Lucky Jon | The Spectator

How the triple lock became political kryptonite

It was early December 1973 and I remember my grandmother asking, “What would you most like for Christmas?” I knew in an instant: “One day, perhaps, it would be good if the weekly rates of my basic state pension were to increase by the greatest of three candidate measures, namely (a) the year-on-year growth in the average weekly earnings index; (b) the year-on-year change in the consumer prices index for the month of September; or (c) a fixed nominal floor of 2.5 percent – with the determination being a simple maximum function rather than an average, and the resulting uplift taking effect from the first Monday of the following tax year in April. Or, failing that, an Etch A Sketch.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Help! My roommate won’t let me watch Harry Potter

Q. I am a lifelong fan of J.K. Rowling’s work. I have read and watched everything she’s written and am so looking forward to December when the new Harry Potter TV series drops. My problem is that I’ve moved into a flat with a close friend who disagrees strongly with J.K.’s views on gender and has pleaded with me to commit to not watching the new series on ethical grounds. I can neither lie to my flatmate nor bear to forfeit something that will bring me so much happiness that it would be no exaggeration to say it will give me a reason to live. – P.R., Edinburgh A. You can resolve this by taking a tip from guilty Greens, who buy carbon credits from bodies such as the nonprofit Atmosfair to offset the eco damage of flights they have taken.

Patrick West

Forget Piddington, here are the real micronations

While last month’s majority vote by the inhabitants of Piddington in Oxfordshire to seek independence from Britain was a stunt – albeit one making a serious point about plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers in an army base near the village – further afield, there are more concerted attempts to establish real micronations. Prominent among these is the self-proclaimed autonomous territory of Liberland, which lies on a stretch of land on the Danube separating Croatia and Serbia. Unlike microstates, such as Monaco or the Vatican City, which are recognized internationally, micronations aren’t. Perhaps the best-known of its type today is the majority Russian-speaking rogue nation of Transnistria, a sliver of land which broke away from Moldova in 1991.

Dot Wordsworth

Why does everybody now have a playbook?

Playbooks are proliferating. In the past few weeks I’ve come across the counter-hybrid playbook, the wartime playbook, the Coldplay playbook, the preppy-meets-sporty playbook, Hitler’s playbook and the nepo-baby playbook. I used to think that the rather thumbed metaphor of playbook referred to a book of words containing the script or libretto. After all, book of words or book of the words has often been used figuratively to mean “the rules.” In Money in the Bank (1942), P.G. Wodehouse has Dolly Molloy exclaim: “There’s nothing in the book of the words to prevent Mrs. Cork having the bozo pinched and stowed away in the cooler.” In the medieval theater the literal playbook was looked after by the garnement man, the props man.

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