Society

Thursday

Taki

Taki: in defence of my friend Alec Baldwin

You know you’re old when people start writing kindly about you. Especially when they are colleagues. First Jeremy Clarke, now Deborah Ross. Debbie could of course be spoofing — if you look down at your bag of popcorn you’ll miss me — but thank you very much anyway. When my new boat is ready there will be a cabin built exclusively for Deborah Ross. The only thing she really got wrong is the moolah. If I’m a billionaire, Lord Sugar is a gentleman. This sounds a bit phoney, but if I were a billionaire I’d give 850 million away; 150 million greenbacks, or 100 million quid should be tops for

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 November 2013

The beer garden at the back of the pub was empty, save one woman sitting alone at a table contemplating a pint glass. It was Saturday night, early, already dark. I placed my carnival glass of Kirin Ichiban on the table next to hers and sat down. The beer garden was floodlit with blue and orange light. The stars were out. I craned my head forward, sucked up an inch of cold lager without using my hands and looked sideways at the woman on the next table. I noticed a reaction to the mouthful of chilled beer on a cellular level. The woman looked miles away. ‘If you’re interested in

Raymond Keene

Bifurcation

As predicted last week, the samurai standoff between Anand and Carlsen was swiftly shattered. After quiet draws in games one and two, Anand missed a golden opportunity in game three, while Carlsen returned the compliment in game four. Then Carlsen struck, cutting Anand down in two consecutive endgames which the young Norwegian handled with awesome clinical precision.   Carlsen-Anand: World Championship (Game 3), Chennai 2013   Here Anand continued 29 … Bd4 30 Re2 c4 31 Nxe6+ fxe6 32 Be4 cxd3 33 Rd2 Qb4 34 Rad1 Bxb2 35 Qf3 Bf6 36 Rxd3 Rxd3 37 Rxd3 and the game was soon drawn. If Anand wanted to play to win he had

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite: I really didn’t mean what I said to my boyfriend while he was in the bath

The builder boyfriend and I have had a terrible row. In the heat of the moment, I said something truly awful to him that may have done irreparable damage. It wasn’t entirely my fault. I haven’t been sleeping. And when I haven’t been sleeping I become irrational. Fine, I become more irrational. Suddenly, the other night, I fell asleep while lying on the sofa watching CSI Special Victims Unit. The overcomplicated plot acted like a powerful anaesthesia and I found myself drifting into precisely the sort of deep, blessed sleep I have been craving for months. Before I drifted off, I had asked the builder to run me a bath.

Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: What Pope Francis and Silvio Berlusconi have in common

It’s filthy wet weather in Tuscany, so I’m lying on my bed in the afternoon reading through the Italian newspapers. They are full of stuff about Pope Francis — how his humility, his simplicity, and his reforming zeal are breathing new life into the Roman Catholic Church. They say that the long decline in church attendance in Italy has been reversed in the few months since a previously little-known bishop from Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected to the papacy. His public appearances at the Vatican are also drawing enormous crowds. He is, in short, a superstar, and by no means in Italy alone. Everywhere in the world, including Britain,

Robin Oakley

Racing: Here are the ‘Twelve to Follow’ for winter

Women truly are different. Recovering in a spare bedroom from the wonders of a hip replacement (don’t ever jump on industrial-sized wheelie bins to compress the contents), I passed Mrs Oakley’s bedroom at 3 a.m. to find her light on. What was wrong? ‘I can’t get to sleep,’ she complained, ‘because I know there’s something I should be worrying about but I can’t remember what it is.’ My worry in recent weeks has taken a more obvious shape: how to explain to Spectator readers the performance of our Twelve to Follow on the Flat. You may remember (well, I do anyway) that our Twelve over jumps last season amassed a

Raymond Keene

No. 293

Black to play. This is a variation from Anand-Carlsen; World Championship (Game 4), Chennai 2013. Anand avoided this position, although he is material ahead. What had he foreseen? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 26 November 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 shall be offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Rxf6 Last week’s winner Andrew Gilmour, Cheltenham, Glos

Toby Young Toby Young

My life as a litter monitor

The think tank Policy Exchange has just published an excellent report on Britain’s urban green spaces called ‘Park Land’. The report’s author, Katherine Drayson, argues that we need to take better care of our parks and public gardens, particularly in the north-east, where local authority expenditure on open spaces has been cut by more than a third in the past two years. ‘Flourishing parks and green spaces are central to the success of our cities,’ argues Drayson. ‘Yet we’ve all gone for a walk in our local park only to find used needles, dog excrement and litter ruining our beautiful green spaces.’ Drayson’s solution is for the government to help

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 November 2013

Home The government announced proposals for the National Health Service, including a law to criminalise wilful neglect by doctors and nurses, and a scheme to post online the numbers of nurses on wards. By the end of October, 219 households had seen work completed to insulate their houses under the government’s Green Deal, launched last January. Nick Boles, the planning minister, suggested that David Cameron, the Prime Minister, might like to revive the National Liberal Party, an organisation affiliated to the Conservative party from 1947 to 1968. The Foreign Office summoned the Spanish ambassador after a Spanish ship entered waters off Gibraltar and undertook surveying activity for 20 hours. A

Mishal Husain

Mishal Husain’s diary: Sachin, women secret agents, shipbuilding .. and telling the time.

I’ve worked for the BBC for years and have been listening to the Today programme all my adult life, but joining it as a presenter feels like exploring a new frontier. Being on top of your brief is one thing; the mechanics of a three-hour live radio programme quite another. Take the junctions leading up to the ‘pips’ at the start of each hour. From television, I’ve been accustomed to directors counting presenters down to these junctions while they ad-lib on air — the idea being to stop talking as the voice in your ear says ‘zero’. But radio presenters are pretty much on their own, watching the clock and

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s notes: Peston and co would have done more Co-op digging if the Tories had been involved

There has naturally been plenty of unfavourable comment on how the Revd Paul Flowers, the ‘crystal Methodist’, was allowed by the Financial Services Authority to become chairman of the Co-op Bank. But the story does not reflect very well on the media either. If you look at Robert Peston’s BBC blog on the subject, for instance, there is a lot of ‘I am told’ and ‘according to the Manchester Evening News’. Is there no one in the BBC’s enormous staff who could have done a bit of work years ago on the Revd Mr Flowers? Isn’t it even more extraordinary that the media did not pick up Mr Flowers’s ignorant

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 21 November 2013

Everyone over a certain age can remember the sense of shock that comes when policemen start looking like mere boys. Now I’m in my mid-forties, I get that kind of jolt quite frequently. It seems incredible to me that so many ‘authority’ figures in my life — my boss, my doctor, my lawyer, and so on — are younger than me. But never have I felt this more keenly than I did last week, when I found myself sitting opposite an extremely talented bridge player whom I’d booked to play in a duplicate game. Meet my new teacher: Tom ‘Mini’ Paske, aged 23. Mini — so called because he has

Lavatch

2140: Essex Man

Our hero must be revealed by shading six cells appropriately. Four unclued lights are key words in 11s featuring the hero. Remaining unclued lights (including one of three words) each need shading appropriately to produce four further 11s (minus definite articles), each one connected to one of the previous 11s. Unchecked and cross-checking letters in unclued entries could make A DEAR CONFESSOR WIN.    Across   1    Band during live heavy metal add trimming (8) 10    Cooked au gratin, sour starters (12) 11    Heading from Thailand wearing hat (5) 13    Indian’s penning most of ancient languages (7) 16    Females getting implants (4) 17    Correct pieces put in base, see? (8)

Lavatch

to 2137: Speculation

The two words were BULL and BEAR. BULL is suggested by 36, 41, 6 and 10; BEAR by 34, 37, 1D and 5.   First prize M. Purdie, Ceres, Cupar, Fife Runners-up Rhidian Llewellyn, Minchinhampton, Glos; Ben Stephenson, London SW12

The Spectator

Is addiction a disease?

Tonight, the Spectator will host a debate on the motion: ‘Addiction is not a disease’.  Damian Thompson, Theodore Dalrymple and Dr Aric Sigman will lock horns with Trinny Woodall, Dominic Ruffy and Vic Watts to decide whether addiction is a medical condition or a pattern of immoderate behaviour. The extraordinary story of Reverend Flowers is likely to feature in the discussions. As Melanie Phillips writes in this week’s Spectator cover piece: ‘So what about all those drugs and orgies? The behaviour which even his former rent boy described as ‘debauched’? How could a man with such predilections have got away with being a Methodist minister for 40 years? Flowers claims the

Ed West Ed West

How much of homophobia is just generic macho stupidity?

I fear that Stonewall are turning into those old colonels who used to write to the Telegraph complaining that the word ‘gay’ had been taken up by homosexualists. Viz had a letter to that effect a few years back lamenting that the kids have taken a perfectly good word, ‘gay’ as in homosexual, and now use it to mean ‘rubbish’. Stonewall have a point, of course; however much people might argue that gay in its tertiary sense is entirely separate from its secondary meaning, it’s still clearly going to be hurtful when kids use it as an insult. You can make all the semantic arguments in the world about how

Sebastian Payne

24 hour Tubes are on their way — the impact on London will be huge

Ravers of London rejoice — 24-hour tubes at the weekend are finally on their way. TfL has announced today that trains on the Victoria, Central, Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines will run constantly from Friday morning till Sunday evening. The all-night drinkers of the capital have long wondered why it wasn’t possible to keep the Underground running all night. Engineering work has been blamed, while the trade unions have remained bolshie with TfL (I can’t wait for Bob Crow to pop up complaining about this). But by 2015, these lines should be all set for the 21st century. If you happen to live on one of these lines, you’re all set

Hannah Fearn

Social landlords have prostituted themselves over ‘Build to Rent’

Last weekend a group of young professionals, forced by a spiralling housing market to rent rooms in shared houses at exorbitant prices, moved into a new development in London’s Stratford East — an area booming in the wake of the 2012 Olympics. To mark their arrival, they held a housewarming party. But these youngsters had not rented their own home in Stratford. Instead, the group of housing campaigners had entered the development to hold a party in protest at the government’s failure to tackle the rising cost of rent — and role of social landlords in that failure. The development in question was an apartment block designed for private rent