Society

Thursday

Robert Taylor

No tap water has left all of Tunbridge Wells disgusted

I’ve lived in Tunbridge Wells for 20 years, and have never met anyone disgusted. Until this week. Yup, we’re all disgusted now. As you would be if you couldn’t flush your loo for days on end, nor take a shower, nor wash your hands, nor drink a glass of water without schlepping to a communal bottle station and waiting in a long queue. The Royal bit in our town’s name has never felt more inappropriate. The Royal bit in our town’s name has never felt more inappropriate What on earth happened? Well, it all started on Saturday, when thousands of us noticed the water pressure in our taps was weak

Matthew Parris

The mind-body conundrum

I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts ever lower towards the waves, and the crests of red ink lick the wicker of my basket, I’ve realised something has to be thrown out. Thus it was that last week I found myself in London’s Hatton Garden. Tucked into my little knapsack was my passport and a couple of one-ounce mini bars of gold I had bought after the last banking crisis, and stored in an old kettle. It was late afternoon, and dark. Hatton Garden is a strange street, lined with jewellers and bullion dealers, and peopled by

The Spectator

Letters: How to clear the courts backlog – without scrapping juries

Tried and tested Sir: Your otherwise excellent leading article opposing proposed restrictions on jury trials (‘Judge not’, 29 November) misses two important points against the proposals. First, one can go much further than pointing to 3,000 days of unused capacity. The capacity itself can be expanded quite readily. It was once normal for courts to sit on Saturdays. Moreover, the court day once started at 9 a.m. and, after a break for supper, could go on well into the late evening – the ‘black cap at midnight’ is not a myth. The modern court day is 10.30 to 4.30, with an hour for lunch. A 9.30 to 5.30 day would

Flora Watkins

Bring back the album

Usually when my tweenage sons ask about relics from my 1990s adolescence – ‘What’s a landline?’ ‘What’s a phone book?’ – we’ll have a good laugh about these obsolete artefacts of the not-so-distant past. But last year when my ten-year-old asked about ‘Immigrant Song’, which he’d heard on the soundtrack to a Marvel movie, and I replied, ‘Oh, I think it’s on the third Led Zeppelin album’, his response left me winded: ‘What’s an album?’ What’s an album? The horror! How had this abject failure of parenting happened? I’ve raised my kids in as analogue a household as possible, with piles of books, newspapers and magazines on every surface. I’ve

Matt Ridley

The great climate climbdown is finally here

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent Cop summit in Belem, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to secure new pledges for a cut in fossil fuels, Cop achieved less than nothing. The venue caught fire, the air conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper. Bill Gates’s recent apologia, in which he

Max Jeffery

The ‘Crewkerne Man’ is reviving political satire for the AI age

You’ve probably seen the videos. Kemi Badenoch delivering her Budget response in the form of a rap to a sobbing Rachel Reeves. Keir Starmer as a McDonald’s drive-thru worker. David Lammy as a Spice Girl in a tight dress. Reeves (again) as the Grand High Witch from The Witches. Behind the videos is one man. He runs the Crewkerne Gazette, an online publisher of viral political videos made with artificial intelligence. The ‘Crewkerne Man’ would not give me his name when we met for lunch in Somerset last week. What I can say is that the most important political satirist of the moment is a large guy in his mid-thirties

Honor Gibbs

The art of the party trick

I’ve decided I need a party trick. This thought occurred to me at a recent dinner party as I watched my mother effortlessly tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. So ensued 20 minutes of entertainment as everyone thought that they too would give it a go. No one succeeded, and my mother remained the undisputed champion. But when the floor was opened to any other demonstrations, I had nothing.  My failure to inherit any sort of skill is a bit of mystery since my father also has an arsenal of party tricks. While most of his peers spent their early twenties in clubs and at parties,

Rachel Johnson

A poignant and perfect send-off 

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing, as her funeral fell during the Arctic spell that whitened the bracken and iced over puddles the colour of Dairy Milk. When we drove into Simonsbath just after lunchtime, the sun was only grazing the hilltops, leaving valleys in deep shadows. We’d allowed plenty of time, but the lanes were already crammed with vehicles. My husband and I had intended to stand at the back of St Luke’s so as not to take up precious places, but thanks to Ivo’s near-village-elder status we were ordered into the emergency seating in

Luke McShane

Retreating knights

Grandmasters do not, as a rule, overlook one-move threats. But when they do, there is a good chance that a retreating knight is the culprit. Take the 1956 Candidates tournament, where Tigran Petrosian (a future world champion), attained an overwhelming strategic advantage as his opponent David Bronstein shuffled his knight back and forth, waiting for the axe to fall. One of these jumps just happened to attack Petrosian’s queen, who failed to notice and moved a different piece forward. Bronstein’s knight moved back again, snapping off the queen, and Petrosian resigned.    The curse of the cavalry claimed yet another victim in the semi-final of the Fide World Cup in

Melissa Kite

The power of tear pressure

The smashed pick-up truck was delivered back to us after I burst into tears and began wailing at the recovery man. When all else fails, men usually cave in to what I like to call tear pressure. Their brains scream ‘Make it stop!’ and they’ll do pretty much anything. The tears gushed out of my eyes very easily as I stood in that recovery yard two days after the builder boyfriend had been hit head-on by a driver speeding down the wrong side of the road who smashed into him at such force that he took apart the entire driver’s side and undercarriage of his Mitsubishi L200. The truck was

Charlie Brooks

My House of Lords dinner disaster

It was just a straightforward dinner in the bosom of the House of Lords, talking to members of the Jockey Club. What could possibly go wrong? When I rashly accepted with gay abandon the invitation to speak to them after dinner, I’d forgotten that I’d been quite punchy about the club over the past decade in the Daily Telegraph. Forgotten, that is, until I arrived at the Victoria Tower Gardens gate to the welcoming grunt of: ‘Well, you’ve been bloody rude about us in the past, so let’s see what you’ve got to say for yourself now.’ I could see one of the more senior members of the club was

Luke McShane

Puzzle

White to play and mate in three moves (that is, W-B-W-B-W checkmate). Composed by Sam Loyd, Holyoke Transcript, 1876. Please note that because of the Christmas printing schedule, this is not a prize puzzle. Last week’s solution 1 Qf6+! Nxf6 2 Bf8+ Nh7 3 Rxh7+ Kxh7 4 Rh3 mate Last week’s winner James McMeehan Roberts, Petersfield, Hants

Toby Young

Juries are defenders of free speech

On Tuesday, David Lammy announced in parliament that a bill would be included in the next King’s Speech restricting the right to trial by jury in England and Wales to those accused of serious crimes, such as murder, rape and manslaughter. Lesser crimes, he said, would be dealt with either by magistrates or by a new tier of jury-less courts. The point of the reforms is to address the delays and backlogs in the courts, with the Justice Secretary pointing out that the Crown Courts are facing a backlog of 80,000 cases. I’m opposed to this, obviously, because jury trials have been a bulwark of English liberty for 800 years.

La Jerezana

2732: Play it tough

A quote (ODQ, 8th edition) runs around the grid’s perimeter, beginning at 3. It is preceded by the first name of its author, whose surname is an unclued entry. Four further unclued entries consist of two leaders, a receptacle, and its contents; letters of the five unclued entries unchecked by clue answers may be rearranged to spell out ‘BASK IN CHANTS’. Two sides, in short, should be highlighted. Across 10   Regularly avoid man in exotic female attire (2,3) 11   Returned home within a day for baby’s protection (6) 14   Naked boozer, close to collapse (4) 16   They sharpen points less clumsily (10) 17   Instincts + body = who one is

The Spectator

2729: Spelled Out 

The unclued lights are first names of authors known by their initials: W.H. Auden (31), A.S. Byatt (40,2), T.S. Eliot (7,10), C.S. Lewis (35,6A) and P.G. Wodehouse (34,4). First prize Marcus Clissold-Lesser, Ramsgate, Kent Runners-up Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Somerset; Alison Gillam, Knotty Green, Buckinghamshire

Roger Alton

Ben Stokes’s run-in with Aggers

There’s tetchy, and then there’s Ben Stokes ‘tetchy’ – pulling out his mic and stomping off cursing, or so I’m told, after Jonathan Agnew asked a disobliging question. Admittedly it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Stokes, an inspirational leader on the pitch who had just seen his team skewered in two days in Perth in one of the most brutal (and thrilling) Ashes Tests in history, and then had to do a live BBC interview. But this was the ever-courteous Aggers, for heaven’s sake, the nearest thing to a secular saint for TMS.  There’s no need for a four-letter outburst. He was asking what were standard if faintly

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I avoid getting shown up by a more chivalrous bachelor?

Q. My godfather, who has managed to get me a valuable internship in the Far East, has also sent me a business-class ticket to fly out there in the new year. I have seen how much the ticket costs (£3,800) and would much prefer to cash it in, go economy (£694) and spend the balance when I am there. But would it be rude to suggest this? – Name and address withheld A. First check with your godfather that he meant to buy you a business-class ticket – his secretary may have done it in error. Then offer to go economy. If he refuses, then make the most of the

Tanya Gold

A right royal travesty: Lilibet’s reviewed

Elizabeth II was a god and a commodity: now she is gone it is time for posthumous exploitation. Lilibet’s is a restaurant named for her childhood nickname at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, on the site of the house where she was born. It was inevitable that Elizabeth II would eventually get a personal restaurant. Princess Diana ate in the Café Diana – English breakfasts and kebabs – on the Bayswater Road and George VI is the inspiration for the superb Guinea Grill – mostly sausages, or rather it is the sausages I remember – near Lilibet’s. Because that is what the British do to our monarchs and their intimates. We

Dot Wordsworth

The changing flavour of ‘fudge’

‘Do you know what vibe coding is, darling?’ I asked my husband. ‘What do you take me for?’ he replied. ‘Or 67?’ ‘Ah, I do know that the Prime Minister had to apologise for leading a classroom of little children in a series of hand moves to that one. But I’ve no idea what it means.’ Thus was my suspicion confirmed that most ‘words of the year’ are far from general concern. Vibe coding, some sort of AI software development, is Collins Dictionary’s new Word of the Year; 67 (pronounced ‘six seven’), which has no agreed meaning, is Dictionary.com’s. To me, a far more interesting word is fudge. It is