Society

Thursday

Peter Jones

The soldiering life

Advertisements encouraging men and women to join the army emphasise that their religious beliefs, sexual orientation and emotional needs will be no barrier to making a career. Very nice too, but what sort of come-on is that? Is there no positive reason for joining up in the first place? In the ancient world, war was a constant, and men had to be ready to die in battle for the very survival of their country, wives and children. So the motivation was very powerful — self-preservation. There were also rewards: the prospect of booty and honours. We hear of one Spurius Ligustinus, an ordinary foot-soldier from a one-acre farm who ‘four

The Spectator

Barometer | 18 January 2018

Big losers Construction company Carillion collapsed with debts of £1.5 billion. How does that compare with other UK corporate failures? Overend Gurney & Co, a bank, collapsed in 1866 with £4 million in liabilities (£400 million at today’s prices). Polly Peck failed after a fraud probe with £100 million in debts (£217 million). Barings Bank failed in 1995 after rogue trader Nick Leeson ran up £827 million of losses (£1.55 billion). MG Rover failed in 2005, leaving behind £1.4 billion of debt (£2 billion). Northern Rock was saved in 2007 after the government provided emergency loans to the tune of £27 billion (£35.7 billion). Rough areas A petition called for

Taki

High life | 18 January 2018

I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject in view of how inauthentic politics are in that Brussels-run south-eastern outpost dotted with islands. Mind you, what is taking place in the West makes Greek politics seem ideal by comparison. The witch hunt is on and it’s as phoney as the one that burnt those poor women in Salem long ago. Thank God for the French actress who injected some badly needed truths into Hollywood’s bullshit. Catherine Deneuve signed an open letter published in Le Monde attacking the wave of ‘puritanism’ sparked by the allegations against Harvey and co.

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 18 January 2018

In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct ‘good day’ or ‘good day, ladies and gentleman’, for example, when joining the queue in the baker’s or at the post office, or when getting on a bus or entering a bar. A nod or a wink just isn’t enough. Neither is a self-effacing silence. ‘Bonjour’ is the password. Since I have discovered it, I have been jovially saluting everyone right, left and centre. The inexplicable hostility I used sometimes to encounter in shops has stopped, and moreover the French have revealed themselves, incredibly, to have a fine sense of

Melissa Kite

Real life | 18 January 2018

A vet has accused me of a ‘hate crime’ for making a joke about vets. On the basis that everything is a hate crime, I am not getting too upset. But it does seem to be the case that jokes are becoming a liability. The sort of complaints I used to get were from lefty bloggers calling me subversive for daring to mock an organic café in Balham that purported to serve locally foraged ingredients. There were also some poor souls on Twitter who said I had worsened their gluten intolerance by making jokes about wheat. By and large, though, people have been wonderful and responded to my jokes by

Robin Oakley

The turf | 18 January 2018

I have never been one for system betting but one little piece of guidance returns to my mind at the start of every year: back Nicky Henderson’s horses at Kempton in the run-up to the Cheltenham Festival. His runners always do well at the Thameside track, although that is not the only reason why the champion trainer has promised to chain himself to the earthmovers if the Jockey Club perseveres with its shameless plan to sell off the course for housing. Like me he simply cannot see any sense in destroying one of the fairest venues for quality jumping, home of the iconic Boxing Day sporting event the King George

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 18 January 2018

The first home tournament of 2018 was last week’s four-day European Open Trials. Ten selected pairs played 216 boards at IMPs scoring, competing for the chance to play in this year’s European Championships. The top two will join Andrew Robson and Tony Forrester (who were preselected) to form the team representing England. My regular partner Artur Malinowski was playing with teammate David Bakhshi, and they made thrilling viewing on BBO hitting the top two slots for over half the tournament. With one match to go they were one of three who could make it — and make it they did! Many congratulations to them and to Jeffrey Allerton and Chris

Toby Young Toby Young

Why my pet dog Leo had to go

Readers may recall that the Young family welcomed a new addition to the household about two years ago: a Hungarian Vizsla named Leo. He turned out to be incredibly high-maintenance. He demanded to be walked twice a day and invariably did something unspeakable, such as rolling around in fox excrement — or, worse, start eating it. Even after running the length and breadth of Richmond Park he would still have enough energy to tear around the house like a Tasmanian Devil, leaving havoc in his wake. I was delighted, obviously. I hoped he’d be an inexhaustible source of material for this column. Then Leo did something really bad and the

Justin Webb

Diary – 18 January 2018

My friend John Humphrys has managed to get on to the front pages again. We first met in the 1980s when I was a very junior bod on Today and he had just arrived to present. He was the same then as he is now: argumentative, hostile to authority of any kind, gimlet-focused on what people said (on and off air) but quick to smile too, and quick to laugh at himself. He was also uninterested in his own seniority at a time when the BBC was still as conscious of rank as the department store bosses in Are You Being Served? I don’t think Brian Redhead or John Timpson

Dot Wordsworth

Shithole

In Polite Conversation, Jonathan Swift presents dialogues made up of clichés, banalities and catchphrases. When Miss Notable makes a remark seen as witty, Mr Neverout exclaims: ‘Why, Miss, you shine this Morning like a shitten Barn-Door.’ Perhaps we might not admit such an adjective, even in this archaic form, to polite company — except that among the chattering classes no word is entirely ostracised. In 2001, Barbara Amiel, Lady Black of Crossharbour, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that ‘the ambassador of a major EU country politely told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the world were all because of “that shitty little country Israel”.’ The remark

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 January 2018

Q. I will be 80 in March and all my friends will expect to be asked to the celebration. My problem is that our dining-room table only fits 16, and everyone is too old for a buffet as we will spill the stuff down ourselves. How can I avoid offending the uninvited friends? — M.D., Norfolk. A. Are you a grandparent? If so, there must be grandchildren and easily 16 members of extended family. Save hurting your friends’ feelings by allowing it to become ‘unintentionally’ a family party on the day itself. During the year fulfil any social expectations by hosting a series of alphabetical lunches. Ask friends in batches

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 January 2018

Home Carillion, the construction and service-provider with 20,000 employees and many contracts for the public sector, went into liquidation with debts of £1.5 billion, owing 30,000 businesses £1 billion. The government said it would pay employees and small businesses working on Carillion’s public contracts ‘to keep vital public services running rather than to provide a bailout on the failure of a commercial company’, as David Lidington, the minister for the Cabinet Office, told Parliament. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, asked the Official Receiver to investigate the conduct of its directors; ‘Any evidence of misconduct will be taken very seriously,’ he said. The annual rate of inflation fell back a smidgen

The Spectator

solution

A beastly business The quote is 1A/92/18D from the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’. The theme was the names of the eight reindeer in the poem. Three were highlighted whilst the others each suggested three unclued lights: Dasher (26, 63 and 83 — sprinters); Comet (12, 48 and 64 — astronomers’ names given to comets); Dancer (7, 49 and 74); Vixen (64A, 85 and 89 — female animals); Cupid (4, 25 and 46 — love deities).   The winners The first prize of £100, three prizes of £25 and six further prizes of Bletchley Park Brain Teasers by Sinclair McKay (Headline) go to the following. In addition, the first four winners

Columba

2342: Decorative

Two unclued lights are terms for the same style. One, consisting of two words, forms a cryptic indication of each of two unclued lights. The other is a word that can be divided into three words; each of these defines each of two of the other unclued lights.   Across 1    Part of thesis systematically weak (5) 6    Leading note on cubist works (8) 13    Turning cold during brilliant spectacle (9) 15    Fish indeed covered with fungus (8, two words) 16    Doorkeepers having no time for steady gazers (6) 17    Commander with note for trumpeter (5) 26    Undermine plodding student (3) 28   

Sabuhi Gard

Are young Londoners financially squeezed?

London, along with other capital cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Kyoto are thought to be one of the most expensive cities to live in the world. So is London Mayor Sadiq Khan, going too far by suggesting that every young Londoner should be entitled to a bank account? The simple logic should be: if you can’t afford to live and work in London, don’t move to London. But I suppose it is not as simple as that, and the good, great and the millennials have been lured to the Capital for studying, family or work reasons. This sort of simple logic might be a tad unreasonable. In the first week

Ian Makgill

Carillion’s collapse is the worst of all worlds for the government

Having spent the best part of 15 years looking at public procurement data, this is my take on collapse of Carillion. It has caused chaos for a simple reason: the organisation’s tentacles reached into all parts of government, with more than 200 public bodies signing some form of contract with Carillion in the last five years. The sums spent by the government on Carillion were huge: in 2016, this amounted to nearly £1bn. As a result, it goes without saying that many government departments have been badly affected by the firm’s demise this week. The worst hit is likely to be Carillion’s biggest customer: the Ministry of Defence. In the

Mikko Paunio

The green lobby’s energy obsession is harming the world’s poorest

Access to an abundance of clean water has been pivotal for the public health miracle that has taken place in rich countries. The western world’s water supply infrastructures enables people to get the water they need to stay healthy, and has undoubtedly played a big role in life expectancy shooting up in the last century. But in the developing world, adequate water supply has completely fallen off the agenda. Instead, environmental health for poorer countries has come to mean only provision of some clean drinking water and latrines. But the copious supplies of clean water that allow hygienic conditions – and therefore public health – to be maintained are no longer seen as a

William Rees

In times of trouble | 18 January 2018

‘People live in the space between the realities of their lives and the hopes they have for them,’ muses the octogenarian Robert at the start of Turning for Home, helpfully establishing the novel’s major theme. Little ventriloquised cogitations like this cover Barney Norris’s second novel like fingerprints, giving the game away. Robert is a newly widowed retired civil servant, who, after a life of patriarchal and political responsibilities, is haunted by his newfound obsolescence. This ghost also haunts the novel’s other protagonist, Robert’s 25-year-old granddaughter Kate; a year lost to anorexia has left her estranged from a life that has only just begun (‘I would look at my phone and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Macron charms, but won’t give ground on the City

Emmanuel Macron is revelling in his new status as the preeminent politician in Europe. In his joint press conference with Theresa May, he turned in a charming performance highlighting the ties between Britain and France and urging the two countries to ‘make a new tapestry together’. However, there was a sting in the tail. When Macron was asked about financial services and the single market, he emphasised that Britain’s choice was between Norway—full involvement in the single market but paying into the budget, accepting ECJ jurisdiction and free movement—and Canada, a much more limited free trade deal. Interestingly, though, he said he didn’t want to exclude any sector from the