The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

The Oxbridge files: which schools get the most offers?

From our UK edition

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from various schools last year. We have combined the figures in this table below. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges now compete with Britain’s finest independent schools. Over the years, both universities have roughly doubled the proportion of pupils from state schools: it now stands at 60 per cent, up from 50 per cent in 2000. This is reflective of which schools get the best A-level results. Of the 100 schools below, 48 are independent, 23 are grammar, 19 are sixth-form colleges, 7 are comprehensives or academies and 3 are further education colleges.

The Spectator

The policing of lockdown is failing

From our UK edition

The scenes in Clapham Common have brutally exposed the problem with lockdown rules. People had gathered to mourn Sarah Everard and protest in defence of the right to walk the streets safely. The Metropolitan Police had been asked by the government to stop people going outside for anything other than a handful of allowed reasons: protest is not one of them. Given how many anti-lockdown protesters were arrested at Clapham Common earlier this year, the Met decided it could not be seen to pick and choose causes. Protesters were told it was 'unsafe' for them to be there due to Covid-19. Officers swooped. Chaos ensured. Footage from the protests showed a row of women being dragged away from the bandstand on the common, which has been filled with flowers for Ms Everard.

The Spectator

Letters: What happens if interest rates rise?

From our UK edition

Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to say that the UK has known barely any inflation for almost a generation misses a very painful point. It may be true for consumer prices. Low interest rates and quantitative easing, along with other ill-advised stimuli, have caused huge inflation over the past two decades in the single greatest expense throughout most working people’s lives: the cost of housing.

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Which TV interviews have attracted bigger audiences than Harry and Meghan’s?

From our UK edition

Good for the goose The government indicated that it will ban foie gras, out of animal welfare concerns. While it is often thought of as a French product, its origins have been traced back to Egypt in 2500 bc — thanks to a bas-relief at the Necropolis of Saqqara outside the ancient city of Memphis. The painting depicts workers holding geese around the necks and feeding them — although there is no great sign of force being used. Viewer discretion ITV reported an audience of 11 million for Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey. In the US 17 million were said to have watched. What are the previously most-viewed TV interviews (combined US and UK audiences)?

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Harry and Meghan’s interview, Piers Morgan’s resignation and Biden’s pets in the doghouse

From our UK edition

Home The world was agog, some in tears, some in synchronised toe-curling, as the Duchess of Sussex and her husband shared their sufferings with Oprah Winfrey. In America 17 million watched; in Britain 11 million. The Duchess spoke of Disney’s Little Mermaid; seeing it, she had exclaimed: ‘Oh my God she falls in love with the prince and because of that she loses her voice.’ She said that three days before her wedding at Windsor, she had been married ‘in our backyard’, with just three of them, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. She said she had considered suicide and that the royal family had taken her passport, keys and driving licence.

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What did Spectator writers really get up to at school?

From our UK edition

Rod Liddle If you leave a Bunsen burner on for about ten minutes, then quickly put the rubber pipe over a water tap and turn it on full, you get a small explosion and a scalding stream of water to be directed at a boy called Harris. Similarly, if you attach crocodile clips to Harris’s jacket and then wire it up to a power source, it makes him jump about a lot. I loved physics lessons. Jeremy Clarke Snow in the playground. The tall caped figure of the headmaster appeared on a short outside staircase — a rare balcony appearance of a benign, reclusive demigod. One long-distance snowball among the flying hundreds, arcing higher than the rest, travelling through the air in slow time, apparently laser guided, is fixed in the memory of all who saw it.

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Which instrument should I play?

From our UK edition

Thinking about taking up a musical instrument, but unsure where to start? Whether you have amazing musical abilities or not one iota, try our handy quiz to find out what’s right for you, from tissue paper and comb to saxophone.

The Spectator

School portraits: a snapshot of four notable schools

From our UK edition

St Edward’s School, Oxford St Edward’s School has featured in these pages before, because of its North Wall performing arts centre which attracts (in ‘normal’ times) more than 20,000 public visitors a year to its exhibitions and performances. St Edward’s sets great store by being part of Oxford as a whole. ‘Beyond Teddies’ is the school’s community outreach programme, encompassing a community farm on school grounds where young people with learning disabilities and autism explore basic outdoor skills, marshalling the Oxford Half Marathon and visiting local care homes. Academically, the co-ed boarding and day school also thinks outside the box, with its pioneering ‘Pathways and Perspectives’ courses.

Thursday

The Spectator

The Sturgeon case exposes the fatal flaw in Scottish devolution

From our UK edition

The campaign for a Scottish parliament was rooted in the notion of a ‘democratic deficit’. Scotland kept voting Labour but the UK kept getting Conservative governments. Devolution, so the logic ran, would give Scotland a more responsive government. Two decades on, a new democratic deficit is emerging: the chasm between the minimum accountability demanded by the parliament and the maximum Nicola Sturgeon’s government is prepared to give. A new establishment has taken root in Edinburgh, more powerful and less accountable than the old one. The Alex Salmond inquiry, which began as a recondite tale about a failed attempt by Sturgeon’s government to probe sexual misconduct claims against the former Scottish National party leader, has narrowed to three stark questions.

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Letters: The key to Scotland’s future

From our UK edition

The key to the Union Sir: ‘Love-bombing’ the Scottish electorate with supplemental spending in devolved areas (‘The break-up’, 27 February) is unlikely to prove a decisive tactic in the ongoing battle over Scottish independence. It will never be enough, and the average voter will not distinguish Westminster spend from Holyrood’s. Neither should opposition to an independence referendum be the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’s primary policy in the upcoming Holyrood election. Falling into the SNP trap of focusing on this issue allows the party to pursue its agenda of confected grievance and division. Secession is the SNP’s preferred battleground, not least because it permits deflection of their record in government.

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Which countries still haven’t had a single case of Covid?

From our UK edition

French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for corruption and ‘influence peddling’ after seeking to bribe a judge. Some other French leaders who have been convicted in criminal courts:— Jacques Chirac got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for setting up fake jobs to claim public funds for political purposes.— Christine Lagarde was convicted in 2016 of making payouts to a businessman while she was finance minister in 2008. She was not punished and went on to be appointed head of the European Central Bank.— In 2020 former PM François Fillon was given a five-year sentence, three suspended, for paying his wife for a job she never did.

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Portrait of the week: A Covid Budget, a Cotswold meteor and Angelina Jolie sells Churchill’s painting

From our UK edition

Home First-dose coronavirus vaccinations totalled more than 20 million. A study suggested that in the over-eighties, a single dose of either the Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was more than 80 per cent effective at preventing hospitalisation. Hospital admissions of 8,452 in the week ending 27 February were 22 per cent down on the week before that. At dawn on 28 February, total UK deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus) had stood at 122,705, including 2,340 in the past week, down by 32.3 per cent on the week before that. Six people with the Brazilian variant of coronavirus were detected in Britain, but one could not be traced. In the Budget, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said borrowing would rise to a peak of 93 per cent of GDP.

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2493: Opposites – solution

From our UK edition

‘I WANT TO BE ALONE’ (1A) and ‘COME UP AND SEE ME SOMETIME’ (49/27) were supposedly said by Greta GARBO (17A) and Mae WEST (45) respectively. Garbo was born in STOCKHOLM (13) and West died in LOS ANGELES (10/29). Garbo starred in MATA HARI (23/38) and West in I’M NO ANGEL (19). GARBO and WEST were to be shaded. First prize A.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Immunity passports are nothing to fear

From our UK edition

Nothing to fear Sir: Many of us await the day when we can travel abroad for much-anticipated holidays — but surely there is a distinction between immunisation passports and Tony Blair-type IDs (‘Papers, please’, 13 February)? If a country requires you to be immunised to travel there in order to protect its citizens against Covid, then I would be happy to have that ‘passport’ requirement. It is quite different from carrying ID with you in your own country. Let’s face it, the danger from Covid will fade in time, and the ‘passport’ requirement along with it. After all we happily travel with a passport in our pockets to show who we are when we go abroad. Didn’t people have the same worries when passports were introduced?

The Spectator

The creeping criminalisation of causing offence

From our UK edition

At a time when resources are scarce, the Merseyside Constabulary must have thought long and hard about its recent advertising campaign: a stern message to the people of the Wirral. ‘Being offensive,’ it declared, ‘is an offence.’ The slogan was put on a van along with text urging the public to inform on transgressors. Four officers posed beside it for a photograph, as if standing ready to enforce its orders. The police only recognised their error after a public outcry. ‘We would like to clarify,’ said Superintendent Martin Earl, ‘that “being offensive” is not in itself an offence.’ On its own, the incident is merely an embarrassment, but it represents a worrying general trend.

The Spectator

Which Covid vaccine is really the most effective?

From our UK edition

State of the art Graffiti on Edvard Munch’s first version of ‘The Scream’ was revealed to be the work of the artist himself. There is a tradition of artists damaging their own work: — In 2018, a Banksy, ‘Girl With Balloon’, was partially shredded moments after being sold for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s by a device fixed inside the frame. — In 1920, Dadaist Francis Picabia arranged for his friend André Breton to rub out his chalk drawing, ‘Riz au Nez’, shortly after it went on display in Paris. — In 1960, ‘Homage to New York’, a sculpture by Jean Tinguely, auto-combusted after going on display in the city’s Museum of Modern Art.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A lockdown exit plan, Duke of Edinburgh in hospital and Texas in deep freeze

From our UK edition

Home The much-anticipated decriminalisation of two consenting people meeting over coffee on a park bench was declared for 8 March under a loosening of coronavirus restrictions announced by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. On that day all schools in England will open. No earlier than 29 March, groups of six would be able to meet outdoors, including in private gardens, and tennis courts would reopen. No earlier than 12 April, all shops, hairdressers and libraries would open, and pubs and restaurants could serve customers outdoors. No earlier than 17 May, groups of six could meet indoors and foreign travel would be allowed. No earlier than the summer solstice, social meetings would be legalised, even wedding receptions.

Thursday