Society

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 23 April 2015

There are already people camping outside St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, to await the birth shortly of another royal baby, the second child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It is hardly a very exciting event. Babies are born all the time, and there are already quite enough descendants of the Queen to ensure the survival of the Windsor dynasty on the throne of the United Kingdom for a long time to come. Yet there are many people in this country for whom this commonplace event will be more thrilling than the forthcoming general election, even though it could presage the dismemberment of the country itself. The British monarchy continues

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 23 April 2015

Congratulations to the Welsh women’s team, who staged one of the most spectacular comebacks I’ve ever seen at last weekend’s Lady Milne (the women’s home internationals). They were languishing in bottom place on Sunday morning, but managed to claw all the way to the top by the end of the day. You can imagine the celebrations: the last time Wales won was 27 years ago. Which just goes to show the importance of keeping your nerve. During the recent Yeh Bros Cup in Beijing, another team kept its nerve under even greater pressure. There are very few bridge events offering big cash prizes, but Yeh Bros is an exception: the

Toby Young Toby Young

The hazards of being a good sport

Not a day passes when I don’t look on my father’s record with shock and awe. I’m not talking about his authorship of Labour’s 1945 manifesto, his invention of the word ‘meritocracy’ or his creation of the Open University. I’m talking about the fact that he fathered a child at the age of 80. How on earth did he cope? My eldest was born when I was 40, with three more following in quick succession, and I already think of myself as an old dad. The problem is, they want to play with me all the time — rough, competitive, physical games — and it’s completely debilitating. The boys, aged

Justin Marozzi

Diary – 23 April 2015

Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security adviser, is on top form. This may not be unrelated to the news that the noose with which he hanged Saddam is up for auction. Interested buyers are said to include Kuwaiti businessmen, an Israeli family, a bank and an Iranian religious organisation. Mischievous tales are circulating about an offer of $7 million being rejected. Hearing Rubaie relive Saddam’s execution reminded me of the late Sir Wilfred Thesiger recalling how he shot up a tent full of sleeping Germans during the Allied campaigns in North Africa. ‘It felt like murder,’

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 23 April 2015

Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter in London, where I have to leave the house by six every morning. My problem is that I owe dinner to a lot of people, but I now baulk at how late they will stay, since no matter how heavily I hint, people seem to stay beyond midnight every time. Even if I invite them to come for an ‘early dinner’ at 7 p.m, they are still there at midnight. These are mainly neighbours or fellow parents from my son’s school, i.e. not lifelong buddies of the sort you could just

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 April 2015

Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into the election campaign. The SNP manifesto promised to increase spending and to find a way to stop the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said she wanted to make Labour in government ‘bolder and better’. Lord Forsyth, a former Conservative Scottish secretary, said that the building up of the SNP, to take seats in Scotland, was a ‘dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country’. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the Tories should not be ‘talking up’ the SNP. Even the Democratic Unionists

Dot Wordsworth

Non-existent phrases

‘Ten Norwegian phrases that don’t exist in English but should,’ said the headline. So I had a little look, as the writer on the internet, one Kenneth Haug, intended. Here’s one. Takk for maten. Should it exist in English? It means: ‘Thanks for the food.’ English, being a cousin of Norwegian, also used to employ meat to mean food, and we still run into the archaic sense in such contexts as the Bible. ‘The life is more than meat,’ says the Authorised Version in Luke 12:23, as the equivalent of Anima plus est quam esca. The 10th century gloss in the Lindisfarne Gospels made that ‘Se sauel mara is thon

Dumpynose

2208: Mort

Two words form the name of a fictional 28, described by his creator as a ‘22A/31/26’. Remaining across unclued lights are associated with the first word and down ones with the second. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across   1    Jackanapes swimming away from Jamaica belly-flops (8) 6    Taxmen laugh at seventy retired coppers (6) 11    Trifler enthrals former railman (10) 14    Old statesmen stands beside painter in food shop (8) 16    Some sham or phony rogue … (5) 17    … uttered marks (unacceptable) he had (7) 19    Most severe wind is in the Camargue (9) 23    Place with a birch tree (6) 24    Home Secretary boards train for subdistrict (6)

Dumpynose

To 2205: In shape

Unclued lights were set out in the form of two squares in the grid (shown here in red). The theme word was 18. 1, 10, 12 and 38 are defined by it in one sense; 15, 19 and 43 in another. Highlighting TIMES (square) gave the fourth example of a city square. First prize K.D. Birkett, Heysham, Morecambe, Lancs Runners-up R.A. Percy, Southport, North Carolina; Kenneth Robb, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Robert Van Egghen

God bless Peter Hendy. We all know London’s commuter services are awful

Anyone who has spent some time travelling on Southeastern’s packed-to-bursting commuter lines – elbows in the back and heads tucked under armpits – will no doubt today be cheering on the Transport for London commissioner Sir Peter Hendy: London’s commuter services are, as he says, ‘shit, awful’ and like ‘the wild west’. Hendy singled out Southeastern as being the worst offender — and he’s right. I travel on it almost every day. Since the closure of much of London Bridge due to refurbishments, the trains at my home station of Orpington have become ever more crowded. People are forced to cram on to an ever dwindling number of services. The

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Does Jamelia not know the first rule of Fat Club?

The first rule of Fat Club is: don’t talk about Fat Club unless you are yourself ‘big and beautiful’, or what most of us would call ‘grossly overweight’. Or just plain ‘fat’. Otherwise it’s as much of a no-go zone as the salad bar at a Weight Watchers’ meeting. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Jamelia, the former pop star and Loose Women panellist, came under sustained attack this week for talking about fat people. As a beautiful and effortlessly slim young woman, Jamelia is, of course, not allowed to talk about fat people. Those are the rules. So what outrageous hate-crime did Jamelia commit? Did

Sebastian Payne

Should politicians leave the wealthy alone?

Bashing the rich has become trendy. Last night, the Spectator hosted a debate at the Guildhall School of Drama on whether the rich have contributed their fair share to society, or if we should ramp up wealth taxes. It’s a very emotive topic and each of the speakers made a solid case for and against the motion: politicians should leave the wealthy alone — they already contribute more than their fair share. Proposing the motion, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson described how London is a city ‘shaped by the super rich,’ pointing out the number of places that serve a £20 vodka martini. But Fraser argued that society needs these wealthy people and

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

At last, tax receipts are surging as Osborne’s recovery continues

The economic good news continues. Until now, the Achilles’ heel of the recovery was weak tax revenue – in part deliberate, as Osborne’s tax cuts meant the thousands moving into work got to keep more of their money. But figures out today (pdf) show that the tax haul was up 5.3 per cent in the second half of the financial year, twice the rate of the first half. Wages are finally rising – in the private sector (i.e. most jobs) wage growth is at a six-year high. All this means a deficit of £87bn last year, better than the OBR’s forecast £90bn. In short: it’s all coming good for George

Sebastian Payne

Lutfur Rahman removed as Mayor of Tower Hamlets

The Mayor of Tower Hamlets has been kicked out of office. Lutfur Rahman was found guilty at a High Court hearing this morning of ‘corrupt and illegal practices’ and the result of the 2014 mayoral election has been voided. Rahman has to pay costs of £250,000 and has been barred from standing in the next election after Judge Richard Mawrey said he’d ‘driven a coach and horses through election law and didn’t care’. The list of offences is long. Rahman has been found guilty of allocating grants to buy votes; his supporters were found to have been involved in the rigging of votes; he wrongly branded his Labour rival John Biggs a

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron: ‘The selfie will come, the selfie will go’

Given that David Cameron posed for a selfie alongside Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, Mr S was surprised to hear that the PM has now tired of the trend. Speaking to Mr S’s colleagues James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson in an interview in this week’s issue of The Spectator, Cameron says that the selfie lacks longevity, claiming ‘the selfie will come, the selfie will go’: ‘It is an extraordinary phenomenon and it sometimes makes part of the process of politics quite difficult. Everyone wants a selfie rather than to have a conversation, and sometimes that’s a bit frustrating, particularly with your party activists. I want to know what they are finding on the doorsteps, but

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Patriotism isn’t uncivilised – it’s what makes civilisation possible | 23 April 2015

Is it racist to be patriotic? Is patriotism, by definition, small-minded and exclusive? When you strip away the onion layers of sentiment about history and hymns, Shakespeare and lawn clippings, does it have a hateful heart? I ask because, as I’ve written before, I feel patriotic, and until recently I’ve considered this to be a good thing. I felt particularly patriotic at a service in Ravenstonedale, Cumbria, last week. I slid in late and guilty, amid snippy Sunday stares. After the sermon we trooped outside and in the suddenly sunlit graveyard the vicar whipped a trumpet from his cassock and began to play. A pair of starlings began their electric

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the passion of David Cameron and whether 2015 will be another 1992

Should David Cameron be showing more passionate in this election campaign? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss their interview with the Prime Minister in the magazine this week and whether Cameron is feeling optimistic about his reelection chances. Was the PM open about his apparent failure to sell the successes of this government to voters? Will Cameron convince the country that he really does want a second term? And with two weeks to go, is the election a done deal? Matthew Parris and Martin Vander Weyer also look back at the 1992 election campaign and whether the Tories can hope for a similar last

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Soldiers of Italy

From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte Morello, and the tramontana blows cold as ice, out of a piercingly blue sky. The streets and squares are crowded. Bells are ringing, bands playing, troops marching. The soldiers are coming back from Tripoli. There is to he a reception at the station. A burst of cheering, a scattering of flowers, a blare of music. Here they come. Bronzed, hardy-looking men these, in their war-worn uniforms, swinging along among the crowds and flowers. But the welcome is not altogether joyous. There are wet eyes amongst the onlookers. Wives

The Spectator

Florence weeps

From ‘Soldiers of Italy’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: It is winter in Florence. The sun shines, but snow lies low on Monte Morello, and the tramontana blows cold as ice, out of a piercingly blue sky. The streets and squares are crowded. Bells are ringing, bands playing, troops marching. The soldiers are coming back from Tripoli. There is to be a reception at the station. A burst of cheering, a scattering of flowers, a blare of music. Here they come. Bronzed, hardy-looking men these, in their war-worn uniforms, swinging along among the crowds and flowers. But the welcome is not altogether joyous. There are wet eyes amongst the onlookers. Wives and mothers