Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

County lines

We are suddenly all expected to know that county lines are to do with the selling of illegal drugs in rural Britain. There is, I think, a confusion built into the term, though language is capable of accommodating such inconsistencies. Most of the stuff in the papers and on television on the subject derives from County Lines, Violence, Exploitation & Drug Supply, a report published last year by the National Crime Agency. It says that the phrase county lines refers to the supply of Class A drugs ‘from an urban hub into rural towns or county locations’. It adds: ‘A key feature of county lines drug supply is the use

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 July 2018

Q. My wife’s much younger sister is lazy and impossible. She forgets birthdays, is invariably late, lets people down and seems to think it’s all a laugh. Examples: forgetting to put the Christmas lunch in to cook so we had to wait four hours for what turned into a very poor evening meal. Informing us of a serious heart condition via a two-line text message, to which my wife responded but then heard nothing. Her husband is similar, once berating my wife in public for not going to see her sister in hospital when we had not been informed that she was there. Her youngest daughter was 18 earlier this

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 26 July 2018

At a speaker luncheon last week, someone I didn’t know passed me a note asking ‘Have you stopped supporting capital punishment?’ As far as I could remember, I have never supported capital punishment, so I was slightly at a loss for a reply. My problem with the subject is that I have always felt ambiguous. On the one hand, capital punishment is horrible, bad for the executioner as well as the victim, and fatal to the innocent. On the other, I cannot confidently argue that, when conducted under law, it would be wrong in every single circumstance. Some times, and perhaps some actions, are so bad that the death penalty

Columba

2369: Prodigious

Each of ten clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a word which can be read as an indicator of the unclued lights in each of four columns of the grid.   Across   1 Revolutionary avoids accepting one god (7) 6 Destroyed each bit of opium (7) 11 Priest and paramour lapsing? (6) 12 Tense champion catching alien in addition (7) 14 Mouldings attached to front of impressive gateway (5) 15 Dredge section mostly exposed (5) 16 See current process releasing a vitamin (6) 17 Rascal having problem carrying Albanian coin around (6) 19 Worn-out horse, mad at vet, I smarten up (9)

Sarah Whitebloom

Who cares about care homes?

For millions of middle-aged children, finding good care for their parents is akin to a Grail quest — and just as unlikely to succeed. How can you tell if a care home is good? There are so many horror stories of neglect, abuse and even deaths. Most people rely on ratings from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). But when the care regulator says a home is ‘good’, does that mean it is actually good? In fact, as I discovered, it could mean anything. The CQC’s coveted ‘good’ grade is supposed to be a reassuring measure. It should tell you that your relation will be safe, because a team of inspectors

Kit Eastwood

Dusting off the past

Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the gift shop: an excavated garden with 13 bodies twisting in an agonising tableau of pain, caught at the instant of their death. They are frozen in history and separated from the onlooker by a glass wall and museum labels — a human moment presented with the cold distance of an archaeological exhibit. Ceridwen Dovey’s third novel is anchored in Pompeii and chooses the garden as its focal point. She tells the story of two characters, Royce and Vita, their rejections by their individual loves and attempts to find meaning after

The Spectator

to 2366: The square

THE RUSSIA HOUSE, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and A MURDER OF QUALITY are novels by JOHN (41) LE CARRÉ, whose surname is the puzzle’s TITLE (13) in FRENCH (30).   First prize Ian Webster, Craven Arms, Shropshire Runners-up Angus Ross, Old Portsmouth, Hampshire; Samantha Pine, Poole, Dorset

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Michel Barnier confirms David Davis’ Brexit deal warning

David Davis could be forgiven a wry chuckle today. For what he warned Theresa May about has come to pass: Michel Barnier has made clear that the EU Commission can’t accept Theresa May’s proposed facilitated customs arrangement as it won’t have a third country (ie, the UK) collecting tariffs on its behalf: ‘The EU cannot and the EU will not delegate the application of its customs policy and rules and VAT and excises duty collection to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU’s governance structures.’ This was the main point of the Chequers offer: that Britain would have frictionless trade with the rest of the EU by

Simon Marcus

Could this summer see a repeat of the 2011 riots?

The heatwave is on and reports of London’s crime wave are widespread, with crime up dramatically in the last year: could a repeat of the 2011 riots be on the cards? Predicting riots is tricky but sometimes there are clues: the weather plays a part; and so too does the economy, community cohesion, social morals and other factors that can combine to lead to outbreaks of widespread disorder, just as they did seven years ago on the streets of the capital. Of course, 2011 wasn’t the only time people intent on violence have taken to the streets of Britain in recent years. The 1958 race riots, the ‘summer of 1968’,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Forget the ‘Beatles’: here’s what happens to most British jihadi suspects

What happens to Brits who’ve returned from fighting for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq? Most would expect that they’d immediately fall into the criminal justice system, and wouldn’t then emerge for a very long time. Today it emerged that Home Secretary Sajid Javid had dropped Britain’s blanket opposition to the death penalty so that two Isis fighters from the group dubbed the ‘Beatles’ could be sent to the US. But in most cases, the question isn’t where someone will face justice, but whether they can face justice at all. We know that there are hundreds of people who have returned from fighting for Islamic State. But what is less

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Don’t blame the Tories for a Brexit ‘no deal’

Remember when leftists and liberals were against capitalists throwing their weight around in the political sphere? ‘Just because you’re filthy rich doesn’t mean you should have more clout than the rest of us’, they might say. No longer. Now they love it when the boss class tut-tuts about democracy and wonders out loud if we should just ignore the little people and shape politics so that it suits us, the moneyed and powerful. Consider the glee with which some leftish Remainers have lapped up Amazon’s dire warnings about a no-deal Brexit. According to the Times this morning, on Friday, at a meeting organised by Brexit Secretary Dominic Rabb, the head

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The Tiger purrs

So in the end it was a fallible Tiger that won all hearts at the Open, not the glowering, red-shirted monarch of the fairways who carried all before him long ago. But a softer, puzzled, vaguely frail Tiger is hard not to like: this is someone now who isn’t quite sure what shot to play, who doesn’t quite know where the ball is going. Now we like him, and by golly the sport needs him. Like a fading but reformed rock star, he looks happier too: easier with the media, and carrying an ailing sport with dignity. The money is pretty good too. Sadly the fact that the sport’s biggest

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why austerity is ending

The last day of the parliamentary term is usually an occasion for the government to get a whole bunch of bad news out of the way all at once. But this summer’s end-of-term announcements were used as a chance to put out some seemingly good news. Teachers, prison officers and members of the military will all receive pay increases of above 1 per cent for the first time in five years. The lifting of the public sector pay cap is another reminder of how politics and the Tories have moved on from the age of austerity that George Osborne announced in his 2009 conference speech. Much has been written about

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The more extreme the left’s screeches, the greater the populist surge

The latest exciting news is that it may very soon be possible for surgeons to perform uterine transplants, so endowing a man who has ‘transitioned’ into being a strange approximation of a woman with the ability to gestate a child. And to give birth, after a fashion. The benighted child would need to be hacked out of the man’s midriff, because there’s not enough room down there for a child to come out naturally (yes, because he’s a man). Sweden — the world leader in uterine transplants — is anxious to reclaim the title of the world’s most batshit crazy nation, which the Canadians and that simpering idiot Justin Trudeau

Cosmo Landesman

Problem children

There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They packed them off to boarding school as soon as possible and banned them from the dinner table as soon as they got back. Why-oh-why, they asked, can’t the English just relax and enjoy the presence of children like the French did? Well, they’ve got their wish. That old, much-mocked Victorian proverb — children should be seen and not heard — has been replaced by a new dictum in child-centric Britain: children must be seen, heard, celebrated, praised and obeyed all of the time. Once children were expected to fit themselves

The Spectator

Hitting home

From ‘The munitions strike’, 27 July 1918: It is necessary for the Government to make it clear that the present strike of munition workers is unlike all previous strikes in that it is a direct challenge to the authority of the State. Such a challenge in time of war is in the nature of sedition and treason, and must be treated accordingly… If this is not made plain, the authority of the Government will disappear, and we may as well all say good-bye to the glorious prospect of handsomely winning the war. If the production of the munitions of war is to be held up, there is no political principle…which

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why dismiss a Catholic priest for being Catholic?

They’re just kids! What’s your problem? This has become the default reaction of a whole raft of clever people to anyone who gets hot under the collar about the fashion for students banning things in universities: speakers, ideas, books. It was ever this way, they say, and besides, sometimes the kids are right. The little episode of righteous vandalism at Manchester last week was a case in point. Students painted over a mural of Kipling’s ‘If’ in the newly renovated union building, on the grounds that he ‘dehumanised people of colour’. Kipling was a racist, they insisted, a man of Empire. Out came the whitewash and on top of it

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Paris notebook | 26 July 2018

‘Problème est masculin; solution est féminine,’ says Brigitte, the adored French teacher at the British embassy in Paris. Good way to remember your ‘les’ and ‘las’. If only it were true. Theresa May has not — yet — solved Brexit. Angela Merkel has not resolved the migrant crisis. Anne Hidalgo, the city’s mayor, has not flushed out its rats. If she fails at re-election, it will be on pest control and tent cities. A sign on the Square du Temple gates asks picnickers to leave no croissant crumbs behind. It attracts the rats. Below, in black marker: ‘Et les Algériens?’ Not nice. But tempers run high in hot summers.  The

Lucy Vickery

Tourist misinformation | 26 July 2018

In Competition No. 3058 you were invited to supply snippets of mischievously/sadistically misleading advice for foreign tourists visiting Britain, or for British ones travelling abroad. This is an assignment that you always embrace with relish, though one competitor observed that it felt curiously difficult this time round because ‘the interaction between Britain and Abroad isn’t very funny just at the moment’. That may well be true, but your entries still raised a chuckle, and as usual those with a ring of plausibility worked best. There was a fair amount of repetition: popular tips included the desirability of introducing Brexit into conversation at the earliest opportunity, the inadvisability of tipping black