World

The BBC’s latest pretty young face is Billie JD Porter. The 23-year-old is entirely lovable. With her brown roots proudly showing, that unmistakably London accent, and a chirpy personality, Billie is the latest in a string of young presenters who the corporation hopes will win back the younger generation. The result? Secrets of China, a three-part documentary series that barely scratches the surface of the country, let alone uncovers its ‘secrets’. Of the Chinese language, she knows little – she can say ‘boyfriend’, ‘beer’, and ‘thank you’. Of the culture, she knows even less. Billie frequently treats the project as a gap yah – using her subjects as the butt of her jokes. You might as well send any

They call it the summer of Trump. Only a year ago everyone expected the 2016 presidential election to be a clash of dynasties, with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush enjoying coronations by the Democrats and Republicans. But Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, is proving to be a formidable challenge to Clinton. Even more disruptive, on the Republican side, has been Donald Trump. While Sanders represents the left wing of a common progressivism he shares with Hillary Clinton, Trump is challenging conservative orthodoxy itself by giving voice to a robust right-wing populism. Populists love outsiders, can-do executives and simple policy panaceas, and Trump, a billionaire real estate developer and

The more one thinks about the current witch-hunt against alleged paedophiles in the establishment, the more beyond satire it seems. What mordant novelist could have imagined, even ten years ago, that the police would be devoting massive amounts of their time to investigating famous people who were a) suspected on no actual evidence and b) dead and therefore beyond the reach of the law? Yet it has happened. It just goes to show that even a society which self-consciously prides itself on its tolerance will always contain those who are desperately searching for people to ruin and then to scream at those who suggest they might be wrong, and —

Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom has descended since I’ve been away — and doesn’t it call for a round-up of cheerful news? So here goes. The UK economy grew by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter and a respectable 2.6 per cent over the past year. US growth has been revised sharply higher to 3.7 per cent, scotching our claim to be the fastest growing western economy, but George Osborne can still say convincingly that ‘we’re motoring ahead’ — and weak first-quarter performance can be seen as a blip rather than the revelation of doom

I never knew my paternal grandfather, who was apparently a bitter, angry right-wing journalist who thought the world was going to hell; although as this was the 1930s, he was pretty much right. Almost the only thing I remember being told is that in 1938 he and my grandmother took in an Austrian boy as part of a scheme in which 20,000 Jewish children were taken away from Hitler. (I only heard this story from my mum, as my father was too English to talk about his parents, and felt rather less uncomfortable in war-torn Beirut or Biafra than actually talking about his own emotions.) I don’t know what happened to

The scene of the recent bombing at the Erawan shrine has swiftly been remodelled to make it seem as though nothing happened. Upbeat slogans – ‘Stronger Together’ – and a forensically dubious ‘clean-up’ have gone hand in hand with a media campaign to reassure millions of tourists that they are safe in the Land of Smiles. The Chinese, however, have cancelled many of their vacations and the investigation rumbles on inconclusively, as is often the way with Thai investigations, which usually peter out in a vague inconclusiveness. An image is starting to form of Thailand as a uniquely dangerous tourist destination, riven by political violence and unprovoked attacks on hapless tourists. The film

The 2015 Dissolution Peerages have been announced today, following much rumour about who might receive one. While Mr S’s colleague Sebastian Payne has the full list over on Coffee House, it’s safe to say the appointments haven’t done much to improve public opinion of the honours system; former spads and out-of-work politicians make up a large chunk of the list. But then again, what did people expect from the man who awarded his barber Claudio Carbosiero an MBE last year for ‘services to hairdressing’? Mr S has compiled a list of the most intriguing appointments from the Cameron camp: 1. As expected — and to the dismay of cybernats everywhere — Michelle Mone — the founder of Ultimo

MS Queen Victoria, 38°N 19°E I’ll do my best, but I’ve got to be honest: being surrounded by shining Ionian waters and convivial Spectator cruisers isn’t helping me channel the panic that has gripped global markets. So forgive me if this dispatch doesn’t have the apocalyptic tone you’re expecting. I’m as irritated as anyone that contagion from China’s share-gambling epidemic has knocked my modest interest in FTSE100 stocks back to where it stood in late 2012, but ask yourself: do you know anything about China or the global economy today that you didn’t know a month ago? Markets have overreacted, on relatively thin mid-August trading volumes, to a long-anticipated slowdown

One-party states are rarely any good at admitting to any form of blunder. It is certainly the case with China’s prickly political leaders, who love to flood domestic media with jolly tales of fashion shows and bamboo-chomping pandas – anything to divert people’s attention from a flagging economy and rising unemployment. This makes today’s main headline on China Daily‘s website all the more arresting: ‘Stocks plunge most since 2007 as state support measures fail’ the state-run newspaper blared, after the Shanghai Composite share index lost 8.5 per cent in a single day. The wider world followed China’s lead: all major Asian stock indices fell on Monday, with oil tumbling to a six-year low.

I’m not aware of knowing many bisexual people. Or indeed, off the top of my head, any bisexual people. Which is odd, really, because back in my student days you couldn’t move for them. Being bisexual was quite the thing. Or, at least, claiming to be was. The girls really dug it. This was back in the mid-1990s, not long after the lead singer of a band called Suede, who is a man called Brett Anderson (married to a lady now; two kids) had declared himself ‘a bisexual man who has never had a homosexual experience’. That, at the time, was very much the sort of sexual identity that a

A powerful explosion ripped almost instantaneously through a busy intersection in Bangkok’s downtown shopping area yesterday, killing 22 people and injuring more than 100. Some of the victims were foreign tourists, and representatives of the country’s military government quickly stated that the bombs were indeed aimed at foreigners, and designed to undermine one of the country’s economic mainstays: tourism. The blasts also occurred at one of the city’s most sacred sites, the Erawan Shrine, a Hindu Shrine that houses a statue of Phra Phrom, a Thai representation of the Hindu deity Brahma. The site, which is venerated by Buddhists, the kingdom’s dominant faith, is busy, both with foreign visitors and locals, especially in

The American presidential race seemed more like a playground fight than a clash of politics this week as would-be Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton drew her claws on her Republican counterpart Donald Trump. The rumpus was sparked by Trump’s comments on Megyn Kelly’s tough approach towards him during a recent Republican Party debate. ‘You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,’ he said. The possibility that Trump was blaming Kelly’s harsh tone on her menstrual cycle predictably sent social media into meltdown. Never too far from a scandal, Clinton seized her chance. In a public statement she described Trump’s comments as

Forget Greece; China’s economic slowdown is the biggest story of the year, says Elliot Wilson in this week’s issue of The Spectator. China’s long boom may finally be ending and the consequences for the world will be profound. Elliot joins Isabel Hardman and Andrew Sentance, Senior Economic Adviser at PwC and a former member of the Bank of England MPC, to discuss the implications of China’s slump on the British and global economy. With the Labour leadership contest still snoring along, there is plenty of discussion about what each contestant will bring to the party. But there’s one thing they are forgetting to discuss, says Isabel Hardman in her column this week: how

There is no argument fiercer in feminism than the argument about prostitution. Say you want to ban it and the libertarian feminists denounce you as a ‘whorephobe’. Say you want to legalise it, and radical feminists denounce you as the tool of the patriarchy. Inevitably, Amnesty International felt it had to intervene. And, this week, with an equal inevitability, it plumped for the apparently left-wing position of decriminalisation. I say ‘apparently’ because many on the left disagree. My sister paper the Guardian made the telling point that Amnesty’s leftism concealed rich-world prejudices. [Its]suggestion that the trade be decriminalised but not then regulated is particularly far off-beam. Since when did unregulated