The Spectator

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

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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.

Friday

The Spectator

Evan Gershkovich is free

From our US edition

An emotional scene unfolded at Joint Base Andrews last night, with the surprise return of a number of American hostages after a prisoner swap with Russia and Belarus. Among those returned were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, Radio Free Europe correspondent Alsu Kurmasheva and former US Marine Paul Whelan. The returned hostages were greeted by their families, along with President Biden and Vice President Harris. Harris exchanged what are technically her first remarks with the press since becoming the presumptive nominee: “This is an extraordinary day and I’m very thankful for our president.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Why marriage matters

Pretender to the crown Sir: Kate Andrews combines detail and analysis with a sprinkling of satire to devastating effect in her article on Kamala Harris (‘Trump’s new rival’, 27 July). The news anchor she describes in the first sentence (‘I’m struck just in your presence’) is more partisan than journalist, and would give Ofcom good reason to clutch its pearls if they popped up on GB News. Here is someone who identifies as, but isn’t actually, a news anchor. Rather like Harris, who identifies as a politician but hasn’t gone to the trouble of securing any actual votes. Perhaps this is why the Democrats have the overwhelming support of Hollywood, whose whole business is, after all, pretence.

The Spectator

2662: OOVIIXVII – Solution

Seven unclued lights, MOORE, CONNERY, LAZENBY, NIVEN, DALTON, BROSNAN, CRAIG, are the names of actors who played the eighth one, BOND, in films. The title, translated from Latin, reads ‘007 x 7’. First prize Louise Rhind-Tutt, Glossop, Derbyshire Runners-up A.

The Spectator

Which countries have doped the most at the Olympics?

Hole lot of history What was the original black hole? Although the term has been in use since the 1960s for a collapsed star from which no light can escape, its origins lie two centuries earlier with the Black Hole of Calcutta. In 1756 the East India Company was seeking to reinforce its fortifications at Fort William in the city. When the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, heard about it he raised an army of 50,000 men and, with the aid of 500 elephants, marched on Fort William. While most of the British fled to ships in the harbour, 146 were rounded up and imprisoned in a hole measuring 14ft by 18ft, in 40°C temperatures. Only 23, it was recorded, came out alive – although some now doubt that so many could have been fitted into such a space.

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves has proved that strikes pay

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were adamant that economic growth would be their first priority in government. It is hard to square that with the decisions the Chancellor has announced this week. The Chancellor claims to have discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances, yet she has created the largest part of that sum by deciding to spend £9.4 billion on inflation-busting pay settlements for public-sector workers without asking for reforms in return. This, it seems, is the first Reeves doctrine: pay now to avoid strikes later Junior doctors are to receive a rise of more than 20 per cent, spread over two years. But it is also the way that Reeves has justified the move that may well cause her trouble in the future.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Stabbings in Southport, a £22bn ‘black hole’ and Tory leadership nominations

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, noted that estimates had been ‘signed off by senior civil servant accounting officers’.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump spars on stage with black journalists in Chicago

From our US edition

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Donald Trump began at this afternoon’s National Association for Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago. ABC News’s Rachel Scott had asked why black voters should trust him in light of his prior attacks on black journalists. “First question, you don’t even say ‘hello, how are you?’” Trump continued. “Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible level.” Trump went on query his opponent Kamala Harris’s racial ethnicity when asked about her being a DEI hire. “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage.

Monday

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President Biden’s plan to overhaul SCOTUS

From our US edition

President Biden unveiled his outline for changes to the Supreme Court, which includes term limits for justices and a new code of ethics. He also called for a constitutional amendment saying former presidents do not have immunity from any federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing — a direct dig at the Court’s recent immunity ruling in Trump’s favor. The plan comes amid a series of landmark decisions by the Supreme Court that favored conservatives, such as the overturning of Chevron and rulings on abortion and affirmative action, that sparked Democrats to criticize the 6-3 conservative controlled-court for an alleged lack of impartiality.

Friday

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A very bad week for the Secret Service

From our US edition

The Secret Service’s worst week since John Hinckley Jr. failed to gun down President Ronald Reagan continued with some buggy problems just days after the organization’s embattled director announced plans to step down following bipartisan condemnation.Fresh off of failing to adequately protect President Donald Trump from a deranged gunman, the Secret Service failed to secure the Watergate Hotel where Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying and allowed a pro-Hamas organization to pour live maggots all over a room where he was alleged to be dining. “BON APPETIT!! MAGGOTS RELEASED ON THE CRIMINAL ZIONIST’S WAR TABLE!” the Palestinian Youth Movement posted on Instagram, along with a video of insects crawling all over the Watergate’s grounds.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: You can grow to hate Wagner

Disappearing England Sir: Rod Liddle’s reference to Labour’s intention to build 1.5 million new houses (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13 July), even though there is not a shortage, leads one to worry where they will be located. The green belt was introduced for London in 1938 and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 extended powers with local authorities for self-designation. In 1937, John Betjeman wrote for one of his BBC talks: ‘England is disappearing and there is growing up, where the trees used to be and where the hills commanded blue vistas, another world that does not seem to be anything to do with England at all. This new world lives in ill-shaped brick horrors, for which it has had to pay through the nose.

The Spectator

2661: Spectrum – solution

The unclued lights are French words or phrases which include a colour: 2, 10/32, 21A/7D, 21D, 28/8, 36/11, 37/8 and 38/15. Bleu at 8 does double duty, and ‘noir’ and ‘noire’ are the two forms. First prize Jeremiah Carter, Cambridge Runners-up Ian MacDonald, East Grinstead, W Sussex; C.R. Haigh, Hassocks, W.