Society

Sunday

Giles Kenningham

Would Winston Churchill have survived public life in the age of Twitter?

It used to be the case that tabloid stings struck the fear of God into politicians and celebrities. Now social media is claiming the scalps of public figures on an almost weekly basis.  Quite simply, life is on the record 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you want to enter public life brace yourself for one long reality TV show. Privacy is dead and thanks to the advent of the camera phone everyone is now a journalist. There is no hiding place. If you’ve got a fondness for tweeting be aware it’s not a place for nuance. As a wise man once said, too many tweets make

Steerpike Steerpike

Guardian’s tabloid makeover

Here we go. As of Monday, the Guardian is a tabloid – in the physical sense anyway. The paper’s editor Katharine Viner has revealed the new look paper online – complete with masthead: https://twitter.com/KathViner/status/952647642517049344 RIP Berliner…

The Spectator

Something’s gone badly right with the world economy

It is only a few months since gloomy economic commentators were confidently predicting that the world was about to plunge into a dark era of protectionism. Yet the global economy begins this year in its healthiest state ever, growing faster than any time since 2011. There has been a change in political rhetoric, but not in the willingness of people around the world to trade with each other. According to the OECD’s most-recent projection, made in November, world trade grew at 4.8 per cent last year. Something seems to be going badly right. Negative sentiments about the world economy echo those which have hung over Britain’s economy ever since the

Saturday

Darius Guppy

The true value of cryptocurrency is freedom

Picture a village. It has a grocery shop and a pub. A little down the road you can find a cobbler and a hardware store. A factory manufactures parts for some large concern in a nearby city and local farmers supply their produce to the villagers. There are a dozen taxi drivers, a priest, a few doctors, teachers, nannies and so on. Crucially, there is also a shared idea of what constitutes the good life, a common culture that enables the inhabitants to trust each other – perhaps the most fundamental and most overlooked component of a properly functioning economy. We are looking, in short, at that increasingly endangered social

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Donald Trump is right: the sale of the US embassy was a bad deal

The anti-Trump forces have been having a field day on Twitter with the hashtag #ICancelledMyTriptoLondon – poking fun at Donald Trump’s claim why he called off his trip to London to open the new £880 million US embassy. The President claims he can’t bear to cut the ribbon because the Obama administration got itself a bum deal by selling the old US embassy in Grosvenor Square for ‘peanuts’ and moving to a secondary location south of the river. The real reason, we’re led to believe, is that Trump is scared of the street mob. I doubt if either explanation is quite right. More likely is that Trump thinks he wouldn’t

Friday

Harry Franks

The gig economy needs solutions that benefit both itself and its workers

2018 will be a crucial year for the gig economy in the UK. Only a couple of months ago, the work and pensions, and the business, energy, and industrial strategy committees of the House of Commons jointly presented a new framework for modern employment. This latest report adds to an already wide-ranging set of proposals from different stakeholders on how the gig economy should be reformed. The big question now is whether and how Government will respond. Yet alongside any possible government action, several ongoing high-profile legal cases are bound to have a significant impact. The antagonism inherent to the court room has pitted platforms against workers, and created a

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: The digital inquisition

On this week’s episode, we examine Twitter’s mob mentality, get to the heart of PTSD, and look at how Russia is preparing for this year’s World Cup. First up: At the end of 2017 it would’ve be hard to guess that the name of everyone’s lips during the sunrise days of the new year would be Toby Young. But thanks to a government appointment and a series of ill-advised tweets, his brief stint at the Office for Students has dominated the news cycle. In the magazine this week, Lara Prendergast writes about how our digital footprints could come back to bite us, whilst Rod Liddle laments the rise of trial

Douglas Murray

If Dawn Butler can’t forgive Toby Young, can she forgive herself?

I am fascinated as well as appalled by the new morality being created in our country. Last night, Dawn Butler MP was on the television again (this time Question Time) making charges against Toby Young and doubling-down on a point she had made earlier in the week on the Daily Politics. The essence of it is that because of Tweets, including one about a Labour MPs breasts from 2009, Toby Young has no right to sit as one member of a 15-member board in 2018. “I don’t think he should have resigned, I think the PM should have been stronger and should have said it was an inappropriate appointment” @DawnButlerBrent

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: What really causes depression?

In this week’s Spectator Books podcast — arranged in partnership with the male suicide prevention charity CALM — I talk to Johann Hari about his controversial new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions. In it, Hari argues that the psychiatric establishment overprescribes chemical antidepressants, and that the orthodoxy that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain is wrong. The book has already caused fierce debate — with not only Hari’s arguments but (in light of the 2011 scandal that came close to ending his journalistic career) his integrity coming in for criticism. I ask him about what he sees

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 11 January 2018

Long lives and pension pots Sir: Jon Moynihan is too optimistic about the prospects for further increasing life expectancy, and too gloomy about those of the pensions industry (‘Falling Short’, 6 January). The wondrous advancements of medical science have offered little to solve the most pervasive problem we now face: declining mental health. It seems unlikely that society will chose to invest endlessly in repairing bodies to extend lifespans, when the minds relating to those bodies have already been lost. So the viability of pension providers is not as parlous as suggested. Indeed, many current fund deficits derive from the low investment yield environment that central bankers have engineered but which

The Spectator

Barometer | 11 January 2018

Many people are gloomy about 2018. But some things are improving every year… Natural disasters These killed 9,066 people in the world in 2017, fewer than any year since 1979. From 2008 to 2017 an average 72,020 died in such disasters. Fifty years earlier (the period 1958-67) the average was 373,453. Life expectancy The current lowest in the world is the Central African Republic with 51.4 years. To put that into perspective, in 1800 Belgium had the highest at just 40 years. Average life expectancy changes in Africa since 1955: Year  /  Age 1955  /  38.7 1965  /  43.4 1975  /  47.6 1985  /  51.2 1995  /  51.9 2005  /  55.1

Taki

High life | 11 January 2018

Gstaad  What I miss most up here in the Alps are the literary lunches conducted on the fly with writers like Bill Buckley, Alistair Horne, Natacha Stewart, occasionally Dmitri Nabokov and, yes, movie star and memoirist par excellence David Niven. This was back in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, during the winter months and in between ski runs. Bill would ring early in the morning and suggest a run somewhere, then he’d pick an inn in the vicinity where we’d meet David and Natacha, two non-skiers, and that was that. Buckley always referred to me as Führer — once on the slopes, of course — as I would

Raymond Keene

On speed

Although it does not have the prestige of the Classical World Championship (to be staged in London in November), the Rapid and Blitz championships recently concluded in Saudi Arabia carried not just worthy titles, but an impressive overall prize fund of $2 million. Viswanathan Anand emerged victorious in the Rapid, while Magnus Carlsen dominated the Blitz. The only fly in the ointment was the refusal to grant visas to Israeli players, an omission excoriated by Carlsen. This week, key extracts from play in both championships.   McShane-Anand, Riyadh Rapid 2017 (see diagram 1)   The veteran new champion strikes with a bolt from the blue against a leading British grandmaster and

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 11 January 2018

By New Year’s Day I’d had enough of festivities. Instead of getting out of bed, I turned over, put my face to the wall and refused all offers of food, drink and conversation. I kept this up throughout the day and into the evening, when I had to get up to go to the toilet. Asked for an explanation of such childish behaviour, I blamed the wind — a cold, violent Mistral that had been blowing since Christmas Eve. The cypresses were still twirling and bowing the next day. Though not yet restored enough to dance the Gay Gordons, I felt a bit more sociable, and in the evening we

Melissa Kite

Real life | 11 January 2018

‘Not being rude, but I don’t think you should do any DIY,’ said the gamekeeper. He had just witnessed me make chicken soup by liquidising a boiled chicken carcass then pressing all the wrong buttons on the liquidiser, so detaching the bottom of the jug from the jug rather than releasing the jug from the machine, sending a deluge of soup downwards on to the kitchen counter and floor. Cydney was standing below, ever hopeful, so as the cascade of soup splashed on to the spaniel’s head she simply tilted herself to gargle down the rain of good fortune. The keeper, who had popped in for a coffee, had been

Raymond Keene

no. 488

Black to play. This is from Carlsen-Anand, Riyadh Rapid 2017. The needle clash from the Rapid was Anand’s destruction of Carlsen. What was Black’s key move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 16 January 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 … Qxc6 Last week’s winner Malcolm Burn, Tuffley, Gloucester

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 11 January 2018

My friend Neil Mendoza and I had a great finish to 2017 when we won the Portland Club’s annual Auction Pairs (which is always a highlight of my year). I can’t pretend we had any real expectation of winning, but a combination of good luck, good play and flawless bidding by Neil meant we scooped the £8,000 jackpot (actually we only got half, as Stuart Wheeler had bought 50 per cent of us). Since then, alas, things have been slipping downhill: I had a poor result with David Gold at the Year End mixed pairs, and last Sunday, a solid beating at the Young Chelsea’s ‘pivot’ teams. Time to buck

Toby Young Toby Young

Screen-addicted kids? There’s an app for that

Over Christmas, Caroline and I finally snapped about the amount of time our children were spending on their screens. If they weren’t watching Logan Paul vlogs on YouTube, they were on Snapchat or playing video games. I couldn’t get them to read anything — not even one of the wonderful How to Train Your Dragon books — and attempts to persuade them to go on walks were met with fierce resistance. Towards the end of the holidays they began to look and act like drug addicts — pallid complexions, easily distracted, short-tempered. Perhaps they really were addicts. Any parent who has tried to limit their child’s screen time will be

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 11 January 2018

Q. Should the lady or the gentleman have the banquette in a restaurant? I’ve been brought up to believe that the lady has the banquette for her more delicate bottom — and for her handbag. She has the view of the room; the gentleman has only eyes for her. My fiancé says that a modern couple should take it in turns to have the hard chair. Whose bottom takes precedence? — L.F., Bayswater, London A. As with so many cultural traditions, the lady takes the banquette for practical reasons. Not only does it allow access to her handbag and protect her more delicate clothing from spillages, but the lady usually has

The Spectator

What’s going right

It is only a few months since gloomy economic commentators were confidently predicting that the world was about to plunge into a dark era of protectionism. Yet the global economy begins this year in its healthiest state ever, growing faster than any time since 2011. There has been a change in political rhetoric, but not in the willingness of people around the world to trade with each other. According to the OECD’s most-recent projection, made in November, world trade grew at 4.8 per cent last year. Something seems to be going badly right. Negative sentiments about the world economy echo those which have hung over Britain’s economy ever since the