Society

Why we shouldn’t fear a ‘fourth wave’ of Covid

A few weeks ago, as the government was preparing for a great reopening on 21 June, I wrote a cover story for The Spectator with some bad news: a third wave was coming, I argued, and it could be even bigger than the second. It jarred with the mood. Covid cases were falling and a great many people desperately wanted this to be the end of it. My model, the Bristol University PCCF (Predictor Corrector Coronavirus Filter), showed otherwise: the biggest wave could be yet to come. But with a vital difference: hospitalisations and deaths would be much lower than at the beginning of the year when we were largely

The Fide World Cup

As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s a thrilling event for spectators, who get to watch high-stakes chess in all its forms — fast, slow, wonderful and blunderful. The main knockout event began with a field of 206 players (with 50 seeded into the second round), while the women’s event had half that number. Each match sees two classical games on consecutive days, followed by a day of tiebreaks at fast-paced time limits. It is a brutal competitive environment, and those who reach the final stages have spent almost a month in

Rod Liddle

Putting the commie in committee

Last month an epidemiologist called Professor Michael Baker described the UK government’s decision to free its people from Covid restrictions on 19 July as ‘barbaric’ and an ‘experiment’. Professor Baker lives in the little-known hermit kingdom of New Zealand — a country which, under the guidance of people like himself, has banned almost all foreign travel and imposed long domestic lockdowns. Such is the grip Baker and his friends have on the country that the appearance of just two Covid infections in the entire population caused the nation to go into a hysterical spasm, with much bed-wetting, shrieking and governmental resignations. You are allowed to die of anything in New

‘I’m plagued by worries of disaster’: an interview with Dominic Cummings

I’ve been waiting over a year to meet Dominic Cummings. Any time Mary Wakefield asked me to interview someone for The Spectator, I said: ‘I’d rather interview your husband.’ And she promised he would do it, one day. I began to lose faith, but at last the day dawns. On the way to see him I run into Mary and their son Ceddy outside their home in north London and she takes me to the kitchen to meet Dom. He is friendly, hospitable, takes me to sit in the garden to talk, and gently shoos Ceddy indoors. The one thing everyone, friend and enemy alike, agrees about Dominic Cummings is

Martin Vander Weyer

Is it time for a Dad’s Army of lorry drivers?

Here’s a patriotic proposal: let’s form a Dad’s Army of lorry drivers, of which the Road Haulage Association reckons there’s currently a 100,000 shortage. Daily headlines tell us this is causing supply disruptions that have led to reduced factory output and half-empty supermarket shelves, slowing recovery and contributing to the blip in inflation. We need Walmington-on-Sea’s trusty platoon at the wheel to compensate for the million-plus exodus of foreign-born workers that has afflicted the economy from hospitality (see this week’s last item) to fruit farms, slaughterhouses and construction sites — compounded in haulage by delays to thousands of HGV tests for new applicants last year. Right now, of course, all

Mary Wakefield

How Nextdoor became the new Neighbourhood Watch

Long before the official numbers began to rise, back in 2014, it was clear that knife crime was on the up. You could tell by the way small boys chased each other through the park with machetes, and by the zombie blades left in flower beds. Now, seven years later, I feel the same way about what goes by the cosy-sounding name of ‘neighbourhood crime’. There’s the fashion for car theft (as poor Sam Leith found out), and the constant predatory circling of iPhone thieves on e-scooters. But worse than that, I think burglary is back, and I think it’s thanks to crack. We know drug use is creeping up:

Roger Alton

What would Avery Ice Age have made of the Tokyo Olympics?

Avery Brundage was known to his enemies as Avery Ice Age — and to quite a few of his friends too, I would imagine. He was a man of ‘dictatorial temperament’, according to one of his critics. A wealthy American, Brundage brought his ultra-conservative outlook to bear on the Olympics, which he bossed from 1952-72. He was, another critic said, bent on ‘insulating the Games from the meddlesome tentacles of the real world’. He was particularly keen on the idea of amateurism, regardless (or maybe because) of the fact that the amateur ideal was the brainchild of the English aristocracy that ensured they didn’t have to compete against the lower

Which industries have the most workers still furloughed?

Happy valet Police Scotland dropped what they said was a randomly generated codeword — ‘Bunter’ — for the security operation when Boris Johnson visited Scotland. While the name invited comparisons between the PM and Billy Bunter, the overweight public schoolboy in the Greyfriars stories, there is another Bunter in fiction. Mervyn Bunter was the immaculate and well-organised manservant to private detective Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers’ crime stories. This Bunter’s defining characteristics were knowledge, accuracy and loyalty — and he was always on hand to correct Wimsey before he committed any social faux pas. Making a run for it Belarussian athlete Krystina Timanovskaya was offered asylum by Poland

Letters: The problem with the ‘alpha migrants’

Here illegally Sir: Unfortunately, Charlotte Eagar misses the point (‘The alpha migrants’, 31 July). The Channel migrants may be ‘bright and brave’, and may repay what they gain from the benefit system. But they are here illegally, thus riding roughshod over the immigration system and those who are still waiting to have their asylum applications processed lawfully. This farce must not be allowed to continue as a taxpayer-funded taxi service for people-trafficking gangs. Victoria Baillon Hornblotton, Somerset On liberty Sir: Michael Cullup (Letters, 31 July) bemoans that ‘The Spectator these days seems obsessed with the idea of freedom’ and that his youth of boarding school, blackouts, rationing and the Royal

I was held to ransom by hackers

I’m the owner of two small galleries which sell 20th-century ceramics and artworks. One of the ways we’ve become known is through Instagram. We’ve got almost 50,000 followers and sell a lot of work through there. In May, I was away for the weekend with friends in Somerset. On Saturday morning, I saw an email in our shared work account (purporting to be) from Instagram. It was congratulating us for getting a blue tick — verification that confirms the account is an ‘authentic presence’. Thrilled, I clicked the link in the email to confirm. It took me to an official-looking Instagram page where I entered our login details. I was

The awe-inspiring appeal of aquariums

Fish tanks were probably first conceived in the distant past by the Chinese, but in many respects, aquariums are a distinctly British phenomenon. The first public one opened at Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in 1853. The word itself seems to have been first used in Philip Gosse’s 1854 book The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. And the glass-fronted version was patented by Edward Edwards in 1858. All that Victorian ingenuity definitely benefitted our underwater cousins. It’s hard to determine if keeping fish is trendy. On the one hand, there’s not much to be said for goldfish in a bowl; on the other, a James Bond-style

Portrait of the week: Vouchers for vaccines, cases rise in China and a Christmas baby for Boris and Carrie

Home After the number of people ‘pinged’ (alerted by an NHS Covid-19 app) neared 700,000, the app was adjusted so that it hunted for contacts of a person testing positive for Covid only from the two previous days, not five. When no more than 68 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds in England had yet accepted vaccination, they were offered vouchers for Deliveroo to comply. Vaccination was to be offered to 1.4 million 16- and 17-year-olds. A letter from Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging the Prime Minister to allow fully vaccinated travellers from the United States and Europe to avoid quarantine was leaked to the Sunday Times.

Why is the mild West afraid to promote its democratic values?

An athlete seeking sanctuary in a foreign embassy after a state–sponsored attempt to spirit her home from the Olympics; a dissident found hanging from a tree in a foreign country that he’d been helping his compatriots escape to; a passenger jet diverted so one of its passengers could be arrested. The fate of critics of Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus might have been drawn from the depths of the Cold War. Like North Korea, Belarus has become a land that time forgot, still fighting battles we assumed had been lost decades ago. There is, however, a big difference between now and the Cold War. The voice of the West is

2515: Paragon – solution

The name was Margaret, whose various versions are suggested by THE SPECTATOR (1: Mag), BARN OWL (10/36: Madge), LEAD HAMMER (14/34: Madge), MAGPIE (19A: Madge or Maggie), CRICKET STUMP (48: Peg), HALFPENNY (2: Mag or Meg), TURTLE HARPOON (9: Peg), PIN (16: Peg) and TEASE (Mag). MARGARET (22/23) was to be shaded. Title: cf. pearl, the meaning of Margaret. First prize Hilda Ball, Belfast Runners-up Jane Smith, Beeston, King’s Lynn; Ken Storr, St Leonards, NSW, Australia

Spectator competition winners: poems inspired by the phonetic alphabet

In Competition No. 3210, you were invited to provide a poem or a piece of prose containing words from the phonetic alphabet. The brief didn’t stipulate that you incorporate all 26 words, but hats off to those who shoehorned them in. In a whopping, wide-ranging entry, with echoes of Keats and MacNeice, and ‘Papa’ Hemingway looming large, Nick Syrett, Nick MacKinnon and Frank Upton shone, but it was a terrific performance all round. The winners earn £30 each. Why on earth in ’56 did someone rearrange The old phonetic alphabet of 1943, While leaving just four letters of its twenty-six unchanged As Charlie X-ray Mike remained and Victor kept his

2518: Make a run for it?

11 Across (three words) is a phrase suggested by the puzzle’s title explaining how to arrive at the other unclued lights, which are anagrams of words of a kind, all confirmed in Chambers (including two less common spellings). Across 1 Beaten up coin is showing heraldic beast (8) 8 Some stuff is crammed in purse once (4) 14 Troublemaker in prison on remand to start with (7) 17 Tests principles initially found wanting (5) 18 Earl ripped up least military decorations (8) 21 Person’s tailless bird of legend (4) 22 Horse in rain gets incitement (4) 23 Amerindians holding figure back in tropical flora (7) 25 Queen Mary University, in

No. 665

White to play. Adhiban–Delgado Ramirez, Sochi 2021. White has more than one good move, but Adhiban found a spectacular way to force mate in four. What did he play?Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 9 August. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Nc6+ Nxc6 2 Qe8 mate. Not 1 Bd5 Bd6!Last week’s winner Shaun Gregory, Cragg Vale, Halifax