The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Blimpish beginnings Protesters flew a ‘blimp’ depicting President Trump as a baby in central London. Why are balloons known as ‘blimps’? — One explanation is that the US military had two kinds of balloon: the Type A (rigid) and the Type B (limp). The use of the term ‘B class’ for balloons was not used till 1917. — In December 1915 Lt A.D. Cunningham was inspecting a balloon at the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) station at Capel-le-Ferne near Folkestone when he tapped it and it gave out a sound close to ‘blimp’. — The term has also been attributed to Horace Short, who is said to have coined it at RNAS Kingsnorth in February 1915, though why he chose the word is not clear.

The Spectator

The road not taken | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Handling Brexit was never going to be easy for Theresa May, given that the Tories have been fighting a civil war over Europe for at least a quarter of a century. But the past ten days have been so calamitous that there is a real possibility that her Chequers gambit — threatening a general election unless MPs support her watered-down version of Brexit — could lead to the fall of the government and the ceding of power to the most left-wing Labour administration in history. The mood in Parliament is now as anarchic as it was during the last days of the Callaghan government in 1979: the Maastricht crisis in 1992 looks rather tame by comparison.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home The administration of Theresa May, the Prime Minister, staggered on, as Conservative MPs exchanged angry words in the Commons, with supporters of Brexit and its enemies voting in turn against government bills. The government even failed to shorten the parliamentary session by five days to avoid trouble, instead provoking threats of defeat on the adjournment debate. An amendment to the Trade Bill seeking to impose a customs union on the government was defeated by 307 to 301, thanks to four Labour MPs who voted with the government. Guto Bebb resigned as minister for defence procurement to vote against the government on amendments that it accepted to the Customs Bill.

The Spectator

to 2365: Beds

From our UK edition

GARDEN (at 46 Across) reveals the theme. Paired solutions are ‘gardens’ in ‘countries’; 8/10, 32/1D, 33/28+29, 12/36, 37/34, 38/2, and 41 on its own.   First prize Helen Stone, Horfield, Bristol Runners-up Jenny Atkinson, Amersham, Bucks; Sara Macintosh, Darlington, Co.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 12 July 2018

From our UK edition

Marriage proposal Sir: Matthew Parris’s proposal that marriage be abolished, and civil partnerships installed in its place, is absurd (‘The term “marriage” needs to be untangled’, 7 July). This would not simplify the ambiguous connotations that the word ‘marriage’ has come to hold; rather, it would diminish its importance at a time when it is greatly needed. Committed and legally recognised relationships are a salient component of a functioning society: providing a stable environment in which to raise children, and serve as a welcome source of privacy in an era where such a concept is scarce.

The Spectator

Disruptor-in-chief

From our UK edition

It is appropriate that the 45th President of the United States has come to Britain this week on a working visit rather than the state visit that was originally intended by Theresa May. Donald Trump’s habit of expressing his frank and impolite thoughts through early morning tweets is undiplomatic and demeaning to his office. It is hard to imagine another leader of a western democracy taking the opportunity to undermine a Prime Minister shortly before arriving in Britain, as Trump did this week by describing the country as being ‘in turmoil’. He then appeared to take sides with Boris Johnson just after the former foreign secretary had resigned in protest at Mrs May’s attempt to unite the cabinet on a shared vision of Brexit.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary the day after David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary, both in reaction to a government plan for Brexit agreed by the cabinet after being held incommunicado at Chequers for 12 hours, their mobile phones confiscated. At Chequers, Mr Johnson was reported to have said: ‘Anyone defending the proposal we have just agreed will find it like trying to polish a turd.’ In his resignation letter he said that the Brexit ‘dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt’, adding: ‘We are truly headed for the status of a colony.’ Dominic Raab, the housing minister, replaced Mr Davis; Kit Malthouse replaced Mr Raab.

The Spectator

to 2364: Frolicsome Threesome

From our UK edition

WEIN (2D) suggests 21, 35 and 37 (German wines); WEIB suggests 10, 25 and 42 (Germanic female names); GESANG suggests 14, 27 and 31 (German-speaking composers of sung works). STRAUSS, highlighted, composed the waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang.   First prize P.G.

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 5 July 2018

From our UK edition

Trapped Twelve Thai boys and their football coach were found in a cave ten days after being trapped by rising water. It may be months before they can be brought to the surface. — The longest anyone has been trapped underground and then rescued is 69 days, after the San José mine in Chile collapsed in 2010. The 33 miners were rescued via a shaft drilled to 2,257ft below the surface. — Less fortunate was Floyd Collins, a caver trapped 55ft below ground in Crystal Cave, Kentucky, in January 1925. He survived 14 days, but died around three days before a rescue shaft reached him. Bouncy castles A four-year-old girl died after a bouncy castle on a Norfolk beach was reported to have exploded and blown her 30 feet into the air. How dangerous are bouncy castles?

The Spectator

Letters | 5 July 2018

From our UK edition

Technical issues Sir: Martin Vander Weyer’s supposition that car manufacturers are holding back investment due to Brexit seems to be wishful thinking (Any other business, 30 June). Having worked for years for one of the largest international vehicle manufacturers in both finance and export, I can assure him that the investment cycle is almost entirely to do with the product and almost not at all with political concerns. Car manufacturers, and particularly German ones, are faced with several serious issues which have nothing to do with Brexit. The diesel emissions manipulation issue and whether diesel engines are acceptable will impact on their decisions about petrol vs diesel engine lines, and the likely share of the market available to hybrid and electric cars.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 July 2018

From our UK edition

Home In an attempt to distract the nation from the toothache of Brexit, the government announced a £4.5 million scheme to encourage homosexuals to hold hands; a law would be considered to ban corrective therapy, which Penny Mordaunt, the Equalities Minister, said could involve rape. A man known as Nick, whose true name is withheld for legal reasons, who alleged there was a paedophile ring at Westminster, was charged with perverting the course of justice. Labour restored the whip to Jared O’Mara, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, from whom it had been suspended in October. Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, was interrupted during a statement to the Commons by the voice of Siri on his mobile phone.

The Spectator

To convey intelligence

From our UK edition

In the basement of The Spectator office, there is a 12-volume version of the paper in its original incarnation. That journal, started in 1711 by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, lasted barely two years. But collections of its essays could be found in almost every educated household for generations after. The first Spectator was seen as an example of something extraordinary: a journal full of humour, wit and civilised discussion at a time when Britain was being torn apart by partisanship and war. It was a freak of its time. On 6 July 1828, a Dundonian printer named Robert Rintoul relaunched The Spectator. He had the good sense to adopt Addison’s formula: ‘the pleasures of books, conversation and the other accidental diversions of life’.

The Spectator

to 2363: Case ending

From our UK edition

In Henry VI part II, Dick says to Cade: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’, thus potentially victimising Atticus Finch (3A), Perry Mason (20D) and Rumpole (30D).   First prize Mrs R. Bailey, Swindon Runners-up Mrs E.

The Spectator

The Spectator’s Mission

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   5 July 1828   The principal object of a Newspaper is to convey intelligence. It is proposed in The Spectator to give this, the first and most prominent place, to a report of all the leading occurrences of the week. In this department, the reader may always expect a summary account of every public proceeding, or transaction of interest, whether the scene may lie at home or abroad.

The Spectator

Out – and into the World

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   4 June 1975   At no time during the campaign have the opponents of our membership of the EEC been remotely as unbalanced, as hysterical or as deliberately personally insulting as those in the opposite camp. Naturally, as in any vigorously fought campaign, there have been some fibs and half-truths on both sides; and each partisan has looked eagerly at evidence which may have several possible interpretations in order to find material that will support his cause. But nothing on the anti-Market side has even begun to equal the tirade of personal insults, and the sickening appeal to fear, that has characterised everything the pro-Marketeers have done.

The Spectator

Sweeping the streets

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   6 September 1957 There are two ways of looking at sexual immorality. One is to regard all illicit intercourse as a crime; the other is to regard it as a sin but not as something which concerns the State unless it has obvious anti-social consequences. The first has been out of fashion since the 17th century, when adultery was still a capital offence, and in most civilised countries the second attitude now prevails. But in England for the last 80 years there has been one notable exception. Since the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 homosexual actions between consenting males have been criminal, even when they are performed in private.

The Spectator

Review: Mr Oscar Wilde’s poems

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   13 August 1881 The reading of this book fills us with alarm. It is evidently the work of a clever man, as well as of an educated man, but it is not only a book containing poems which ought never to have been conceived, still less published, but it is almost wholly without thoughts worthy of the name, entirely devoid of true passion, with very few vestiges even of genuine emotion, and constituted entirely out of sensuous images and pictures strung together often with so little true art that they remind one more of a number of totally different species of blossoms accumulated on the same stem, than of any cluster of natural flowers.

The Spectator

The duty of England and the American crisis

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   1 June 1861 The time has arrived when the national will on the American quarrel ought to be expressed. A party, numerous in Parliament and powerful in the press, is beginning to intrigue for the recognition of the South. They are aided by the fears of the cotton dealers, who dread an intermission of their supplies, by the anxiety of commercial men, who see their best market summarily closed, and by the abiding dislike of the aristocracy for the men and manners of the North. For the moment, their object is apparently to deprecate debate. They dare not as yet brave openly the prejudices of freemen, or advocate a cause based on antagonism to all that Englishmen hold dear.

The Spectator

The country gentleman and the Corn Laws

From our UK edition

190 years of The Spectator   14 January 1843   The country gentlemen of England never committed a greater blunder than when they passed the Corn Law of 1815. If they would but allow themselves to examine dispassionately their own objects, they could scarcely fail to discover this, and also the necessity of retreating as speedily as possible from the false position in which they then placed themselves. The country gentlemen are the most powerful body in England, and they are fond of their power and proud of it. But the passing of the Corn Law gave a rude shock to the opinion favourable to the power of the country gentlemen. It placed them in the invidious light of men who perverted the office of legislators into the means of passing a law to keep up rents.