bailey, it confirmed the latest British jihad innovation: our first all-female terror cell. For those who have been involved in profiling terrorists (a job I used

Matthew Parris

The sorrow that turns sweet

It was the phrase ‘sad sweet feeling in your heart’ that arrested my attention. But who would have thought it would have been Abraham Lincoln who found those words? I’ve been searching for an adequate description of something we’ve all experienced but which is rarely discussed. Many years ago, beachcombing for pithily disobliging quotes for Scorn, my anthology of insult and invective, I was arrested by a remark of Samuel Johnson’s. ‘Depend upon it,’ Boswell quotes the great man as saying, ‘that, if a man talks of his misfortunes, there is something in them that is not disagree-able to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery, there never

Cosmo Landesman

Too kind

I originally thought of calling this piece: ‘Kindness is the New Rock ’n’ Roll’ — but only as a joke. And then I discovered that the rock band Peace have a new album out called Kindness is the New Rock’n’Roll. And they aren’t joking. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that kindness is the new mindfulness; but there’s already an offspring of the two that has been dubbed kindfulness. Suddenly, kindness is cool. And hot (or so zeitgeist-watchers keep telling me). Look in the self-help or personal-growth section of any book store — or on Amazon — and you will find numerous books with titles such as Kindness: