2612: Grounded – solution
From our UK edition
The eight unclued lights are the names of flightless birds, past and present.
The Spectator
Wednesday
Is 2023 a bad year for forest fires in Europe?
From our UK edition
Boss pay Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, complained that FTSE 100 bosses aren’t paid enough, and suggested that the gap between UK bosses and US bosses needs to be closed if the London market is to prosper. How much are FTSE 100 bosses paid? – The median earnings in 2021 for a FTSE 100 boss was £3.41m and the mean £4.26m. Three were paid less than £1m, 57 between £1m and £4m, 35 between £4m and £10m and three more than £10m. Two changed jobs during the year and so aren’t included in the figures – But the best-paid FTSE chief executive wasn’t even in the FTSE 100. That was Frederic Vecchioli, CEO of FTSE 250 company Safestore, who earned £17.06m. The next best-paying companies were: Endeavour Mining (FTSE100) £16.
Letters: Labour’s shameful defence of Ulez
From our UK edition
Unfair Ulez Sir: I hope Ross Clark’s article (‘Highway robbery’, 22 July) will open people’s eyes to the unfair disadvantage Sadiq Khan has been imposing on those on lower and middle incomes in London. As a jobbing gardener who relies on the use of a van, I had just paid off the lease, with the intention of keeping the vehicle until I retired, when I became a victim of the first expansion of the Ulez zone in 2021. I live 200 metres within the boundary: driving that 200 metres in and out to go to work costs me £12.50 a day. Ulez is a regressive tax that falls particularly hard on the elderly and disabled, as there is no exemption for Blue Badge holders (Labour GLA members voted down a proposed amendment by the Conservative group to allow an exemption).
Wednesday
Coutts must be held to account over Nigel Farage
From our UK edition
When Nigel Farage said Coutts had closed his bank account and claimed political victimisation, many thought he was making it up. The BBC reported that Farage didn’t have enough of a cash balance to sustain an account in the King’s bank and many who oppose his politics suspected this was a TV talk-show host being provocative. But this week he produced a document that proved it was precisely as he claimed. The bank had decided that Farage’s views were ‘at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation’, so he was out. So what we have here is discrimination masked as ‘inclusivity’, bigotry dressed up as tolerance. The board of Coutts may well have been appalled by the Ukip project but the party got more than 3.5 million votes in the 2015 general election.
Coutts must be held to account over Nigel Farage
From our UK edition
When Nigel Farage said Coutts had closed his bank account and claimed political victimisation, many thought he was making it up. The BBC reported that Farage didn’t have enough of a cash balance to sustain an account in the King’s bank and many who oppose his politics suspected this was a TV talk-show host being provocative. But this week he produced a document that proved it was precisely as he claimed. The bank had decided that Farage’s views were ‘at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation’, so he was out. So what we have here is discrimination masked as ‘inclusivity’, bigotry dressed up as tolerance. The board of Coutts may well have been appalled by the Ukip project but the party got more than 3.5 million votes in the 2015 general election.
Portrait of the week: By-elections, dangerous dolphins and Djokovic’s £6,000 smashed racquet
From our UK edition
Home Ben Wallace said he would cease to be the Defence Secretary at the next cabinet reshuffle and would not stand again for parliament. The Conservatives endured three by-elections – at Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Selby and Ainsty and Somerton and Frome. The left-wing mayor of North of Tyne, Jamie Driscoll, resigned from the Labour party after a rival was selected to stand for the newly created mayoralty of the North East. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said he would not reverse the Conservative limit on claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children. On universities, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Our young people are being ripped off. They’re being saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt from bad degrees.
2611: On-board entertainment – solution
From our UK edition
Unclued lights were world CHESS champions. Current champion DING was to be highlighted.
Where have the world’s highest temperatures been recorded?
From our UK edition
Swing when you’re winning What are the biggest UK by-election swings? — The 1983 Bermondsey by-election saw a 11,756 Labour majority turned into a 9,319 majority for the Liberal party – a result widely attributed to the Labour candidate, Peter Tatchell, coming out as gay during the campaign. The Labour party under Michael Foot was also extremely unpopular – and had its then biggest defeat in a general election four months later. — The Clacton by-election of 2014 saw a 12,068 Conservative majority overturned into a Ukip majority of 12,404, with the Conservative share of the vote falling from 53% to 25%. However, it was unusual in that the Ukip candidate, Douglas Carswell, had been the sitting Conservative MP.
Changing in the changing rooms on International Women’s Day
From our UK edition
It’s trying to snow but the window’s open wide. My teacher has her hair in a towel and everyone’s a blur because she’s lost a contact lens. Hello Kate! How are you? Class was cancelled so she’s had a nice long shower and now a friend comes in saying Someone asked today have I thought about botox? I said ‘What’s wrong with looking my age? I wear my soul on my face’, but she made me think, you know? Surely there must be an easier way to tie shoelaces. Pole Dance 2 are waiting on the stairs againas I go down to the treadmill.
Wednesday
Portrait of the week: BBC presenter scandal, EasyJet cancellations and a baby boy for Boris
From our UK edition
Home The government pondered whether to accept pay-review bodies’ recommendations on rises in public sector salaries. ‘Delivering sound money is our number one focus,’ Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in his Mansion House speech. ‘That means taking responsible decisions on public finances, including public sector pay.’ Regular pay in the March to May period was 7.3 per cent higher than a year earlier, although it rose less than inflation. Unemployment rose from 3.8 per cent to 4 per cent; vacancies fell by 85,000 to 1,034,000. The average two-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.7 per cent. Jeremy Hunt confirmed that he was refused a bank account with Monzo last year on the grounds that he was a ‘politically exposed person’.
Rishi Sunak is right about illegal migration
From our UK edition
The Illegal Migration Bill is having a distorting effect on the Tory party. It has put Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith together on the side of liberal opinion – and Ken Clarke on the side of the Prime Minister. This week, May and Duncan Smith sought to stop the government from overturning a Lords amendment which would prevent the deportation of those claiming to be victims of people-trafficking. Rishi Sunak thinks that loopholes in the law have been exploited by people-traffickers. May and Duncan Smith disagree. It fell to Clarke, a fierce critic of the government since Brexit, to challenge the plan’s opponents to come up with a better way of addressing the illegal migration problem.
2610: 700 – solution
From our UK edition
Each of the unclued lights (with the pair at 15/26) includes D C C (= 700). First prize Rosamund Campbell, Woodstock, Oxon Runners-up J.
Who lifted the ban on trans women taking part in Miss Universe?
From our UK edition
Mx Universe A transgender woman was named ‘Miss Netherlands’, and will now compete in the Miss Universe contest. British TV viewers might be surprised to learn there are still such things as beauty pageants, given they disappeared from the main TV channels in the 1980s. They might be even more surprised to learn who was responsible for lifting the ban on transgender women taking part in Miss Universe. – The decision was made in 2012 by Donald Trump, who then owned the franchise for the competition, after a Canadian trans woman, Jenna Talackova, had been banned from taking part and her cause had been taken up by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
Letters: How to reform the NHS
From our UK edition
How to reform the NHS Sir: During the pandemic I and millions of others went out every week and clapped for the NHS (‘National health disservice’, 8 July). But if you’ve experienced it lately, it’s a dystopian nightmare. Appointments regularly cancelled, paperwork missing, 1950s administration. It appears the only thing being managed at the NHS is its decline. A working group of trusted business leaders should consider ‘best practice’ at excellent private and public hospitals in the UK and across Europe, and implement reform of the service immediately. The Tories don’t have the bottle or anyone with the talent to get this under way. All the reform talk is coming from Labour, and at the election this will cost the Tories dear.
Wednesday
Portrait of the week: Teachers strike, French riot and dire news for Diet Coke
From our UK edition
Home The Financial Conduct Authority questioned banks about savings rates lagging behind the rising cost of mortgages. Andrew Griffith, the City Minister, was also asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look into cases of bank customers who reported their accounts being closed because of their opinions on such things as LGBTQ+ policies. Petrol retailers were blamed by Harriett Baldwin, the chair of the Treasury Select Committee, for not passing on the benefit of a 5p cut in fuel duty. A group of 25 MPs, calling themselves the New Conservatives, published a plan to cut net migration from 606,000, last year’s figure, to 226,000, the figure for 2019. In June, 3,824 people crossed the Channel in small boats, the highest figure so far for the month.
Biden shouldn’t turn his back on Britain
From our UK edition
You can tell a lot about a president’s politics by his foreign visits. Joe Biden’s decision to skip King Charles’s coronation in favour of a fly-by visit to Belfast and three days in the Republic of Ireland gave an indication of his priorities. Biden presents himself at home as an Irish-American with a charmingly unserious hostility towards Britain: ‘The BBC?’ he told a reporter after his election victory in 2020. ‘I’m Irish!’ But it’s not all lighthearted. As President, Biden’s reflexive anti-Britishness seems to have coloured his foreign policy. He’s shown a striking reluctance to reciprocate Rishi Sunak’s attempts to refresh Britain’s credentials as America’s great ally. Part of this may be down to Biden’s own fuzziness.
2609: Hard work – solution
From our UK edition
The literary scholar F.S. Boas used the term Problem Plays (9D) to refer to a group of Shakespearean plays which seem to contain both comic and tragic elements: Measure for Measure (12/36), All’s Well That Ends Well (39/1) and Troilus and Cressida (21/22). First prize J.
Is it possible to live without a bank account?
From our UK edition
Of no account Nigel Farage claimed that his bank has told him it will be closing his accounts, without giving him a reason, although he suspects it is because of his political views. Is it possible to live without a bank account? – According to the Financial Conduct Authority, there are 1.3 million adults in Britain who are ‘unbanked’. – A third of them do not want to have a bank account, sometimes because they have got into trouble with debt in the past. – There are 7.45 million ‘basic’ bank accounts designed to offer essential functionality for handling payments, without offering credit and other services. Around the houses How is the volume of housing sales holding up across the UK?
Letters: Prigozhin is the model of upward mobility
From our UK edition
Prigozhin’s example Sir: Educationalists and policy advisers have long been concerned with identifying alternative routes of upward social mobility. The career of Yevgeny Prigozhin provides an illuminating example of precisely this (‘Crime and punishment’, 1 July). Instead of spending years swotting away at A-levels and business studies degrees, Yevgeny opted for hands-on commercial experience by running a hotdog stand in a big city. He was quick to recognise the value of physical fitness in the pursuit of ambition by engaging in regular training at a local gym. Networking was always high on his agenda, and he soon became close friends with an employee of the state intelligence agency who eventually became President of Russia.
Wednesday
Parents have a right to know what’s in sex education classes
From our UK edition
Rishi Sunak tends to shy away from social issues so it has been left to a backbencher, Miriam Cates, to introduce a Bill which would oblige schools to disclose to parents the materials which are being used in their children’s sex education classes. The Bill is necessary because the Conservative government has allowed sex education in many schools to be taken over by campaign groups with a radical agenda who wish to persuade children that it is wrong to think in a ‘heteronormative’ way. One popular schoolbook tells of a Cinderella-like figure who undergoes gender realignment overnight The scandals that have recently surrounded schools reveal the scale and severity of the problem.
