Society

Linden Kemkaran

One shark attack shouldn’t put you off Tobago

Last week, the tiny Caribbean island of Tobago was left reeling after a British tourist staying there was attacked by a shark. Sixty-four-year-old Peter Smith from Hertfordshire was left with serious injuries to his left arm and leg, puncture wounds to his abdomen and injuries to his right hand after the attack. He is currently being treated at the island’s Scarborough General Hospital, where he is in a stable condition. The shark which bit him, believed to be a ten-foot long bull shark, has not yet been spotted or caught. Hotel staff, tour guides and boat owners will now be asking themselves if they could have done anything more to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The parable of Blackpool’s potholes

I read the news today, oh boy. Four thousand holes in Blackpool, Lancashire. Well, in fact, not quite as many as 4,000. The number of holes in the Lancashire town that the Beatles didn’t sing about was a very precise 2,628 – or, translated into another scale, just over half an Albert Hall’s worth. That’s how many potholes Blackpool Council has filled in over the last year alone.   In a world where every other bulletin is of swirling climate catastrophe, economic precarity, hot wars, riots, migrant drownings, gusts of online hate and all the jollity of the day-to-day news cycle, this local council has been getting on, patiently and

Andrew Tettenborn

Do we need a Sikh court?

Last week in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, nearly 50 prominent Sikhs gathered to mark the formation of the world’s first specifically Sikh court. When the body opens for business on 1 June, its members will be available essentially to do two things. They can provide what the lawyers call Alternative Dispute Resolution, helping to settle family and community arguments. In addition, on request they will act as arbitrators in property or business disputes, with the power to give determinations which will be legally binding. Apart from noting the irony that the governing body of Lincoln’s Inn – which last year ostentatiously distanced itself from religion by abolishing its Christian grace before meals – is now welcoming with

Niall Gooch

Count Binface just isn’t funny

On British general election nights, I like to watch Dish and Dishonesty, the first episode of the third series of Blackadder. It pokes some gentle fun at the conventions of election night TV, including the tradition of ‘silly’ candidates. In the episode, Ivor ‘Jest Ye Not, Madam’ Biggun of the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid party is among the challengers to replace the late Sir Talbot Buxomly. It all feels very tired. Exhausted, even Mr Biggun – whose policies of compulsory asparagus for breakfast and free corsets for the under-fives will doubtless be in the next Lib Dem manifesto – is an unsubtle parody of the Monster Raving

Sunday

Angus Hanton

How America plunders Britain’s tech economy

The UK government tells a confident story about Britain’s tech business acumen. In one 2023 example, a press release from Rishi Sunak invited investment in the tech sector, calling the UK an ‘island of innovation’. In it, he explained that the UK corporation tax rate was the lowest in the G7 and that the UK capital allowance for investors was ‘one of the most generous’ in the OECD. Even better, the UK Treasury offered ‘full-expensing for qualifying business investments in more plant and machinery for three years – a tax cut worth £27 billion’. This is generous, and notably so when in 2023 the UK spent more than £100 billion

Peter Elson

Liverpool is trashing its maritime history

Three subjects are branded onto the Liverpool psyche: football, music and seafaring. While the first two remain in rude health, maritime matters have long taken a dive in the city – even though shipping is the very reason Liverpool became the second city of the British Empire. Instead of preserving Liverpool’s seafaring history, National Museums Liverpool (NML), which is responsible for the city’s historic port, has instead decided to pursue the fashionable obsession with ever louder apologies for the city’s part in the transatlantic slave trade. The biggest victim of the NML’s seemingly unstoppable emotional self-flagellation on our behalf has been its decision to scrap De Wadden, a 107-year-old schooner dubbed

David Abulafia

Trinity College Cambridge has rushed to judgement on Captain Cook

Cambridge has made a mistake in returning to the tribe that made them some spears collected by Captain Cook’s men in 1770. It is always dispiriting to write something and then discover that no one with the power to act has paid any attention. Last year, I complained on Coffee House that Trinity College, Cambridge and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology were about to make an ill-conceived mistake by repatriating these spears. It seems no one was listening. The truth is that these spears – which were presented to Trinity in 1771 – would not have survived had they not been kept safe in Cambridge. These were

Robin Ashenden

The monstrous experience of boarding school

Charles, Earl Spencer published a blistering denunciation of his prep school days – complete with constant corporal punishment and child abuse – in A Very Private School last month. Since then, many of us who attended such places have been recalling our own time there too, nodding in recognition or giving thanks that our experience was better. From 1978 to 1983, I was at such a boarding school myself, in Suffolk. Presumably prep schools have changed a lot since then, but in the late 70s they were still brutal, spartan places. You wore shorts in all weathers, studied and slept with the windows open, and spent your life longing for an extra

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Taylor Swift is a rotter

Taylor Swift has released another album spilling the beans on her private life. ‘I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past two years and wanted to share it all with you,’ she says. Her fans are lapping up The Tortured Poets Department, but her critics say dishing the dirt on her ex boyfriends isn’t fair. Swift is famous for two things; being so massively successful that a musical visit by her can boost a country’s GDP, and for writing snarky songs about her exes. There is something very appealing about the extremes at play here; the former so grown-up and the second so teenage. Why do people never stop

Lynne O’Donnell

Afghanistan won’t be at the Olympics

When the thousands of international athletes march proudly behind their national flags along the banks of the River Seine in Paris to open the Olympic Games in a few months, the country that usually leads the parade, behind the host, will be absent. Afghanistan, first in the alphabetical order of nations, has been captured by the Taliban, an extreme Islamist movement that does not allow women to play sport. It also bans girls from high school and university, women from work, and all females from walking in public parks, even if they do leave their homes fully-covered and accompanied by a mandatory male relative. Some are calling for formal bans

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Life was better in the 1990s

Does anyone else miss the nineties terribly? Everything seemed simpler in that pre-internet era of The Fast Show, the band Suede and heaving nightclubs. Twenty-five years ago today, one of the defining films of that decade – Notting Hill – held its premiere in London. In the years since, we’ve made progress, of sorts: technology has improved immeasurably and we’re all living longer. But are we any happier? I’m not convinced. It’s true that the 1990s weren’t perfect: there was a sprinkling of identity-based grievance and envy, but it was still safely contained in the universities. We genuinely thought experts knew what they were doing. There were also vital cultural

Rakib Ehsan

A fairytale of Luton: why the Hatters deserve to stay in the Premier League

As the Premier League season draws to a nail-biting close at both ends of the table, my hometown club of Luton Town FC is still in with a shout of surviving the drop back to the Championship. The club is one point from safety with four games to play. Staying in the Premier League is vital not just for LTFC but for the town itself. It is safe to say that Luton doesn’t have the most positive reputation; a running joke is that most people visit Luton to fly right out of it from the international airport. My hometown all too often ranks highly when it comes to lists on

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Sadiq Khan should be ashamed of his attack on the Chief Rabbi

A while back, Lee Anderson got himself into trouble for claiming Islamists had ‘got control’ of Sadiq Khan. Levelling said charge at London’s Mayor was said to be ‘Islamophobic’ but surely more important is that it was wrong. Khan is neither an Islamist nor under their sway. He is a standard-issue identity-politics progressive, and with that comes a toxic farrago of communalism, victimhood narratives and offence opportunism. It is Khan’s identity-politics progressivism that was on display when he implied that comments by Sir Ephraim Mirvis were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice. In the space of just 130 words, Khan manages to find offence and wallow in imagined victimhood The row originates

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The BBC Proms could do much better than Sam Smith

The BBC has struck upon a new wheeze to make the Proms accessible and inclusive: it has booked famously ‘non-binary’ singer Sam Smith. The pop star, best known for cavorting on stage in ill-fitting outfits, is joined in this year’s line up by Florence Welch. A disco prom will also take place, which for those of us of a certain age immediately brings back memories of the grotesquely naff ‘Hooked On Classics’. Robert Newman, who founded the Proms over 100 years ago, must be spinning in his grave. Smith’s inclusion is a remarkably odd decision by the BBC: yes, his appearance will sell seats and draw eyes. But then so would any concert by these artists. Does their appearance really

Terry Barnes

The truth about Australia’s controversial crocodile cull

The Northern Territory News, Darwin’s daily paper, is known worldwide for its front pages with headlines so cleverly lurid that they outshine the efforts of the Sun’s Kelvin McKenzie in his editorial heyday. Over the years, the newspaper has run front pages highlighting everything from UFO and mythical beast sightings to the bizarre behaviour of Territorians, who, if you go by the NT News, are no strangers to acting oddly. But there’s one hot topic always guaranteed a NT News front page when it comes up: crocodiles. ‘I love crocodiles and anytime we have a good one we put it on the front page,’ a former NT News editor, Matt

Michael Murphy

Ireland can’t blame the Rwanda plan for its immigration woes

‘When in doubt, blame Britain’ has, since Brexit, become something of an iron law of Irish politics. So it came as no surprise yesterday to see Michael Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, attribute Ireland’s mounting migration crisis to Britain’s Rwanda scheme. There’s an obvious appeal for the Irish government to blame the Rwanda scheme, when it is under fire over its poorly handled migration policy ‘It is having a real impact on Ireland now in terms of people being fearful in the UK,’ Mr Martin said, adding: ‘maybe that’s the impact it was designed to have.’ Mr Martin claims that migrants are fleeing to Ireland from the UK to avoid being deported

Debbie Hayton

Why do politicians keep getting gender politics wrong?

Gillian Keegan has declared that she will no longer use the slogan, ‘trans women are women’ because, as she explains, her understanding of the issue has ‘evolved’. Good for her; it is far better that politicians develop their positions than dig their heels in and refuse to countenance the concept that they were ever wrong. What happens when common sense diverges the from the hard facts of biology? In 2020, the Education Secretary went further than the slogan when she told an LGBT+ forum in her Chichester constituency that ‘trans people should have equal access to safe spaces’. Assuming she meant that trans women should be able to access women’s

Thursday

William Atkinson

Why is the BBC censuring Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’?

‘What is Civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t definite it in abstract terms – yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it; and I am looking at it now.’ So suggested Kenneth Clark, looking towards Notre Dame at the start of Civilisation, his magisterial televisual guide through Western art, architecture, and philosophy. From the ruins of a ravaged Roman Empire to the skyscrapers of modern New York City, the series covers Clark’s ‘personal view’ of the development of European civilisation. Now, more than fifty years since its creation, the BBC has decided its viewers need protecting from this ‘personal view’. First broadcast in 1969, Civilisation was

Mark Lynas

Children could die because of Greenpeace’s Golden Rice activism

First, a word of warning. If you donate money to Greenpeace, you might think you’re helping save the whales or the rainforests. But in reality, you may be complicit in a crime against humanity. Last week, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and several other NGOs managed to stop the cultivation and use of vitamin A-enhanced rice in the Philippines, after the country’s court of appeal ruled in their favour. Greenpeace’s actions in blocking Golden Rice do not just tarnish its own brand, but bring the whole environmental movement into disrepute In doing so, Greenpeace have blocked a multi-year, international, publicly-funded effort to save the lives and the eyesight of millions of children

Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Meta’s AI investment plan has backfired on Zuckerberg

It will write your WhatsApp messages for you. It will post a cute picture of your cat on Instagram, even if you don’t actually have a cat. And it will put some enhanced memories up for you on Facebook, while cheerfully making connections with people you don’t know and who may well not actually exist… When Mark Zuckerberg started explaining his plans for Meta – the company formerly known as Facebook – to start investing billions of dollars in Artificial Intelligence (AI) yesterday, investors should have been cheering all the lucrative possibilities. Instead, the share price has promptly sunk like a stone. The stock market has started to become suspicious

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why didn’t the Tories nationalise the railways?

The Conservatives can crow all they like about the benefits of privatisation – and make whatever claims they like about tickets being more expensive, and services worse, were the railways to be brought back under public ownership. But there is little getting away from the fact that Labour’s policy of progressive renationalisation of train services by taking over franchises as they expire is hugely popular with voters. If the Conservatives were really that wedded to capitalism they wouldn’t have bunged the rail industry £12 billion in subsidies last year YouGov has been asking the public whether they support this policy in a monthly poll going back several years. In the latest

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Donating to charity is too easy

It’s been a torrid few weeks for anyone who knows anyone who was running in the London Marathon. In have come the emails sent by the sender to himself or herself, and BCC’d no doubt to a very long list of the sender’s friends: ‘I’m running the London Marathon on 21 April, for [insert name of charity]. I’d be so pleased if you could sponsor me for this worthy cause. You’ll find my page on [JustGiving, or other similar websites]’ and a link is supplied. There’s no way of getting yourmoney back if your friend wobbles out of the marathon after five miles I’ve received a few of these and

Flora Watkins

How the Jilly Cooper Book Club turned toxic

The Jilly Cooper Book Club was set up about a decade ago by two friends who’d had enough of book groups where someone would insist, ‘We really must do Dostoevsky this year.’ Members of the JCBC, in a co-founder’s words, just wanted to get together to ‘drink champagne and shriek about Jilly’. ‘Book clubs are basically Mean Girls for middle-class women’ For some time, I stalked key members on Twitter before managing to wangle an invitation. My first meeting was at a large townhouse in Clapham to discuss Rivals. There was a lot of champagne and a gaggle of smart, entertaining women. One was wearing a Vivienne Westwood corset dress;

Robert Tombs

Has the C of E got its reparations bill all wrong?

Reparations have a troubled history, and rightly. The word itself, in its familiar sense, seems to have been a euphemism thought up by lawyers after the first world war. President Woodrow Wilson had promised a peace ‘without indemnities’. So no indemnities: ‘reparations’ instead. It sounded less objectionable. It was further agreed that liability should cover only demonstrable damage, not be punishment for the act of war itself – a remarkable and perhaps unprecedented concession by the victors to the vanquished (who had themselves recently imposed heavy indemnities on Russia, and before that on France). Yet reparations – relatively modest in total and largely unpaid – still became probably the most