The Spectator

Monday

The Spectator

This month in culture: September 2024

From our US edition

Slow Horses, season 4 Apple TV+, September 4 Apple TV+’s adaptations of Mick Herron’s excellent espionage novels, led by Gary Oldman on magnificent form as the belching, flatulent, brilliant Jackson Lamb, have quietly become the streaming service’s MVP, and their strong showing in this year’s Emmy nominations has reinforced the company’s continued faith in the unmissable series. This fourth installment, based on Herron’s novel Spook Street, guest stars the ever-excellent Hugo Weaving as a mysterious interloper with a close personal connection to Jack Lowden’s bratty Bond-in-training River Cartwright. Expect the usual mixture of big laughs, shocking twists and high-octane action scenes.

Culture

Friday

The Spectator

Kamala unleashes radical economic agenda

From our US edition

The long wait for Vice President Kamala Harris’s policy platform is over... well, at least on the economic front. Harris released her economic plan on Friday after weeks of running at the top of the ticket for the Democratic Party. The rollout, however, was less than stellar, as Harris proposed a mix of Soviet-style price controls with more popular policies pilfered from former president Donald Trump’s speeches and policy platforms.Harris said in the past week that she would end taxes on tips for service workers, which Trump promised back in June to do. The plan also runs counter to policies the Biden-Harris administration implemented that empowered the IRS to go after serviceworkers’ tips. Today, reports said Harris also intended to increase the child tax credit to $6,000.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Britain doesn’t have a ‘two-tier’ policing problem

Less is more Sir: While I wholeheartedly agree with Toby Young’s observation that ‘more censorship would make things worse, not better’ (No sacred cows, 10 August), I’m confused by his remedy – ‘more and better speech’. First, how does one decide what better even means, without it becoming a form of censorship? Second, and perhaps more worryingly, it feels like something Stalin might appreciate. ‘Quantity has a quality of its own,’ he once said. In their different ways, both incessant social media and weekly magazines rather disprove that.

The Spectator

How do Britons get their news?

SS-GB The car company Jaguar said it won’t make any new cars for a year as it re-invents itself as an electric-only car company. For a long time the automatic choice of stockbrokers in the ‘gin and Jag belt’, the company had beginnings that were less luxurious. It was founded in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company to make sidecars for motorbikes. It produced its first car, a two-seat open tourer, in 1935, by which time the company was known as SS Cars. Remarkably, it retained this name almost entirely throughout the second world war until, to escape associations with the Nazis, it was renamed Jaguar – a brand name it had previously used on sidecars. Info wars Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson wants children to be taught how to spot misinformation online.

The Spectator

2664: First name terms – solution

The unclued lights can be sorted into four trios of forenames in a reducing anagram chain: MONICA, NAOMI, MONA (4,31): DECLAN, LANCE, NEAL (12,24,36): SINEAD, DIANE, ENID (33,15,34) and ALISON, SONIA, SIAN (42,13). First prize E.C.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: riot justice, Olympic success and Ukraine’s Russian advance

Home Riots subsided after 7 August, a night when many were expected but only empty streets or demonstrations against riots eventuated. By 12 August there had been 975 arrests and 546 charges in 36 of the 43 police force areas in England and Wales. Rioters could be released from jail after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, as part of the early release scheme to ease prison overcrowding, Downing Street said. Ricky Jones, a councillor for Dartford, now suspended from the Labour party, was remanded in custody after being charged with encouraging violent disorder in Walthamstow.

The Spectator

What today’s A-level results reveal about boys

In her first speech as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves made much of being the first woman to hold that position. ‘To every young woman and girl,’ she said, ‘let today show that there should be no ceilings on your ambitions.’ Britain has already had three female prime ministers, two female foreign secretaries and six female home secretaries – so what makes Reeves think that girls and young women have low ambitions? This week’s A-level results and accompanying university offers will show that it’s the boys she should be more worried about. For every 100 girls who secure a university place this week, about 75 boys will do the same For every 100 girls who secure a university place this week, about 75 boys will do the same. Why should that be?

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Squad will fight another day

From our US edition

The 2024 primary season is slowly coming to a close — and last night’s marquee election saw a rare big win for the left-wing Squad in the House of Representatives: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar vanquished an underfunded opponent in the Democratic primary to avoid the fates of Congressmen Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.Following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the pro-Israel community was galvanized to challenge some of the most openly anti-Israel members of Congress. It successfully trained its fire on Bush and Bowman, who both carried major liabilities unrelated to foreign policy.

Rebecca Farmer

Ghost train

For G.D.M. To walk around Dreamland and not take the rides: not much of a plan but the man’s face changed all that, took me back to a candy floss summer when I learnt to spin sugar from a boy who looked the same as this guy who stood by the sign ready to start the train. He was the boy who lived in the caravan and sprinkled candy sugar on his Weetabix because he liked to see milk turn pink. I watched him practise his three-card trick. And here he was, older but still his voice when he said because we were only two in the queue he’d make the train go slower. He pressed the button and the doors swung. With a scream we jerked away and towards ourselves in a gyration of mirrors and ghouls.

Monday

The Spectator

Kamala cribs Trump’s policy platform

From our US edition

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to unveil her policy platform this week after criticism that she has failed to say what she would actually do as president in the weeks since becoming the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.The process does not appear to be going well. Harris said her platform will “be focused on the economy and what we need to do to bring down costs,” which is a bit puzzling as she is the number two executive in the Biden administration, which has repeatedly assured us that “Bidenomics” is working to heal the economy post-Covid. Harris will face this conundrum with all of the policies she puts forward; why hasn’t she done it in the past four years? Will she blame a divided Congress? President Joe Biden?

Friday

The Spectator

Kamala rebrands as the ‘joy’ candidate

From our US edition

Vice President Kamala Harris is almost three weeks into her presidential campaign and not only has she failed to hold an unscripted press conference or sit for a media interview, she also has zero policy positions on her campaign website. Democratic strategists have repeatedly assured me that she will adopt whatever platform comes out of the Democratic National Convention, which certainly won’t help the perception that she is a manufactured candidate willing to do whatever it takes to seize power, but I digress. The clear indication we are getting from the early stages of the Harris-Walz campaign is that it is all about “vibes” and the idea that Harris is selling “joy.

Thursday

The Spectator

Who is your favourite character in children’s literature?

Rod Liddle Rabbits, always rabbits. I remember at age 13 forcing my poor parents to trudge despondently across hilly downland on the borders between Berkshire and Hampshire, with me jubilantly pointing out stuff like: ‘Look, it’s the combe where Bigwig met the fox!’ and ‘I think this could be the Efrafa warren!’ For a while, Watership Down jostled uneasily with the grown-up stuff I was just beginning to enjoy – Jack Kerouac, James Thurber, Ray Bradbury – but it still held a big claim on me and does today. Better than On the Road, isn’t it? Watership Down also took me back from the awkwardness of puberty to the safety zone of post-toddlerdom and, of course, Brer Rabbit.

The Spectator

The inherent unfairness of the Olympics

The Olympics can hardly fail to be the greatest show on Earth. For the last two weeks, the world has been transfixed by sports which attract little interest at any other time. From beach volleyball to BMX bike racing to obscure forms of wrestling – all, briefly, seem to be vitally important, such is the prestige of winning a gold medal. Yet at the same time there is something rotten about the modern Games. Their pretension to moral virtue is too often at odds with reality. They impose such a burden on their host cities that only a few countries in the world are capable of staging them. The 2024 and 2028 Games were apportioned between the only two cities, Paris and Los Angeles, left standing after others, including Boston, Budapest and Rome, withdrew their bids.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: riots and Russia’s prisoner swap

Home A week of riots, with violence against the police, threats to Muslims, burning of vehicles and looting (Greggs, Shoezone, Sainsbury’s Local) broke out in Liverpool, Sunderland, London, Hartlepool, Manchester, Hull, Aldershot, Stoke-on-Trent, Bristol, Bolton, Tamworth, Portsmouth, Weymouth, Leeds, Rotherham, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Blackpool, Plymouth and Belfast. The Northern Ireland Assembly was recalled. Rioters attacked hotels where asylum-seekers were living. They threw fencing, beer kegs, glass bottles and furniture at police, wounding scores. Activity was coordinated on social media. The anger of most rioters was directed against Muslims in general and hotels housing asylum-seekers. ‘Save our children’ was one of the chants.

The Spectator

How long have we spent failing to upgrade the A303 past Stonehenge?

Deal or no deal Have public sector workers had a worse deal in recent years than private sector ones?  – Between 2007 and last year mean public sector pay declined by 0.9% in real terms, while mean private sector pay rose by 4%. However, for most of that time public sector workers were ahead of private sector ones. It was only after high inflation took hold in 2022 that public sector workers fell behind. – Public sector workers at the lower end of the pay scale have done relatively much better. Those at the 25th income percentile have seen incomes increase by 16% in real terms since 2007. Those at the 75th percentile have seen incomes fall by 8% in real terms. Men’s mean income fell by 11% in real terms, women’s rose by 3%. – Since 2010, nurses (-6.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Another ‘Squad’ member axed

From our US edition

Missouri trims Bush Talk about Squad goals: another of the most progressive members of Congress lost her Democratic primary last night, as Cori Bush was beaten by Wesley Bell in the race for Missouri’s 1st district.Bush first won her seat after playing a prominent role in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the post-George Floyd protests in St. Louis — with one local particularly pleased to see the back of her.“Bye bye Cori Bush,” tweeted Mark McCloskey, co-star of the infamous viral gun-toting photo with his wife Patricia, taken as they faced down the Bush-led protest outside their house. “You may have torn down my gate, but the people of St. Louis tore down your career. And I ‘spat on your name.

Adrian Buckner

well met last night

Two tables pushed together, the beer coming in timely and convivial rounds. A song, a chorus joined and hilarious failures at games we played. And then you plucked from the air an offence in a foreign theatre of war and I caught in your group-beguiling tone, the note of the Commissar prepared to burn a village, its music halls and fields of play.

The Spectator

Letters: you can have a ‘good’ divorce

Splitting the difference Sir: Hannah Moore’s article ‘Split personalities’ (27 July) is brutal. ‘There’s no such thing as a kind divorce,’ she writes. Ms Moore cites Amicable, the company I co-founded after my own long, painful divorce, as promoting the impossible idea of a ‘successful divorce’. Unless you have been divorced, it is hard to understand the pain and soul-searching that ending a marriage entails. Emotionally, psychologically and financially, it tears you apart. Divorce can reduce unhappiness and remove unbearable pressure from families. In broken relationships, the only thing worse than breaking up can be staying together, especially for the children. Do you really want to role-model ‘put up or shut up’ to your kids?

Monday

The Spectator

Doug Emhoff knocked up nanny during affair

From our US edition

Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, admitted this Saturday to cheating on his first wife following an explosive report that he once got their nanny pregnant. “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,” Emhoff said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN. The report indicates that more than a decade ago Second Gentleman Emhoff cheated on his then-wife with a blonde nanny, Najen Naylor, who taught at the Willows, a Californian private school attended by his two children.