The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A-level chaos, quarantine confusion and revolution

Home The government seemed to be taken strangely unaware by the frenzy of recrimination that came its way when results were announced from a system put in place as a substitute for A-levels, cancelled in March. Schools had been told to present teachers’ assessments, to which Ofqual applied an algorithm supposed to iron out anomalies. Almost 40 per cent of teachers’ assessments were downgraded, but even so the proportion of A and A* grades was higher than ever. Yet anomalies abounded, and schools that had performed less well in recent years saw bright pupils penalised; black children and those from poor backgrounds were said to be hard hit. While candidates lamented lost places at medical school, the government did nothing.

The Spectator

How scared are we still about Covid?

Pink and twisted Bernard Matthews, which stopped making Turkey Twizzlers in 2005 after criticism about unhealthy school dinners from Jamie Oliver, announced it is reintroducing the product. It will contain up to 70% turkey, compared with 34% originally. — Bernard Matthews came up with the idea of making twisted pieces of turkey, allegedly as an accidental by-product from a machine which stamped out imitation drumsticks from reconstituted turkey meat. — The name ‘Twizzler’ was also used by a Pennsylvania confectionary company, Y&S Candies, from 1929. The product, still sold in the US, is made from corn syrup, flour and sugar, with strawberry flavouring. Covid courage How brave have the British public been feeling over Covid-19 in the past week?

The Spectator

The Democrats’ complacency is Trump’s greatest weapon

There is a great mystery lying behind the 2020 US presidential election: how come a country of 350 million, which leads the world in academia, science and more, is unable to find two more inspiring candidates than Donald Trump and Joe Biden? Where is the voice of hope, or even just a reassuring voice of calmness and competence? Instead, come November, citizens of the most powerful nation on earth will be forced to choose between a narcissist and a man whose claim to his party’s candidature appears to be based on the principle of Buggins’ turn.

Thursday

The Spectator

Inflated exam grades let the government ignore its own failures

It was obvious that closing schools would hit the poorest hardest, inflicting permanent damage and deepening inequality. While many private schools and the best state schools maintained a full timetable of lessons throughout lockdown, a study by UCL in June found that 2.3 million pupils — one in five of the total — did virtually no schoolwork at all during the weeks of lockdown. The official response has been to turn a blind eye, and imagine that the damage can be covered up by simply awarding decent exam results. This year’s students are right to protest about the injustice of the system. From the moment the decision was taken to cancel exams, rather than carry out exams with social distancing, this year’s mess was guaranteed.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Employment falls, exam failures and a roundabout rigmarole

Home In fine weather with calm seas, 565 migrants in four days crossed the Channel in small craft. French officials said that 33 migrants in two boats that got into difficulty had been returned to Calais. In July more than 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, appointed Dan O’Mahoney as Britain’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander, tasked with somehow making such voyages ‘unviable’. Employment fell by 220,000 in the three months to June, the biggest quarterly fall since 2009, but unemployment remained at about 3.9 per cent, as millions stayed on the furlough scheme. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 9 August, total deaths from Covid-19 stood at 46,566, with a seven-day average of 53 deaths a day.

The Spectator

How hot does a ‘heatwave’ have to be?

Some like it hot Are heatwaves becoming a devalued currency? Last year the Met Office defined a heatwave as three consecutive days when maximum temperatures exceed the 90th percentile maximum temperature for mid-July. In London that means when the maximum exceeds 28˚C. For the rest of the south-east, as far west as Hampshire and as far north as Nottinghamshire, the threshold is 27˚C. For Dorset, Somerset, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire it is 26˚C, and everywhere else, including the West Country, most of Wales, the north of England and Scotland it is 25˚C. In places it will mean a heatwave occurring in 30 to 50 per cent of years. Journeys by dinghy How far do migrants have to travel in boats?

The Spectator

Letters: Will office workers ever want to return?

The future of offices Sir: I agree with much of Gerard Lyons’s article about the future of the capital (‘London in limbo’, 8 August), but there is more to consider. Before the virus, many organisations considered having staff working from home. However, there were always objections: people needed to be at meetings; the technology wasn’t good enough; questions over whether workers would work their contracted hours. With the onset of the virus, working from home was forced upon many, and has proved to work better than could ever have been expected. Will these workers ever want to come back to the office?

The Spectator

2467: Girl Talk solution

The unclued lights, 3/34, 12/31, 26/1A/33, 35/9, 39 and 18 PEAKE (an anagram of the red highlighted letters), are six of the actresses who appeared in the recent BBC production of Talking Heads.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Local lockdowns, busy beaches and an explosion in Beirut

Home Some 2.7 million people in Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire and West Yorkshire, where many Muslims live, were put under tighter restrictions on the eve of Eid al-Adha. Wedding receptions, gambling in casinos and eyebrow-threading continued to be banned when the government decided to ‘squeeze the brake pedal’ to control coronavirus, in the words of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. Aberdeen was put back into lockdown. People would have to wear masks in church from 8 August. The sudden actions came after new cases rose from a probable 2,800 to 4,200 a day, according to a survey by the Office for National Statistics, based on 116,026 swab tests collected over six weeks, which found 59 people with Covid-19.

The Spectator

Letters: How to slim down the nation

Peer review Sir: A neat solution to the levels of inactivity of some members of the House of Lords (‘Peer pressure’, 1 August) might be annual self-assessment against national minimum standards: record of attendance (including duration), contributions to debates, questions asked, involvement in legislative procedure, notable achievements, charitable works. Any peer falling short should be shown the ornate door, as should any caught popping in just to claim their £300.David EdwardsNorton sub Hamdon, Somerset Matrix of success Sir: It is agreed that the purpose of the Upper House is to employ its wisdom and experience to improve draft bills emanating from the Commons. The present occupants of the Lords hardly represent a font of all wisdom.

The Spectator

Economies run on confidence – the government mustn’t undermine it

Throughout the past few months the government has appeared to face an unenviable choice between saving lives and saving livelihoods. Nevertheless, a fortnight ago the path seemed clear. The numbers of Covid infections were falling, but the economic news was dire — hence Boris Johnson was engaged in a drive to reopen the economy as quickly as he could without prompting objections from his scientific advisers. Now things feel rather different. Economic figures from recent days have surprised on the upside: the CBI’s figures for retail sales in July show a sharp V-shaped recovery. Sales of cars and houses were running ahead of last year — during July at least. At the same time, though, the outlook on Covid-19 has darkened.

The Spectator

How busy have restaurants been this summer?

The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form. How did the shop get its name? Founder Richard Tompkins happened to be on holiday in the city of Argos, on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece, when he came up with the idea for it. The city, which dates back to around 1200 bc, offers a number of treasures of its own, including: — An ancient theatre, seating 20,000 people and dating back to the 3rd century bc — The Agora, developed in the 6th century bc — The arched municipal market, Argos’s own monument to retail, dating from 1889 Dying out The overall mortality rate in England and Wales was below average in June, in spite of high numbers of Covid deaths still being recorded.

Saturday

Friday

The Spectator

From Evgeny Lebedev to Philip Hammond – the 36 new peers

This afternoon, the government revealed the new peers who have been appointed to the House of Lords. New members of the Upper Chamber include Jo Johnson, Ian Botham, Evgeny Lebedev, Claire Fox and Charles Moore. Below is the full list of appointments: Political Peerages 2020 Nominations from the Leader of the Conservative Party 1. Lorraine Fullbrook – former Member of Parliament for South Ribble. 2. Sir Edward Udny-Lister – Chief Strategic Adviser to the Prime Minister and former Deputy Mayor of London. 3. Daniel Moylan – Chairman, Urban Design London and former member of Kensington and Chelsea Council. 4. Andrew Sharpe OBE – Chairman of the National Conservative Convention and ViceChair of Policy Forum. 5.

Thursday

The Spectator

How Boris should pick his peers

It is no credit to British democracy that we have the second largest legislative chamber in the world. The only one larger than the 792-strong House of Lords is the 2,980-member Chinese National People’s Congress. In the coming days the House of Lords will grow even bigger as the Prime Minister announces another batch of peerages. We can expect a bad-tempered reaction if, as expected, a slew of Brexit campaigners such as Ian Botham are included while former speaker John Bercow is left out. But no one should be too surprised. Prime ministers have always used their patronage to appoint likeminded peers, as have leaders of the opposition.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Second wave fears, cash for cyclists and a cat catches Covid

Home At a few hours’ notice, the government removed Spain from the list of countries from which it was possible to enter Britain without spending two weeks in quarantine. Among those caught by the regulations was Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, whose department regulates so-called ‘travel corridors’. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said: ‘In Europe, amongst some of our European friends, I’m afraid you are starting to see in some places the signs of a second wave of the pandemic.’ Oldham followed neighbouring Rochdale in imposing stricter regulations, prohibiting social visits to houses. A Siamese in southern England was found to be the first cat in Britain to have been infected with coronavirus.

The Spectator

Letters: What cycle helmets can tell us about face masks

Masking the truth Sir: Matthew Parris is right to laud the importance of embracing the scientific method (‘Why should opinion matter more than science?’, 25 July) to determine the efficacy of face masks. However, his proposed experiment contains a significant oversight — the human factor. That is, how the very wearing of a mask (or a conscious decision not to) may itself result in behaviours that alter transmission risk. Multiple studies into the benefit of wearing a bicycle helmet provide a useful reference. Those forced to wear one by law may do so incorrectly simply to avoid a penalty. Meanwhile they may also indulge in ‘risk compensation’ — more dangerous cycling because they feel safer.

The Spectator

If curiosity doesn’t kill the cat, what does?

The first nanny state The Prime Minister’s strategy on obesity has been labelled a work of the ‘nanny state’ — not least because Boris Johnson himself, during his campaign to become Conservative leader last year, promised to banish ‘the continuing creep of the nanny state’. The term can be traced to the 12 February 1965 edition of The Spectator, under a piece with the byline ‘Quoodle’ — a pseudonym used by the then editor Ian Macleod — about the government’s decision to prohibit cigarette advertising on commercial television. ‘Personally I regard the proof of a causal link between heavy cigarette-smoking and the incidence of lung cancer as overwhelming,’ he wrote.

Wednesday

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Why is the problem of working-class white boys not considered worth solving?

Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in trying to highlight the under-attainment of white working-class boys in higher education, particularly in chemistry, a frontline Stem subject. I was elected to the Inclusion and Diversity Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry to investigate this matter. Despite strong acknowledgment of the under-representation of ‘white working-class males’, any positive action remains painfully slow. It is abundantly clear that while white working-class males are the largest group of disadvantaged young people in this country, their cause is the least fashionable and the problem not considered worth solving.