The Spectator
14 August 2021 Aus
Zero-sum game
Why the government won’t talk about the real costs of decarbonisation
Australia
Mandy & the IPCC
Floods, hurricanes, disaster, disease, drought, rising sea levels: you name it, it’s all there in the latest doom-laden tome from…
Australian Columnists
Brown study
The Commonwealth government is at it again, doling out money for a fashionable cause and without any need being demonstrated,…
Latham’s law
Rupert, keep an eye on your bunny rabbit Obsessiveness is one of the most fascinating and under-reported aspects of human…
Australian Features
The National Cabinet is a disaster
The PM has created a presidential role for himself
Features
How the ‘Nixon shock’ reshaped our economy
Fifty years on, we’re still counting the cost of the ‘Nixon shock’
Cuomo, Trump and the secret of eternal political life
There are many in Donald Trump’s inner circle who have tried to read his mind these past four years, together…
Will Sizewell C see off the avocet?
There are many reasons why birds disappear — and why they return. The avocet, however, is probably the only one…
Liberté, égalité, vacciné: France’s Covid passport revolt is just beginning
France’s revolt against Covid passports is just beginning
In defence of net zero: yes, we can afford it
Ending emissions will cost less than tackling Covid
The true cost of net zero
Why the government won’t talk about the real costs of decarbonisation
The Week
The timeless appeal of Latin
The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the…
How many alpacas are there in Britain?
Woolly thinking There were protests in Whitehall to save Geronimo, an alpaca due to be put down after testing positive…
Letters: Why aren’t Italians fighting for their liberty?
Wage concern Sir: Martin Vander Weyer’s call for higher wages to end the shortage of British HGV drivers (‘Your country…
Portrait of the week: Cameron’s cash, A-grades abound and Tower Bridge won’t budge
Home With less frightening domestic data on the coronavirus pandemic to ponder, subjects such as the rivalry between Boris Johnson,…
Why shouldn’t we worship the NHS?
For obvious reasons, stocks in ex-editors of The Spectator are experiencing an all-time low. But my own complaint is with…
Working from home is a decision for businesses, not government
After seizing so much power during the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s government is having trouble working out where its remit now…
Columnists
What ministers won’t admit about A-levels
The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous…
Why vaccine passports are pointless
Despite having mocked app-happy Albion in my last column, I finally downloaded the NHS app. (Lest I seem a raging…
Will anyone publish my rabbit tale?
The literary sensation of the season is apparently a book called The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde. In brief, a…
The National Trust has lost the language of architecture
Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…
How to burst the grade inflation bubble
The Tories regard a return to rigorously marked exams as one of their big achievements in education. In 2010, the…
Why filling Santa’s sack will cost more this year
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey looks increasingly uncomfortable as inflation notches upwards from ‘nothing to worry about’ towards the…
Books
Hooray for Hollywood
Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood – and hates it.…
The poet with many lives
This is an ingenious and infuriating book about an ingenious and infuriating writer. I first encountered Fernando Pessoa in the…
Keeping yourself angry, the Hare way: We Travelled, by David Hare, reviewed
A character in David Hare’s Skylight claims she has at last found contentment by no longer opening newspapers or watching…
Oliver Cromwell: ruthless in battle – but nice to his men
One of the first retrospective accounts of Oliver Cromwell’s early career, Andrew Marvell’s ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from…
How we did the locomotion: A Brief History of Motion, by Tom Standage, reviewed
Audi will make no more fuel engines after 2035. So that’s the end of the Age of Combustion, signalled by…
The roots of conflict: The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak, reviewed
The Island of Missing Trees feels like a strange title until you realise how hard Elif Shafak makes trees work…
David Keenan, literary disruptor in chief
Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in…
Churchill as villain – but is this a character assassination too far?
Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts
Nazis and Nordics: the latest crime fiction reviewed
Social historians of the future may look back at the reading habits of this era and conclude that we were…
Borges: the man and the brand
‘The story that Jay Parini recounts in Borges and Me is untrue,’ a recent letter in the TLS claimed, ‘and…
More than one bad apple: the sorry demise of English cider
Can you imagine if, in the 20th century, wine producers in France had switched from a product made (almost) entirely…
It all started with Dracula
The title of the journalist Paul Kenyon’s second book on crazy leadership, Children of the Night, leaves the reader in…
The musical gravy train: Leaving The Building, by Eamonn Forde, reviewed
Musicians cast a long cultural shadow. Politicians may wield considerable power in their time, but although today’s young people are…
Arts
Aden Young
No one has any guarantee of seeing Sigrid Thornton in Lifespan of a Fact with the Sydney Theatre Company now…
A total mess: BBC2's The Watch reviewed
Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November…
The death of the Edinburgh Fringe
Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it
Sinatra, Bacon and a YouTube star: Edinburgh Fringe Festival round-up
Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…
Hugely unmemorable: Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever reviewed
Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless,…
The best Cold War thriller I've seen that I fully understand: The Courier reviewed
The Courier is a Cold War spy thriller and the prospect of a Cold War spy thriller always makes my…
Glorious: Bernardo Bellotto at the National Gallery reviewed
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
Why do I find sketch shows – even the better ones – so embarrassing and charmless?
On sketch shows, the wisdom once was that you needed a punchline. That is, a slightly hammy, summative sign-off to…
Life
Aussie Life
At time of writing, Australia is sixth on the Tokyo medal ladder and with only one day of competition left…
Aussie Language
In December the various dictionaries will announce their choice for the Word of the Year title. For a while I…
Dear Mary: How do I stop my husband repeating himself?
Q. A very old friend has rented a holiday house and invited my husband and me to stay. The property…
I took my wife to a Millwall match – and it didn’t go well
The fighting started just as Caroline turned right on to the Uxbridge Road after emerging from QPR’s stadium on Loftus…
The wine that made me change my mind about Valpolicella
There was a marvellous general of yesteryear called George Burns. He had a good war and a splendid peace. He…
Why cocktails are superior to wine
I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…
The dramatic evolution of ‘actor’
‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…
Why I’m thanking God, my immune system and garlic
‘Contact a GP if you’re worried about symptoms four weeks after having Covid.’ That was the NHS quote on the…
Spectator competition winners: Nursery rhymes for the pandemic
In Competition No. 3211 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme inspired by the pandemic. When I set this…
2519: Not so up-to-date
One clued solution can precede each unclued light (four of two words and one of three), all to be found…
2516: Such childish vocabulary - solution
The unclued lights are the nouns from the opening sentence of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. TAFFETA was…
From ferreter to animal-rights champion
I was sitting quite still at the typewriter when a plump mouse emerged from under the fridge and crossed the…
No. 666
White to play. Abdusattorov–Durarbayli, Sochi 2021. The endgame looks tricky, but White found a way to force a quick mate.…
The Olympics have become a celebration of human frailty
Coronis Embracing one’s vulnerability seems to have replaced the higher, faster, stronger ethos of the Olympics. The very frailty that…
Calculated risks
Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his…
Bridge | 14 August 2021
Most of us have lost a year and a bit, but hopefully we will get back to normal (bridgewise) fairly…