‘Rude, bone idle… and cosseted by the welfare state! Chinese teachers’ damning verdict on British children after spending a month in UK classrooms. Yes – just about right, I reckon. Except, of course, the English head teacher at the school thinks the Chinese are completely wrong and that their teaching methods are boring. And that we
In the early 1960s a satirical combo called the Chad Mitchell Trio sang of the anti-communist paranoia of the John Birch Society (a forerunner of today’s Tea Party, as those among you who study the history of demagogic delusion will know). The reds were so ubiquitous that: There’s no one left but thee and we, (and
‘Corbynomics’, aka Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for the UK economy, has entered the Westminster lexicon today. It appears to consist of the work primarily of one man, Richard Murphy. The director of TaxResearch UK, who advises various charities and trade unions on tax matters, has taken credit for the handful of economic policies Corbyn has announced so far,
Apparently, I’m supposed to be shocked by doping. This weekend, the Sunday Times published files from the International Association of Athletics Federations, suggesting that hundreds of athletes had been awarded medals at top events, despite receiving suspicious blood test results. It seems that if you’re groomed from childhood in an ultra-competitive, winner-takes-all fight for glory,
The latest challenge was a shameless rip-off of the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest which asks for ‘the opening sentence to the worst of all novels’ (Edward Bulwer-Lytton is often described as ‘the worst writer in history’). What a joy it was to wade through the morass of florid, convoluted prose, over-elaborate metaphors and inconsequential tangents.
Mr Corbyn has a beard. If he becomes leader, he will be the first bearded leader of any main party since Keir Hardie. The beard as a fashion item is now back, generally in shaped and even waxed form. But Mr Corbyn’s one owes nothing to fashion. It is a 1960s political beard, already obsolete
Walking around central London, I’ve been struck by how many shows Frank Sinatra has been performing in town recently. He played a string of concerts in July at the Royal Albert Hall (which as any schoolboy knows was actually named after Sinatra’s middle name), and he is currently performing an extended summer season at the
It’s only lunchtime but the Guardian may have already reached ‘peak Guardian’ for the day. The paper has published an article penned by Chris Elliott chronicling an in-house investigation into their coverage of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership bid. They decided to do this after a number of Corbynistas complained that the left-wing paper had shown bias against Corbyn, with
I have a new Kindle Single out, an essay on the 14th century Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun, who can rightly claim to be called the ‘father of social science’. Ibn Khaldun is underrated in the west, compared to the other great philosophers and historians of the ages, but he enjoys a cult following because his
Although Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to tackle her party’s ‘cybernats’ over the online abuse of those who do not support Scottish independence, the SNP leader may need to reassess her current efforts following this weekend’s events. After news broke that Michelle Mone is to be awarded a peerage by the Tories, the lingerie entrepreneur was
Water cannons at the ready: the Tory leadership contest is officially underway. How does Mr S know this? Well, in a clear sign that George Osborne means business, he has changed his Twitter profile picture. Osborne is now in Conservative blue, offering a confident grin as he embarks on his campaign to move into Number
One of the most important rules for politicians dealing with a Summer Crisis is that you must be seen to be Doing Things to deal with that crisis, even if those Things aren’t really very much to do with the cause of the crisis and won’t really make much difference to it overall. Take the
Let’s not be too cynical. It is a touching thought that Beau Biden’s dying wish was that his father Joe, the Vice President, should have another tilt at the White House. We learn this nugget of intimate information thanks to the New York Times. The story is suspiciously well-timed to propel a Joe Biden run, coming as
Finally, someone in Labour is tearing apart Jeremy Corbyn’s ideas. Overtly criticising what Corbyn stands for is something the leadership candidates have been reluctant to do. You can see why: his popularity with the party’s grassroots could result in a backlash. Therefore, it’s been left to poor old Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow chancellor, to point out that
From ‘News of the Week‘, The Spectator, 7 August 1915: A YEAR has elapsed since the first war issue of The Spectator. We have tried elsewhere to say something in answer to the question. “How do we stand?” Here we only reply very shortly. If we cannot say all is well, we can at any
Last week, New York magazine ran a front-cover photo of 35 of the 46 women who have accused actor Bill Cosby of sexual assault. The feature inside includes individual interviews with each woman, but argues that ‘the horror is multiplied by the sheer volume of seeing them together, reading them together, considering their shared experience’. The
From ‘Germania Contra Mundum‘, The Spectator, 31 July 1915: It may be said that, in the domain of international relations, the triumph of the German arms would substitute the perpetuation of a state of war rather than the maintenance of peace as the ideal goal which the rulers of the world should seek to attain.
George Galloway has announced that he would like to return to the Labour party if Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader. The former Respect MP for Bradford West sees Corbyn as a comrade in arms and would feel at home alongside him. He told LBC this week: ‘I think if Jeremy were to win everyone on the left
From ‘Sim-sam the Mink‘, The Spectator, 31 July 1915: Sim-sam’s bath was the spectacle that revealed him at his very best. Watching him glide and twist and loop the loop under water with the utter ease of a fish made you see the reason for the webbed toes, the powerful short, double-jointed legs that bent
Although the Milifandom wasn’t enough to lead Ed Miliband to victory at the polls, the cult movement did at least bring the former Labour leader’s lagging campaign some momentum in the final weeks of the election campaign. So perhaps it’s little surprise that the new Labour leadership hopefuls have been courting Milifandom founder Abby Tomlinson in a