Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Tired Mountain Syndrome

‘You must have Tired Old Woman Syndrome,’ said my husband as I fell back into an armchair with a sigh after a morning clearing out the kitchen cabinets. It had to be done. He of course had just been sitting in the drawing-room waiting for a plausibly respectable hour to have a drink. His abuse was not utterly random, for we had been discussing Tired Mountain Syndrome. It is being blamed for small earthquakes near Mount Mantap in North Korea, where they have been testing nuclear weapons underground. The rocks become many times more permeable along lines of weakness. The name Tired Mountain Syndrome was popularised by a paper in

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 December 2017

Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around the restaurant and after a while began to scream loudly, with no remonstration by his parents. At this point my wife asked them if they could make the child desist. This brought a diatribe of abuse from the Aussie hipster father. The mother’s response (she was a Mitteleuropean) was that he was only small. Management was reluctant to intervene so what should we have done? — C.H.-T., by email A. The same people who fly off the handle in response to someone trying to ‘boss them about’ will happily obey

Toby Young Toby Young

The subtle art of showing off

This has been an interesting year for me. Back in January, I took up a full-time job as director of New Schools Network, the free schools charity, and it’s the first time I’ve worked in an office since parting company with Vanity Fair 20 years ago. It has taken a bit of getting used to. Until I took this job, I used to work out of a shed at the bottom of my garden. It is not so much a ‘man cave’ as a ‘Toby cave’. The walls are covered with egocentric tat — framed newspaper cartoons, posters of plays I’ve written, pictures of me with famous people, etc. It’s all

Columba

2339: Interesting

Cryptic indications in four clues are incomplete; in each case, the part not indicated is supplied by a 1D (two words). Two unclued lights and the 35 are synonyms of the first word of 1D; each of three unclued lights is defined by the second word of 1D, which is also the surname of a fictional character whose first name is the answer to a clue without a definition.   Across 9    Just disloyal, having time off (10) 14    Run and stop Greek character (3) 16    Take in troublesome situation with navy scattered (6) 17    Complete sphere around family (5) 20    Smirk depressing expert (7)

The Spectator

to 2336: IRRELEVANT

The action that results in 6, 10, 29D and 30 is HAIR-RAISING (7, defined by 5). RAISING A HARE (39) results in 13.   First prize Norma Jacobs, Linton, Wetherby, W. Yorks Runners-up Mrs E. Knights, Wisbech, Cambs; Trevor Evans, Drulingen, France

The Spectator

We need to bridge Britain’s productivity gap

The UK has a big productivity problem. Our slowdown since the financial crisis has been more severe than in other developed nations. We rank third-last among the G7 — ahead of only Canada and Japan — and we’re falling further behind our competitors: France, Germany and the USA. This matters, because increased productivity is the key to improving living standards. Without it, businesses underperform, we fall behind competitors and, ultimately, our ability to increase pay, invest in public services and improve living standards is limited. Government sets the agenda for productivity in areas like skills, infrastructure and research and development. We’ve seen encouraging moves in the Budget and an industrial

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Snowflakes are now triggered by the term ‘snowflake’

This has got to be the own goal of the year. Millennials want people to stop calling them ‘snowflakes’ because it is an unfair term of abuse that damages their mental health. Get your head round that if you can. In response to the accusation that they’re soft, oversensitive and too easily wounded by words and ideas, young adults are effectively saying: ‘No we aren’t. And if you keep saying we are, we will be plunged into mental despair.’ There aren’t enough faces and palms in the world to express the exasperation such a self-defeating defence deserves. This epic self-own was uncovered in research by Aviva. It surveyed 2,022 Brits

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Donald Trump is right: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

The Israelis are doing it again. That thing they do when someone, anyone, even a total nishtgutnick like Donald Trump, comes along and tosses them a few warm words. Their little hearts leap to be told that, on balance, all things being equal, they have a right to exist, perhaps even to defend themselves, and that calls for their destruction are jolly well not on. Recognition is a miser’s feast but Israel gorges on it like a banquet.   They are dining out on Donald Trump’s proclamation ‘that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and that the United States Embassy to Israel will be

David Butterfield

The Guardian’s tabloid switch is a big mistake

‘Since you’re here…we have a small favour to ask’. These words may ring a bell for you – or just sound the spam alarm, coming as they do at the end of any Guardian online piece. For times are hard in Graunville: in recent years, the Guardian has lost tens of millions annually and, as a result, the paper has got out the begging bowl. Now its editor, Katharine Viner, has announced the latest cost-cutting ruse: lopping the paper down – from January next year – to a tabloid format. This is a great shame. Viner claims that the shrinkage would preserve ‘the same amount of journalism’ and went on to justify the change by saying:

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If Damian Green lied I don’t blame him

I first viewed pornography at the age of 12, when a school friend showed me a magazine called, I think, Razzle. The centrefold was a naked lady with what appeared to be a large and potentially ferocious rodent between her legs — a coypu, perhaps, or a capybara. I had never seen anything like that before. ‘Look at that flunge!’ my friend enthused. I had never heard the word before, either — I think it was a kind of portmanteau of ‘clunge’ and ‘flange’, both words with which I was familiar. ‘I bet your gimmer hasn’t got one like that,’ he added, spitefully. Gimmer is rural Teesside slang for a

Harry Mount

Rise of the glamocracy

The world may be dazzled by Prince Harry marrying a divorced, mixed-race American TV star. But his grand friends and royal cousins will hardly bat an eyelid. Because they’ve been marrying celebs (and Americans) for the past decade or so. In a subtle, gradual change in the British upper classes, the aristocracy has given way to the glamocracy. Gone is the blue-blood obsession; gone the marrying off of smart cousin to smart cousin which has continued since Agincourt; gone the Mrs Bennets frantically flicking through Burke’s Peerage, desperate to marry off their boot-faced daughter to the local squire. These days, young royalty and aristocracy are increasingly mixing with, and marry-ing,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Why Stokes should be picked for Perth

And so to a cloudy, chilly Adelaide, more like London in October than Australia in the early days of high summer, for one of the most thrilling Ashes Tests of modern times. Now the key moments in the fate of these Ashes are becoming very clear. Forget Joe Root putting Australia in, or Steve Smith’s unimaginative reluctance to give his bowlers more work and enforce the follow-on on the third day under the lights. Forget that rousing final session for England as the pink ball seamed and darted and hooped as if it were on crystal meth, and the Aussies were reduced to 53 for four. Forget even that extraordinary

Lucy Vickery

Shipping lines

In Competition No. 3027 you were invited to submit a poem inspired by the Shipping Forecast.   Life-saver, lullaby, poetic reminder of our maritime heritage, the Shipping Forecast celebrated its 150th anniversary this year. Charlotte Green has described it as the nearest she ever came to reading poetry on air; Carol Ann Duffy ended her poem ‘Prayer’ with the lines ‘Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer —/ Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre’; and Seamus Heaney wrote a beautiful sonnet ‘The Shipping Forecast’.   Its incantatory magic inspired a entry that was funny, poignant and varied, in both content — cricket, adultery, the choppy waters of Brexit — and form (haiku, sonnet,

David Butterfield

The Watford Gap

In a shallow dip between two unremarkable Northamptonshire hills you will find a road, a motorway, a railway and a canal jostling for position. It is neither a place of natural beauty nor a spectacle of human ingenuity. Yet it has been the subject of books, art exhibitions, pop songs and even a (mini) musical. This is Watford Gap, a three-mile break in the limestone ridge that runs from the Cotswolds to Lincolnshire. Perched between Daventry and Rugby, it subtly marks the watershed of the Nene and Avon to the east and west. However understated the depression geographically, it’s of high status culturally. For this is the gateway between the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The LSE’s skulking assassins are a terrible advert for the City’s global aspirations

The revenge tragedy at the London Stock Exchange whose plot I outlined last month has reached its third act, but the carnage may not be over. Chief executive Xavier Rolet has left the building, rather than staying one more year as the LSE first announced, and declared that he won’t come back under any circumstances. Despite whispers that ‘aspects of his operating style’ sparked this row in the first place, Rolet is due a £13 million golden farewell — which the Daily Mail called ‘obscene’ but his fans see as fair reward for all the value he has delivered. Chief among those fans is LSE shareholder and hedge-fund princeling Sir

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The royals don’t exist, so they have my full support

Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist. This truth, which has come to me rather late in life, has taught me how to stop worrying and love the monarchy. Despite my boyhood admiration for King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, I was always a bit of a republican. Not a tumbrils and guillotine kind, nor even, really, a campaigner for abolition, because as the decades have rolled it has become impossible not to feel respect for the Queen’s hard work; and besides, as the Australians have learned, there’s not a lot of point in removing the monarchy unless

Wednesday

The Spectator

Could investing in website names make you an internet millionaire?

With the savings of the nation languishing around 1%, it’s no surprise that UK consumers are turning to increasingly creative ways to make their money work that little bit harder. Even with the arrival of a plethora of savings-focused banks such as RCI Bank, the savings horizon remains bleak for those yearning for the good old days of a 5% savings rate with FSCS protection. This backdrop has helped to fuel the rise of more consumer-friendly and increasingly mainstream financial investment opportunities. This includes everything from investing in property, via firms like LendInvest, and Kuflink, investing in corporate bonds via firms like WiseAlpha, or even investing in personal loans via

The Spectator

Ignore the motorheads telling us that we all need new cars

The motorheads are at it again. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the UK auto manufacturers lobby group, lobbed another rusty torque wrench at the government this morning, announcing that UK new car registrations are down 11.2 per cent year-on-year. The decline is led by a collapse of nearly a third in sales of diesel-engined cars. Inevitably, some blamed the fall on ‘uncertainty caused by Brexit’. The SMMT itself doesn’t take this tack: instead it points the finger at ‘months of confusion and speculation about the government’s air quality plans and its policies towards diesel cars’. Its suggested remedy is no surprise: ‘fleet renewal is the fastest way to

Joanna Williams

In defence of Saturday jobs

In August 1988, after weeks of practice, I created the perfect Mr Whippy ice cream. I was 14 and I had a Saturday job in a cafe. When the sun shone I’d get to lean out of the serving hatch, chat to passers-by and sell ice creams. Rarely have strawberry sauce and sugar sprinkles been so lovingly applied to such gravity-defying cornets. Go to your local cafe this Saturday and the chances are you won’t be served by an over-enthusiastic 14 year-old. Figures released to the BBC this week, under the Freedom of Information Act, show the number of teenagers with part-time jobs has declined markedly in recent years. Businesses