The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

This month in culture: December 2024

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Disney+, December 3 Of the making of Star Wars, there appears to be no end. This one, though, looks different. The characters are a group of children on an Amblin Entertainment-style adventure, a coming-of-age story as they try to make their way back home across the universe after something goes wrong on their home planet. The trailer gives strong Spielberg/E.T./Goonies vibes. Taking place around the same time as The Mandalorian, it rounds out its cast with Jude Law as a “new kind of Jedi,” according to the creators. — Zack Christenson Nightbitch In theaters December 6 Based on Rachel Yoder’s hit horror-comedy novel of the same title: Amy Adams stars as an artist turned stay-at-home mom who learns that domesticity contains multitudes.

culture
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The Spectator’s 2024 Holiday Gift Guide

Matt McDonald, managing editor As we grow older, the idea is that we become wiser. I’ve decided to buck that trend by making progressively dumber decisions that put me further from my goals of attaining professional success, home ownership, emotional stability and nirvana. The most recent of these is increasing the distances I’ve been running; I will be attempting a half-marathon back home on the south coast of England the week before Christmas, with a view to running my first marathon in Berlin next fall. It’s unclear why we as a species decided to adopt the practice of doing marathons a couple of millennia ago — the first man to do it did die at the end, after all.

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The Spectator

Which birds are doing best in Britain?

From our UK edition

The last straw Farmers are threatening to strike over the government’s changes to inheritance tax in what is being described as a first in Britain. Besides France, where farmers regularly protest, India witnessed a farmers’ strike in 2020, which was eventually settled after the government dropped proposed new laws. But one of the earliest farmers’ strikes was conducted by the Farmers’ Holiday Association in Iowa in 1932, by farmers protesting at consistently low prices for their products. The idea was that farmers would go on ‘holiday’, refusing to sell any of their produce. Few, however, joined, leading to pickets blocking rural roads with telegraph poles. One policeman was killed, but in an accidental discharge of his gun. The action died down after a few months.

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Letters: How to support the dying

From our UK edition

Life support Sir: If the Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill is passed into law we will have crossed the Rubicon. As the second reading vote on 29 November approaches, it is astonishing that we are hearing less debate than on the loss of the winter fuel payment. There should be the mother of all debates. The issues surrounding assisted dying are immensely complicated and the arguments for and against are powerful. On the one hand it may shorten and ease a dreadful death and on the other it may put pressure on the dying and be deficient in its application. However, the trite adage that hard cases make bad law has great weight, especially if the law is made too quickly and without the fullest informed consideration.

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves can still repair the damage done to farming

From our UK edition

The Chancellor of the Exchequer found time this week to edit her own page on the social media site LinkedIn. She had, it appeared, fallen into error by saying that she had worked as an economist for the Bank of Scotland. Her role had in fact been humbler. No one should be criticised for seeking to correct a mistake. There is no fault in acknowledging that your claims to economic authority were exaggerated, and no shame in embracing humility. Which is why Rachel Reeves should apologise again – without further delay – to Britain’s farmers. For the grotesque, unjust and vindictive tax assault she has launched on the nation’s food producers.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Rising inflation, electric car targets and a tax on flatulent livestock

From our UK edition

Home Thousands of farmers protested in Westminster against inheritance tax on farms. Tesco, Amazon, Greggs and 76 other chains belonging to the British Retail Consortium said that costs introduced by October’s Budget ‘will make job losses inevitable and higher prices a certainty’. The annual rate of inflation rose to 2.3 per cent from 1.7 a month earlier. The British economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, but shrank during September; in the second quarter it had grown by 0.5 per cent. Beth, the Queen’s Jack Russell, died. An additional 50,000 pensioners will live in relative poverty next year as a result of cuts to the winter fuel allowance, the government estimated.

Wednesday

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Laken Riley’s killer sentenced

Jose Ibarra, the “sick, twisted and evil coward” who was accused of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, was convicted on all counts and sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole, with an additional twenty-seven years tacked on.“She fought for her life in dignity, and to save herself from being brutally raped,” Riley’s mother said. Ibarra, who is reported to be a member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, “showed no regard for Laken and human life. We’re asking the same be done to him.”Riley’s high-profile murder inspired the Laken Riley Act, a bipartisan measure that “directly addresses one of the federal policy issues related to Laken Riley’s murder,” according to Congressman Mike Collins’s office.

Monday

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How Biden is preparing for a Trump presidency

President Joe Biden delighted Kyiv officials and war hawks — and infuriated the incoming Trump administration (and, separately, the Kremlin) — on Sunday by authorizing Ukraine to send long-range missiles into Russia. Ukraine had been begging for approval to conduct strikes deep into Russia with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) for years, only to receive the go-ahead in the final months of Biden’s lame-duck presidency. The decision is being reported as a response to Russia importing 10,000 North Korean troops a few weeks ago, but the timing feels curious.

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Friday

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Are Pennsylvania Democrats starting the steal?

“Dave McCormick won. Bob Casey lost. Dems can’t handle it. Don’t let them get away with this scheme…”I got this text a few hours ago, and before texting back, “Stop,” as I’ve done about a thousand times over the course of the last month, I tapped the Senate GOP’s link to learn Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic senator, “Punxsutawney Bob” Casey (so-called because of allegations he only comes out of hiding when it’s re-election time), is not going back into his hole quietly.The Associated Press declared Republican candidate Dave McCormick the winner many days ago, as he “was leading by more than 30,000 votes when AP called the race...

Thursday

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The case against assisted suicide

From our UK edition

Those in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill insist they’ve addressed critics’ principal concerns and that ‘stringent safeguards’ are in place. But it is impossible to see how this could be the case. If suicide is institutionalised as a form of medical treatment it is inevitable that vulnerable people will feel under pressure to opt for it, and inevitable that the bill will in time be amended and extended. In Canada, denying assisted suicide to people who are not terminally ill has been ruled to be discrimination Under the terms of the existing bill, a terminally ill person given less than six months to live will legally be able to take their own life if sanctioned by two independent doctors and a High Court judge.

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Portrait of the week: Justin Welby resigns, interest rates cut and Trump announces appointments

From our UK edition

Home Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury, after not reporting to the authorities what he knew in 2013 of the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth QC (who ran Christian summer camps in the 1970s and 1980s and died in 2018). An independent review by Keith Makin found last week that Smyth abused more than 100 young men and boys sexually and by beating. ‘When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow,’ Mr Welby said. Gary Lineker, who had presented Match of the Day since 1999, agreed to stand down at the end of the season. Sue Gray turned down the job as the Prime Minister’s envoy to the nations; the mysterious role was said to be hers after she was dropped in October as his chief of staff.

Wednesday

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All smiles for Trump and Biden at the White House

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were all smiles at the White House on Wednesday as the two met to discuss efforts to transition to a new presidential administration. The duo appeared in front of reporters this afternoon as Biden emphatically shook Trump’s hand and congratulated him on his victory before promising a “smooth transition.“We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated with what you need,” Biden said. “We’re going to get to talk about some of that today.”  “Thank you very much. Politics is tough and is in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today,” Trump replied. “I very much appreciate it.

Jamie McKendrick

Tibet

From our UK edition

I arrived in Lhasa by train in freezing weather. From what I’d heard, my father would be there. Outside the gaping entrance all was dark,snow falling quietly like owls’ feathers. In the bustling concourse, doubling as a market, just as I’d feared, my errant father was nowhere to be seen. I knew he was dead but that didn’t seem a proper excuse. I had in my pocket a bronze coin he’d given me from the reign of Tasciovanus, and his last letter telling me, while in Dublin, to visit and give his love to his old friend Joe Bewley ‘who ran a marvellous place on Grafton Street where they made jam and sold fine coffee and tea’. BEWLEY’S ORIENTAL CAFE, he’d scrawled in capitals.

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Who are the longest-serving Archbishops of Canterbury?

From our UK edition

Arch rivals Justin Welby served longer as Archbishop of Canterbury than any of his four immediate predecessors, but others have served far longer. The longest since the Reformation was Randall Davidson, who held the position between 1903 and 1928, when he retired aged 80 – becoming the first not to die in post. Before the reformation, several Archbishops served stints of nearly three decades, but none so long as Thomas Bourchier, who was Archbishop between 1454 and 1486. Another long-serving Archbishop was St Dunstan, who held the post between 959 and 988, surviving to the age of around 80 in spite of having been beaten, bound and thrown into a cesspit in his youth. Digital divide How buoyant is the market for jobs in the digital sector?

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Letters: How to argue with Trump voters

From our UK edition

Unhealthy debate Sir: Matthew Parris is absolutely right to say that the time has come for facing populists with honest argument (‘In defence of the liberal elite’, 9 November). This call would be all the more persuasive if it were not embedded within the rotten foundations of current lamentable public discourse. Honest argument presupposes the ability to engage with one’s opponents in terms that they would own and recognise: ‘steel-manning’ rather than erecting a flimsy straw man. What Mr Parris, and many others, fail to own is that the concerns of Trump voters, though unpalatably incarnated in Donald Trump himself, are in their essence not only legitimate but good.

Monday

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Trump’s White House… reloaded

President-elect Donald Trump is slowly revealing who will — and who will not — be a part of his second administration come 2025. As a reminder, last week Trump announced campaign co-manager Susie Wiles as his chief-of-staff.Over the weekend, Trump rebuffed Nikki Haley, who previously served as Trump’s UN ambassador, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s secretary of state. “I will not be inviting former ambassador Nikki Haley, or former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump administration, which is currently in formation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our country.

Friday

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Tracking the Trump transition

Donald Trump has successfully won his second term, which means it’s time for him and his allies to buckle down and fervently start hiring for the incoming administration. Prior to his election, Trump announced that his transition would be chaired by former head of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon and billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, with assists from Trump’s sons as well as former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.The president-elect made his first pick for his administration on Thursday, announcing that his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles would be his chief of staff. She will be the first ever woman to hold this key White House post.

Thursday

The Spectator

2676: ITOX – solution

From our UK edition

The unclued lights reveal phrases beginning (or, with 8, ending) with the numbers 1 to 10. The red and yellow squares reveal two members of LES SIX, the solution at 45 Across.