to 2435: A Little Puzzle
Unclued lights are DWARFS. First prize Bill Stewart, Leicester Runners-up Mark Roberts, Luxembourg;John Bartlett, Solihull
Society
Thursday
Is St Edmund’s body buried beneath a Suffolk tennis court?
Here in St Edmundsbury cathedral, a bunch of clerics and local bigwigs are preparing for a most unusual anniversary. Throughout 2020 the inhabitants of this historic market town will be celebrating the 1,000th birthday of a building that ceased to exist nearly 500 years ago. The Benedictine Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was founded by King Canute in 1020 to house the body of King Edmund, England’s original patron saint. Traditionally said to have been born in 841 and crowned King of East Anglia in 855, Edmund was captured in 869 by the Danes, who told him he could be their puppet king if he renounced Christianity. He refused, so
Trans activists are making life harder for trans people
This was the year that the word ‘non-binary’ went mainstream. It has now officially entered the dictionary — lexicographers at Collins have defined the term as ‘a gender or sexual identity that does not belong to the binary categories of male or female, heterosexual or homosexual’. Non-binary also entered the Liberal Democrat manifesto, though Jo Swinson may now be regretting this decision. Non-binary is easy to announce; it’s rather more challenging to explain to the electorate — or to journalists. In a series of difficult interviews this week, she even denied the fact that every human being is either male or female. I’m a science teacher; if she had been
A river of lost souls: the extraordinary secrets of the Thames
If you spend enough time on the Thames, you will eventually come across human remains. It is a river of lost souls, filled with suicides, battles, burials, murders and accidents, with people so poor their families couldn’t afford to bury them, or so destitute they were never missed. Their bones wash up on the foreshore in the drifts of smooth, honey-brown animal bones, the remains of 2,000 years of dining and feasting. I know this because I am a mudlark and I’ve found my fair share of lost and forgotten Londoners. Mudlarking is best described as a hobby for the archaeologically curious. Twice a day, the tidal Thames falls low
The chilling stories from inside China’s Muslim internment camps
Vegetable-seller Kairat Samarkhan didn’t know why he had been summoned to the police station. ‘I had to empty my pockets and hand over my belt and laces. Then they started to ask questions,’ he says. After days of interrogation, during which he was hardly allowed to sleep, officers pulled a sack over his head and drove him to a camp near the city of Altai. Samarkhan, a Muslim Kazakh, told me about his experience in the camp: ‘Every day, we had to renounce the Muslim faith and confirm that we respect the laws of China. Before every meal, we chorused: “Long live Xi Jinping!” ’ In the past two years
The new Conservatism has begun
Elections should be carnivals of democracy, yet the campaign we have just been through has felt more like amateur dramatics at times – the standard of debate has not risen to the importance of the issues at stake. Yet this election will go down as one of the most consequential in British history. It has brought a profound change to our politics: not just that Brexit is now certain to happen, but also in the way that both main parties have transmogrified before our eyes – in terms of what they stand for, and who they appeal to. The list of Tory gains shows the extent of the change that
All the world’s a stage: this election has echoes of Shakespeare and Dickens
The Christmas election has unfolded like a series of mini-dramas from panto, Dickens and other popular classics. Boris has come across as a Dick Whittington figure, already twice mayor of London, and hoping to establish his seat in the capital on a more permanent footing. Jeremy Corbyn resembles Mother Goose flinging sugary treats at gullible children. And Jo Swinson has clearly been reading Cinderella (and believing every word of it). Swinson positioned herself as the long-suffering drudge who must tidy away the mess left by the Ugly Sisters, namely the Tory and Labour parties. In the story, Cinderella ends up as a princess (‘I’m standing to be your next prime
Finland’s new PM has wowed the world. But what about Finland?
Helsinki Sanna Marin is the world’s new feminist political icon. At the age of 34, she’s just been appointed the prime minister of Finland after a power struggle in the five-party coalition government that forced Antti Rinne out of office only six months after he won the general election. Marin isn’t just young and a woman — she was brought up by two mothers in a small town south of Tampere, an industrial region that isn’t known for championing progressive values. That backstory has earned her the plaudits of feminists on both the left and the right. To the Daily Telegraph, she’s a ‘trailblazer’. For the Guardian, her coalition of
What have the Anglo-Saxons ever done for us?
It has been a while since I’ve considered the vexed question of Byrhtnoth’s ‘ofermod’. More than 30 years, in fact. I remember, as if it were yesterday, my Anglo-Saxon tutorials with dear, lovely, gentle Richard Hamer. And now he is the author of the standard translation being used by my children on their own university English Literature courses. (I suppose the Latin equivalent would be having been taught by the author of Kennedy’s ‘Eating’ Primer.) Byrhtnoth’s ‘ofermod’ is the pivotal word in ‘The Battle of Maldon’, a 325-line fragment of Old English poetry about an otherwise obscure skirmish between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, and much studied on English courses
Does the truth about Ukrainegate even matter?
If you think the election here has been a disorientating exercise in post-truthiness, try following the latest twists in Washington. In the coming days Donald Trump will become the third American president to be impeached. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker, is rushing the vote on articles of impeachment through the House of Representatives, so that the Senate trial of Trump can start before the 2020 election primary season begins. Pelosi knows that impeachment is probably a losing cause: the Republican–controlled Senate will almost certainly acquit the President. What, then, is the point? The Democrats will say impeachment is a moral necessity, since the President is evidently unworthy of high office.
Has Nicola Sturgeon pulled off a second historic victory?
It’s just an exit poll. They can be wrong. They were, substantially, in 1992 and lowballed the Tory result in 2015. Those caveats stated, we have to address that number for the SNP. Fifty-five seats, every seat but four north of the border, would represent the Nationalists’ best result since 2015. Before polls closed, SNP insiders were nervous they might lose some marginal seats to a combination of the Tories and Labour. If the exit poll is broadly accurate, Nicola Sturgeon has pulled off a second historic victory. Since she placed Brexit and Scexit at the centre of her campaign — stopping the former and securing a second referendum on
Corbynistas react to the exit poll result
Tonight’s exit poll has predicted that the Conservatives are heading for a bumper majority of 86 – a remarkable result. And while the exit poll is still just a prediction at this stage, that hasn’t stopped Labour’s various Corbynistas melting down at the result. Here are the best reactions so far: I’m so, so sorry guys. Just utterly devastating. Brexit just smashed us. Keeping together an electoral coalition of Remainers and Leavers as the country bitterly divided just became impossible. — Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) December 12, 2019 I cannot imagine how so many people in England can have been quite so stupid Sorry, but it has to be said —
This exit poll is a triumph for Boris Johnson
The exit poll is predicting a Tory landslide, a majority of 86 seats. The United Kingdom will leave the EU on the 31 of January. (The exit poll does have a margin of error but it is inconceivable that it could possibly be this wrong.) This is a huge achievement by Boris Johnson. Earlier this year, the Tories came fifth in a national election with less than ten per cent of the vote—the European Elections. But Boris Johnson’s leadership has completely transformed the Tories’ fortunes. He has reunited the Leave vote behind the Tories while using fear of Jeremy Corbyn to keep most Tory Remainers on board. The exit poll
The polling that shows Corbyn is to blame for Labour’s decline
The reason Jeremy Corbyn is not preparing to lead the first majority Labour government since 2010 is Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is proving the falseness of the cliché that ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. Unless enough people are convinced of an opposition’s competence and decency it will not take power, even when all it has to do is beat the mendacious rabble that make up today’s Conservative party. Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition did not win a majority and could never win a majority because millions could not vote for the incompetent and indecent Jeremy Corbyn. It’s that simple. I am not just repeating anecdotal evidence from Labour MPs
I’m calling it: Boris is going to win this election
I am going to stick my neck out and say it’s going to be Boris by 58 seats. How do I reach that conclusion? Because the pollsters have a problem with estimating the Labour vote. And this time it is their turn to over-estimate it. In 2010 the final polls put Labour on between 27 and 29 per cent – against the 29.7 per cent which Gordon Brown actually achieved. In 2015 the last polls put Ed Miliband between 33 and 35 per cent – compared with the 31.2 per cent he actually achieved. All polls converged on predicting either a dead heat or a Tory lead of 1 per
‘Progressive’ Britain is no more if Jeremy Corbyn comes to power
At the outbreak of World War I, the Jewish Chronicle, which had been wary of conflict with Germany, threw its support behind the war effort in a leader proclaiming: ‘England has been all she could be to Jews, Jews will be all they can be to England.’ A banner reading the same and urging Jews to enlist, was hoist outside the newspaper’s London offices. The Jewish World published a full-page poster insisting ‘There must be no Jewish slackers’ and urging ‘young Jewish men’ to ‘do your duty to your faith and your country’. Naturalised British Jews urged Russian emigres to sign up, even though as foreign nationals they were initially
Jewish activists abused outside Corbyn’s eve of poll rally
Jeremy Corbyn held a small rally last night in east London, telling supporters to go and spread the message of ‘socialism, which is about hope’. Many British Jews will have woken up this morning feeling anything but hope. They have seen a Labour party led by a man who many consider to be a harbinger of left-wing anti-Semitism. A man who has found it hard to accept that there is even a problem within his own party. This is why almost half of British Jews have said they would consider leaving this country if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister on Friday. A truly appalling statistic. So how, then, might one expect some of the supporters of
Today is an exciting and nerve-wracking day for Brexiteers
It’s tense for us Brexiteers, isn’t it? We know that if the Tories don’t secure a Commons majority today then our country probably won’t end up leaving the EU at all. Almost certainly, an alliance of pro-Remain parties would put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. They would keep him there just long enough for Remain to win a low-turnout second referendum. Many Leave voters would boycott such a vote on the grounds of it being a stitch-up that offers a choice between actually staying in the EU and virtually staying in it, just without any political representation. So it is quite understandable that our nerves are frayed just now. But
Boris vs Corbyn: the key seats to watch on election night
Will Boris Johnson return to Downing Street on Friday? Or will it be prime minister Jeremy Corbyn? There are now only two days to go until election day. Here are the key seats to watch on Thursday night and Friday morning that will determine Labour and Tory fortunes: 10pm All eyes will be on the joint exit poll from the BBC, ITV and Sky. This is the moment when everything went wrong for Theresa May. Will Boris Johnson receive better news than his predecessor? 11pm Houghton & Sunderland South, which has always elected a Labour MP, is likely to be the first seat to declare. We’ll also get the result from
Magic Grandpa to Free Stuff: The A to Z of the 2019 general election
A is for Alliance. All across the country voting pacts and tactical deals are being fixed. These arrangements are helpful to cash-strapped smaller parties who can save money and present their thrift as a statesmanlike decision to ‘withdraw for the good of the country.’ For activists, voting pacts may be problematic. The deals rely heavily on opinion polls. And opinion polls are heavily influenced by false answers given by the kind of activists who arrange voting pacts. B is for Balance or ‘fair reporting’. The Beeb gets it right every time by interviewing a fixed number of Remainers and an identical number of Leavers who have switched to Remain. C
