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The Spectator

27 June 2020 Aus

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Ditch Paris

It was announced last week that the Minerals Council of Australia has ‘committed to cutting carbon emissions’ and has ‘thrown…

Australian Columnists

Australian Notes

Australian notes

Time to cancel cancel culture If I were ever asked, and I won’t be, I would urge the government to…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Brown on white guilt

I can’t sleep because of the guilt. I have not been able to do so since I was 16. That…

Features Australia

Into the Intersectional abyss

Thanks to identity politics, the mob can never be satisfied

Features Australia

Lawless Labor easy meat

Victoria’s Libs should be able to trounce the Andrews government. But will they?

Features Australia

Business/Robbery etc.

Fake news on super’s early access spend The attention-grabbing media headline ‘Revealed: Aussies spend early access super on gambling, beauty…

Features Australia

Australian arts

It’s all about the money honey.  When I awoke to see the front cover of the Weekend Australian’s Review Section…

Features Australia

Black-robed guardians

We are increasingly ruled by unelected and unaccountable judges

Features

Features

The controversy paradox

The less something is a problem, the more people talk about it

Features

Sorry state

The private school advantage has never been greater

Features

Defund the police

Forces have become too politicised to function

Notes on...

Football without fans

Football is back — but the fans aren’t. Covid means that clubs have to play their games behind closed doors.…

Features

Battle lines

The art of corona warfare

Features

Cop out

To save black lives, top brass must face reality

Features

The next Isis threat

A warning from the British trader who fought in Syria

Features

Empire states of mind

It is hard to find benign examples of imperialism

Features

Aid and abet

How should the money we send abroad be spent?

The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home Pubs in England would be allowed to reopen for table service from 4 July, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister,…

Leading article

Britain emerges, blinking

The Prime Minister’s announcement that pubs, restaurants and many other facilities will be able to re-open on 4 July amounts…

Diary

Diary

‘Pray for us St Sebastian that we may deserve to pass through this pestilence,’ reads the inscription on a 15th-century…

Barometer

Barometer

Voyage into history How did the Labour government respond to the arrival of the Empire Windrush on 22 June 1948?…

Ancient and modern

Assuming liability

When Covid-19 first appeared, its similarity to Sars made some assume it could not mount a pandemic; others that it…

Letters

Letters

Back to schools Sir: I share Lucy Kellaway’s enthusiasm for seeing school-life return and inequality gaps closed (‘A class apart’,…

Columnists

Columns

Will Covid change anything?

Earlier this month, a curious report caught my attention. Apparently there exists no rigorously established evidence that electric shock therapy,…

Columns

Why Biden might be better for Brexit Britain

At the best of times, US presidential elections require the British government to walk a tightrope. In 1992, a Tory…

Any other business

A VAT cut won’t boost spending if we don’t trust this government

Should Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut VAT as an emergency stimulus to the consumer economy? When Labour’s Alistair Darling made a…

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

‘White Lives Matter Burnley’ said the plane’s banner as it circled the club’s stadium just after the teams had ‘taken…

Columns

Political pandering won’t prevent Covid deaths

When the media have gone large on the conclusions of an overpoweringly tedious report, one of the biggest favours a…

Books

Australian Books

Next year in Jerusalem

Alex Ryvchin’s book couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. On an almost daily basis, voices opposed to the…

More from Books

Time immemorial

Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…

More from Books

Trapped in hell

On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…

Lead book review

Everyday exchanges

Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right

More from Books

One who got away

In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…

More from Books

The road to Weimar

Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…

More from Books

The lives of others

Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…

More from Books

Giving the game away

This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…

More from Books

A troubled past

A decade ago — eheu fugaces labuntur anni — Stuart Evers’s debut story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, was one…

More from Books

Brains and beauty

There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…

Arts

Culture Buff

Keith Urban using a Maton guitar, recording Gimme Shelter in Olympic Studios, London

We are critical of ourselves for not designing or manufacturing things any more. Well, there is a contrary example in…

More from Arts

New word order

I was going to write about Monument Valley, and I suppose I will eventually, but first I have to write…

More from Arts

Beige-washed Burton

The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…

Arts feature

Homage to Avalonia

Televising Glastonbury has changed the festival, and in turn transformed television, says Graeme Thomson

Exhibitions

Age of stuckism

I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…

Film

Nearly nul points

This comedy stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic duo whose biggest dream is to represent their country…

Dance

Eroticism and ecstasy

Wayne McGregor’s Morgen! and Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits are the first pieces of live dance — streamed…

Theatre

Chekhov by Zoom

The Beeb has released Simon Godwin’s Hamlet staged by the RSC in 2016. The director makes one major change and…

The Listener

Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways

Grade: A ‘Rough’ in terms of the mostly spoken vocals, but only ‘rowdy’ if you’re approaching your 80th birthday, which…

Television

Pure poison

The big mistake people make with Alan Bennett is to conflate him with his fellow Yorkshireman David Hockney. But whereas…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie Life

Everyone wants to get high and have sex while saving money. So says P. J. O’Rourke, the political satirist who…

Drink

Peaty giant, Tuscan flower

The virus is in retreat, the lock-down is crumbling, the sherbet dispensaries will shortly reopen and there is a second…

No sacred cows

Who watches the watchdog?

At the beginning of April, I became so frustrated by the supine coverage of the government’s response to the coronavirus…

Mind your language

Ventriloquising

‘What! No one told me,’ my husband shouted when I explained that the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford no longer existed…

The Wiki Man

Network failures

You can’t discuss racial inequality without using the N-word. And you can’t debate social justice without adding the C-word and…

Real life

Real life

‘Have you met the man who keeps his horses in this field?’ said one silver-haired lady to the other, as…

The turf

The turf

Royal Ascot it wasn’t: for the first time in her 68-year reign, thanks to Covid-19, the Queen was not there.…

Bridge

Bridge

I’m not a great fan of online bridge but I must admit, lockdown has provided a real opportunity for players…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary

Q. How can one politely stop predatory kissers? I am (or was) an affectionate and demonstrative person but I don’t…

Competition

Here comes the summer

In Competition No. 3154 you were invited to supply your own variations on the medieval round ‘Sumer is icumen in’.…

Crossword solution

Solution to 2460: Sleaze

The word is TACK. In the order of the headwords in Chambers, except for the fifth, their meanings are indicated…

Low life

Low life

Chatting on the café terrace with my new friends Didier and Emile made me aware that certain political ideas, which…

High life

High life

Gstaad I thought of Nietzsche while the mayhem and destruction of monuments was going on. Decadent bourgeois society was in…

Chess

Clutch fun

‘May the best scoring system win!’ is hardly a sentiment to stoke the passions. In the 2011 referendum, the alternative…

Crossword

2463: Tongue twister

The unclued lights are of a kind and are entered in the grid in a thematically appropriate manner. Across 11…

Chess puzzle

Puzzle no. 610

White to play. Grischuk–Aronian, Clutch Chess 2020. Only one rook move draws here. Which one? Answers should be emailed to…