Society

Thursday

Taki

High life | 30 August 2018

Gstaad The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, meadows bright with wild flowers amid white-capped mountain peaks; these are no substitute for pretty women or intellectual company. That is the bad news. The good news is that the nouveaux riches and terribly vulgar do not appear during the summer. They’re too busy sweating it out in the south of France or in Marbella. They do show up during the winter months, alas, but the low temperatures keep them covered in chinchillas. To see them in bathing costumes would be too much, even for someone like me who

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 30 August 2018

I was present in the room when Oscar encountered his father for the first time since returning from his fortnight in the south of France. Oscar doesn’t see his father often. I hoped that his father would be pleased to see his son and would kindly ask him how his holiday went. And if, as I hoped, he did ask how the holiday went, I wondered which of his holiday memories Oscar would describe to his father, and in which order. There was plenty to choose from. For a start there had been the extraordinary weather. Would he tell his father about the terrible heat and the car always like

Melissa Kite

Real life | 30 August 2018

When I made a joke about ragwort being like Islamic extremism, I expected someone to write in. I was fully braced for a complaint from a sympathiser of Islamic fundamentalism, saying look here, Missy, comparing our noble struggle to an invasive weed is beyond a joke. However, the modern world has surpassed my expectations and I have, in fact, had a complaint from a sympathiser of ragwort accusing me of hate speech against another species. The tenor of his complaint is broadly: how very dare I compare ragwort to Islamic extremism, because this is inflammatory and likely to incite hatred towards ragwort. I don’t think he’s joking. The charges against

Robin Oakley

The turf | 30 August 2018

Having spent most of my life among politicians I guess I have become unaccustomed to candour. The only example I remember was the Danish prime minister I interviewed for CNN before his country’s referendum on joining the euro. ‘Prime Minister, the trouble with referendums is that people often don’t answer the question. They vote on the popularity of the person asking it. Are you popular enough to win this referendum?’ ‘Probably not’, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen replied — and was proved correct when the Danes voted to stay out. In racing too we have all grown used to jockeys and trainers making excuses. ‘The ground didn’t suit him’, ‘He was short

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 30 August 2018

All the best players today are technically excellent in card play. They know all the odds and end plays to bring home their contract or thwart the opposition so the important differences are often in the bidding. Finding the best game, slam or partscore, played from the right hand, is vital. But there is another quality that separates great and genius, a quality you can’t learn, and that is imagination. The gift of seeing the whole picture and finding a winning line which is not necessarily technically conventional. Geir Helgemo is widely acknowledged as the world’s No. 1 supremo in solving problems imaginatively. Today’s hand comes from his book Bridge

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 30 August 2018

Q. I invited four younger colleagues, all in their mid to late thirties, to go for a meal at a rather special venue. I first invited A and B, who were sitting together at the time, then C and D, who were also sitting together. On the day, A and C arrived, expressing great enthusiasm and having dressed in their best; B and D simply did not turn up. When I mentioned it later, they breezily replied that they had had other plans. What I don’t understand is that when I gave the invitations out two people accepted and acted accordingly, while two agreed with near-identical wording, but failed to attend

Peter Jones

Antigone and algorithms

Hardly a day goes by without someone making excitable predictions about human progress and how, thanks to AI, we are all going to become algorithms served by robots. The ancients took a different view. All ancient man had available to him was what nature in its raw state offered. Only fire (e.g. cookery, metal-work) or man’s ingenuity (e.g. papyrus, concrete, the arch) could significantly alter it. But men could still fantasise about flying to the moon, or imagine a world in which ‘Every stream ran with wine; fish came to the house, baked themselves, and served themselves up at table; rivers of soup, swirling with meat chunks, flowed by the

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 30 August 2018

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, flew off to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria accompanied by a trade delegation. In a speech in Cape Town she promised an extra £4 billion in British investment in Africa. ‘True partnerships are not about one party doing unto another,’ she said, but the achievement of ‘common goals’. The government announced plans for Britain’s own satellite navigation system if Brexit meant it was expelled from the European Union’s Galileo project. A gang flew men from Chile to burgle houses around London, said police who arrested 36 men in the past eight months, 16 of them being convicted and eight deported, with 12 leaving the

Dot Wordsworth

Slang of the 1880s

‘I want my money back,’ said my husband. ‘This is from the 1880s, not the 1980s.’ He looked up from my copy of Soho in the Eighties by my neighbour at the other end of the mag, Christopher Howse (CSH of Portrait of the Week, who also recalls his drinking days in the Coach and Horses).  My husband had not, of course, paid a penny for it. What caught his interest surprised me too. It was a canting song by W.E. Henley (author of ‘Invictus’: ‘I am the captain of my soul’), published in 1887 under the title (which Mr Howse doesn’t mention) ‘Villon’s Straight Tip to All Cross Coves’,

Doc

2374: Watch your step

The unclued lights (three of two words) are of a kind.   Across 1    Slices top of sausage in front of dogs (5) 6    Starting at Keele, say, in flames? (7, two words) 11    Former England captain has Alec Robins out (10, two words) 15    Heartless Valentine’s streamer (4) 17    Wild chatter has teeth on edge (7) 18    Drink Church of Scotland finally banned (3) 21    Matches for Spurs and the Hammers say (5) 24    Peterborough’s backed some network (4) 27    Spanish province drops green knitwear (4) 28    A hospital covered by me, just for now (5, two words) 33    City replay regularly (3) 35    Potentially profitable project is

The Spectator

to 2371: In a paddy

The unclued lights and those clued without thematic definition (2, 11, 26, 33 and 42) are Irish forenames. Nuala Considine’s crossword compiling career spanned over 70 years. Doc was privileged to meet her five years ago when Saga magazine invited five British compilers to a photoshoot to accompany an article about the hundredth anniversary of the British crossword.   First prize Carole Smallhorn, Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos Runners-up Philip Berridge, Gosberton, Lincs; Jim Birkett, Heysham, Lancs

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Business is suffering from Britain’s poor broadband

As to public subsidy for broadband, the conclusion to be drawn from the DCMS report, though it may not please some readers, is that it should be heavily tilted towards business premises. The report comes up with a benefit-to-cost ratio per pound of subsidy of £1.18 for residential superfast connections but £12.28 for non-residential. The ‘wellbeing’ effects of more movie choices from the sofa and everything else home broadband brings are worth having and we now see them as an entitlement. But the effects on productivity, job creation, small-business viability and export potential are vital for future prosperity — and the competitive disadvantage of having poorer broadband than our trading

The Spectator

The facts about the Venezuelan economy

Contrary to the impression given by Jason Mitchell, Venezuela does not have a socialist economy (‘Maduro’s madness’, 25 August). It has a ‘mixed’ economy (and therein lies some of its problems; such as food hoarding by private companies hostile to the regime). The private sector is large, and involved in numerous sectors within the economy; food distribution, pharmaceuticals and so on. The US sanctions against Venezuela have always been about regime change, and these sanctions amount to a blockade of the country. US and European banks have refused to handle Venezuelan payments for medical supplies, and pharmaceutical companies have refused to issue export certificates for cancer drugs — therefore stopping

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: Ian Kershaw

In this week’s books podcast, I talk to Sir Ian Kershaw about his new book Rollercoaster: Europe 1950-2017. Here from one of our most distinguished historians, is a history of Europe that goes from the postwar period right up to the present. Is he aiming at a moving target? How can you meaningfully speak about “Europe” as one thing when for much of the period under discussion half of it was behind the iron curtain? Were the machinations of powerful individuals, or sheer chance, the great drivers of our history? And how was the raising of the Berlin Wall — from some perspectives — a good thing?  

Steerpike Steerpike

Alex Salmond’s fundraising efforts

In a rather dramatic turn of events, former first minister Alex Salmond quit the SNP last night over allegations of sexual harassment. Salmond is launching a judicial review against the SNP controlled Scottish government over the way they have handled complaints against him, and indicated he would quit so as not to split the party. But never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Salmond also used his resignation to launch a crowdfunding page, asking for £50,000 to cover the costs of his legal challenge against the government. As of writing, the campaign has already raised £65,898 from 2590 supporters. In the bio he assures donors that: ‘The

Douglas Murray

The real lesson of a Swedish deportation protest

A few weeks ago I wrote in this space about the case of Elin Ersson. She is the young Swedish woman who caused adulatory headlines around the world when she stood up on an airplane and refused to sit down until an Afghan man was taken off the flight. Not that Ersson is some awful racist. Far from it, in her own eyes. Ms Ersson refused to be on the same place as the Afghan man because the Afghan man was being deported from Sweden and Ms Ersson wanted to stop this from happening. In her own words (filmed on her own phone, natch) the man was being sent to

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

If Pope Francis resigns it could tear the Catholic Church apart

The allegation by a former senior Vatican diplomat that Pope Francis vigorously covered up sex abuse is looking more credible by the day. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, says he told Francis in 2013 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, was a serial abuser of seminarians. The Pope ignored him, he claims – and lifted sanctions placed by Benedict XVI on McCarrick. Moreover, he fully rehabilitated the old man, who became one of his most trusted advisers. Viganò has called on Francis to resign. We can now be reasonably certain that Benedict, after a deplorable delay, did punish McCarrick, whom independent sources

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Who will speak for the working class? Everyone, apart from the working class

It’s funny how the new left’s rule against speaking on behalf of groups to which you do not belong never applies to class. If a white man ventures his thoughts on the best way forward for Britain’s black community, he’ll suffer social death by a thousand tweets. Woe betide any bloke who holds forth on women’s issues. ‘Dude, let women speak for themselves,’ people will chide. Yet when it comes to the needs of working-class communities, everyone gets to have a say. So last week, Newsnight featured a discussion about the crisis of working-class representation in the media between Owen Jones of the Guardian and Sarah Baxter of the Sunday

Bruce Anderson

Animal magic | 30 August 2018

Roy Hattersley once wrote a plangent passage about a painful aspect of the human condition: the short span of animals’ lives. The owner who commits his affections condemns himself to the pain of bereavement. This thought has come to my mind recently. Roxy Beaujolais, that glorious ale-wife, has already been celebrated in this column. Her public house, the Seven Stars, is just behind the Law Courts and has almost acquired the status of a fifth Inn. I popped in the other day and found to my delight that it was as good as ever. Cured herring followed by rare cold roast beef: Roxy would be horrified if you described the