Society

Friday

Jack Wakefield

Why has TfL vandalised the Eduardo Paolozzi murals at Tottenham Court Road?

Last weekend I used the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road station for the first time since it reopened. Oxford Street is not my favourite place in London but perversely for a tube station that was cramped, overcrowded and cavernously deep, Tottenham Court Road used to lift my spirits. That was wholly due to the wonderful effects of its Paolozzi mosaics; grubby and glittering schematic designs that plastered the walls and ceilings of the entrance hall and platforms. They were probably the only piece of art on the Tube that I have ever thought worked well. As such I was horrified when I heard that the murals were under threat after the Crossrail

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

MI5 didn’t make Jihadi John; he made himself

Poor Mohammed Emwazi. One day he’s your average ‘beautiful’ young man, nose buried in his computer studies books, looking for a job and looking for love. The next he’s being harassed by the security services, so intensely that — BOOM — he weeps and wails his way to the deserts of Syria where he changes his name to Jihadi John, dons an Islamic ninja outfit and starts chopping people’s heads off. Happy now, MI5? See what you did? Shame on you for pushing this studious, handsome London lad to become the Charles Manson of the Middle East. That, at least, is a rough outline of the script being hawked by

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why the apologists for the Islamist far right must make Jihadi John a victim

Islamic State allows its adherents to be both cultists and psychopaths: an L. Ron Hubbard and a Fred West rolled into one. The reasons why young men want to travel across the world to fight its wars and lend a hand to the murder of its victims ought to be brutally and boringly obvious. Psychopaths are always less complicated, less rewarding, less interesting than their victims. They’re not hard to explain. Where is the difficulty about Abelaziz Kuwan , for instance? His case opens ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan. It is a superb piece of journalism, unsparing in it analysis of the folly

Douglas Murray

Cage deserves all the scrutiny the relevant authorities can muster

So the identity of ‘Jihadi John’ appears to have come out.  And surprise surprise he is a man associated with the group Cage (formerly Cage Prisoners).  The leaders of this group – Asim Qureshi and Cerie Bullivant – have been filling the airwaves ever since the naming of their friend Mohammed Emwazi. Qureshi even appeared to shed a tear as he talked about what a ‘beautiful young man’ his friend Jihadi John is. I wonder if any scales have fallen from any eyes in the last 24 hours?  I do hope so. Cage is, after all, a group which has for years been introduced on the BBC, Channel 4 and

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Under the sea

From a letter to the Editor, ‘The Channel Tunnel’, The Spectator, 27 February 1915: [To the Editor of The “Spectator’] SIR,—Many of us must be wondering what the promoters of the Channel Tunnel enterprise think about the matter now. To those of us who are of the “Island” school it has always appeared that there were three main objections to the scheme —first, the risk of panic and of the evils that arise from panic; secondly, the real danger involved; and thirdly, the fact that in creating a tunnel we should be giving a hostage to fortune. A mere layman cannot set forth adequately the risks that the existence of

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Gnomic

The elite tournament at Zurich, which finished last week, has adopted a system for determining the ultimate trophy winner which seems to me virtually impenetrable. Zurich consisted of three separate events, a blitz, a rapidplay and a classical tournament, all of them involving the elite group of Nakamura, Anand, Kramnik, Aronian, Karjakin and Caruana. For the general public, victory in the classical tournament would be the chief honour. But Zurich’s complex system ignores the blitz results, includes the classical section, adds on points scored in the rapidplay, and ends with an armageddon game in the event that two leaders have tied for first place. As it was, Aronian won the

Raymond Keene

No. 351

White to play. This position is from Nakamura-Karjakin, Zurich classic 2015. White’s knight seems trapped but he can rescue it with a fine tactical idea. Can you see how? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 3 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I am offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Qc8 and 1 Qb8 both win Last week’s winner Robert Gray, London SW19

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Why rural churches are so important, and the best use for them

The presence of a church Sir: The challenge for the Church of England and the wider community is to ensure that our village churches are a blessing and not a burden (‘It takes a village’, 21 February). The Church of England has approximately 16,000 churches, three-quarters of which are listed by English Heritage. Most of these church buildings are in rural areas. There are around 2,000 rural churches with weekly attendance lower than ten. It can be a significant responsibility for those small congregations to look after that church, and one has to recognise that this is a burden that falls on thriving parishes. There is no ‘one size fits

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 February 2015

Home Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary, resigned as chairman of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee and promised not to stand for Parliament in May after he and Jack Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary, were suspended from their parties. This followed their being separately secretly filmed apparently offering their services for payment to reporters from the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4’s Dispatches programme pretending to be acting for a Chinese company. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, declared that Labour candidates would in future not to be allowed to have second jobs. Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green party, apologised for an ‘excruciating’ interview on LBC with

Taki

Once upon a time I was very proud to be Greek. But no more

Gstaad A naked, very good-looking young man skied down the mountain evoking shrieks of laughter and admiration from the hundred or so skiers lining the slopes. He turned out to be J.T., my son, and it was an act of protest against the mind-numbing conversation about titles among some at the Eagle club. A friend had skied ahead and was waiting for him at the bottom with a blanket. Needless to say, it became the subject du jour, and someone even filmed young women cheering the streaking skier as he shussed his way down at record speed. His naked run to glory succeeded in getting the subject changed up at

Dot Wordsworth

‘Robust’, busted

‘Heart of Oak are our ships, Jolly Tars are our men,’ shouted my husband unconvincingly. He has taken to doing this every time someone on air says robust, and that is pretty often. On this occasion it was someone from the Arts Council rambling on about business plans and governance being robust enough to ensure that organisations are sustainable. Anything else might have been adjudged robust: Mrs Merkel, examination procedures, animal welfare rules, IT systems. It’s an all-purpose word of approval and thus often on the lips of politicians. The overuse of robust robs their speech of all conviction and drives listeners to distraction, even if few are provoked into

Jeremy Clarke

The day an ancient and very wonderful sport died

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the last running of the English hare-coursing classic, the Waterloo Cup. I shan’t start raving on about the perversity of banning a so-called blood sport in which the death of the hare, should it happen, is seen as a failure. Suffice to say that in the last season of legal coursing under English Coursing Club rules, 160 hares were registered as killed — one in nine hares coursed. Three months after the Hunting Act had come into force, 8,000 conserved hares on ten coursing grounds had been shot, including 3,500 on the coursing grounds of the Swaffham Coursing Society (founded in 1776) alone.

Melissa Kite

My request to see my medical notes has sparked all-out panic at my GP surgery

My request to see my medical notes has sparked all-out panic at the GP surgery. ‘What do you mean?’ said the receptionist who answered the phone when I called to ask. She sounded even more furious than the time I rang to ask if I could possibly have an appointment to see the doctor. On that occasion, she affected her best Lady Bracknell impression, ‘The doctor? You want to see the doctor?’ ‘Well, yes if it isn’t too much trouble,’ I spluttered, as she audibly bashed her keyboard in ill-disguised rage at my impertinence. On this occasion, she was horribly icy. ‘I mean,’ I stammered, ‘I want to see my

Toby Young Toby Young

If you think Britain’s corrupt now, watch what happens if we ban second jobs for MPs

Last year, I had an exchange with Hugo Rifkind on Twitter in which I bet him dinner at Clarke’s that his father would stand down before the next election. My reasoning was that, at the age of 68, his dad wouldn’t want to serve another five years in the Commons and would be happier in the Lords. I hadn’t anticipated he would depart as a result of a cash-for-access scandal. I’ve always rather fancied running in Kensington myself. Rifkind has a majority of 8,616, which makes it a safe seat, and it’s only a 15-minute cycle ride from my house. But I’m not going to throw my hat into the

Alexander Chancellor

You can’t force low-income people to go to an art gallery or the theatre if they don’t want to

I went last week to see the justly praised production of Wagner’s The Mastersingers at English National Opera, and I didn’t see a single black face there, nor even much dark hair (except in the case of Melvyn Bragg who, though now greying a bit, still seems to have Ronald Reagan’s gift for keeping white hairs at bay). This chimed with the finding of the Warwick Commission on the arts in Britain that much the greater part of live-music audiences, theatre-goers and gallery visitors is old, white and middle-class. Even though this wasn’t actually the reason for the Arts Council’s drastic decision to curtail ENO’s funding — this was because

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 26 February 2015

Bridge players never get bored of each other’s company for one simple reason: interesting hands are like juicy bits of gossip, and there is an endless supply to discuss and mull over. The things other people do! The things we ourselves have done! Here’s an extraordinary deal that has had everyone chattering from Warsaw to London and back again. It occurred during the final of the Polish Teams Championships, when the two top teams of Martens and Vitas were slugging it out. At the first table, the famous Krzysztof Martens was North, his partner Dominik Filipowicz was South: North opened a ‘gambling 3NT’, showing a long solid minor and no

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I lie about my age and still use my Senior Railcard?

Q. I was not brought up in England and don’t appear in Who’s Who. This means that there is no printed record of my date of birth. I’m not vain, but have good reason to believe the work I do would dry up if my age became known. (I look about 50.) The point of my writing is that I now have a Senior Railcard but hardly dare use it in case the collector comes while I am sitting with neighbours or potential clients. Twice I have pre-empted having to show the card while sitting next to such people by walking through the train on the pretext of asking the

Doc

2200

The unclued Down lights (individually or as a pair) are of a kind in short, as are the unclued Across lights (one of two words) all paired. In short together, they reveal the title of this puzzle.   Across   1    Chap on a demo who is on the boundary (8) 10    Exaggerated details from the needlewoman? (12) 11    Homes of housemistresses (5) 16    Thameslink’s reflection of German girl (4) 17    W.G.’s poorly – such lack of manners (8, hyphened) 21    Gold weight’s around rears of open vehicles (8) 23    Separate variety of nut and drink (7) 25    Two kings drinking one

Doc

To 2197: Missing

The unclued lights are some of the words highlighted in Chambers 2011 which were unfortunately omitted from the 2014 edition of the dictionary owing to a printing misunderstanding.   First prize Simon Fletcher, Twickenham, Middlesex Runners-up Chris Butler, Borough Green, Kent; Rowan Priestman, Burpham, Surrey