Society

Saturday

Hugh Thomson

Why won’t young people pick up the phone?

‘So you mean rather than writing something out, you could just talk to somebody from a distance? But that would be so cool. And so much quicker. And so much more real.’ ‘Exactly!’ There was a distant time when phone calls were in themselves seen as the cowardly opt-out way of communicating rather than just doing it face to face Imagine if after decades of just being able to text, phone calls were only invented now. Everyone would be all over them. But instead the telephone is something used exclusively by  sad old people to talk to each other. No self respecting teen would talk when they could text. Or

Friday

Madeline Grant

Ricky Jones and the reality of two-tier justice

This may be looked back on as the week when two-tier justice moved from being an accusation to a statement of incontrovertible fact. The stark difference in treatment of Ricky Jones, the former Labour councillor accused of encouraging violent disorder as he mimed a throat being cut at a protest and Lucy Connolly, the mother who sent a nasty tweet shortly after the Southport massacre, is no conspiracy theory, despite the state’s best efforts to pretend it is.  Crucially, like most of those arrested at the time, Lucy Connolly was denied bail To recap, Jones was filmed at an anti-racism rally after the Southport riots calling protestors ‘disgusting Nazi fascists’, and

Patrick West

What’s wrong with a St George’s Cross flag?

Flags have become a contentious and defining issue of this year. You only have to witness the furore that has surrounded the increasing proliferation of the Progress Pride and Palestinian flags in this country to recognise this. So it was only a matter of time before that other increasingly common sight, flags denoting pride in Englishness and Britishness, should have been drawn into the fray. As reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, Birmingham Council has ordered the removal of Union and St George’s flags from lamp posts. In response to initiatives made by residents in the fortnight approaching VJ Day to install hundreds of the flags in the predominantly

Alexander Larman

King Charles’s poignant VJ Day reminder

It has been one of the hallmarks of King Charles’s reign so far that, when he makes a commemorative or ceremonial address, especially when he is remembering Britain’s wartime victories, he usually manages to hit the correct note. He has become very adept at persuading even the most dyed-in-the-wool republicans that he is the right man at the right time. Therefore, when it was announced that he would address the nation in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day – the grimmer, less obviously triumphal cousin of VE Day – expectations were high that the King would once again deliver. What was less expected was how personal the speech

Adam Sisman

How the second world war shaped the sons of its soldiers

The 80th anniversary of VJ Day today marks the passing of the generation that took part in the second world war. The few surviving veterans must now be a hundred years old, or virtually so. They are departing; most have already left. This seems an appropriate moment to reflect upon the next generation, those whose fathers fought in the war and who grew up in its shadow. Much has been written about the luck of the ‘baby boomers’, those born in the two decades after the war, who benefitted from post-war prosperity, buying houses cheaply and seeing their values soar. Later generations have envied their affluence. But less has been written

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Bournemouth police are losing control

Who is Ritchie Wellman? He is a father, a boyfriend, an assistant operations manager at a local business and a part-time paedophile hunter. Right now, however, at 7 p.m. in a dusty car park down the road from Bournemouth pier, Ritchie is the commander of his own private policing unit, briefing his officers before their first patrol. He tells them not to assault anybody, not to be provoked, not to drink or smoke on the job, and to reassure the public if they are concerned by this new authority on their streets: ‘This is not a takeover.’ Ritchie is a normal guy, and he and his officers and others in

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Uefa’s ‘Stop killing children’ banner isn’t fooling anyone

Who does Uefa think it’s kidding? It says the huge banner saying ‘Stop killing children’ unfurled at a Super Cup match last night was ‘not political’. It was ‘about humanity’, insists an insider. ‘In fact, you could just say it is common sense’, they said. They must think we were born yesterday. Everyone whose moral faculties have not been entirely fried by the Gaza war knows this banner was likely a political dig at that state it is fashionable to hate – Israel. To display such a banner ahead of a Spurs match – a team with deep links to Britain’s Jewish community – is especially egregious The banner said

Madeline Grant

Thought for the Day and the elite empathy problem

Like much of Radio 4’s output, Thought for the Day is something of a curate’s egg – sometimes enlightening and a source of inspiration or comfort. Often, however, it’s sanctimonious; auricular masturbation for the comfortable. Comfortable England has an empathy problem; it is willing to contort itself into paroxysms of emotion for migrants yet remains incapable of listening to concerns of the communities affected by mass migration The BBC has been heavily criticised for its segment on Wednesday morning, featuring Dr Krish Kandiah, a theologian and author, discussing ‘fear’ in relation to the migrant crisis. His reflections amount to a series of boilerplate platitudes beloved by open borders advocates. He calls

Limor Simhony Philpott

Why the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust error matters

The Imperial War Museum is supposed to be one of Britain’s guardians of historical truth. Yet in its description of the Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi edicts that laid the legal groundwork for the Holocaust, the museum claims they defined Jews by religious observance. It’s a small phrase, but it’s entirely wrong. And it matters. When Jews are erased from their own history, it becomes easier to downplay anti-Semitism in the present The Nazis did not care whether you kept kosher, went to synagogue or even believed in God. The Nuremberg Laws defined Jewishness by ancestry: if three of your four grandparents were Jewish, you were Jewish. You could be baptised, married

Chas Newkey-Burden

Can Taylor Swift save us from the Oasis bore-off?

The news that Taylor Swift is releasing her 12th album in October will thrill her fans but perhaps we should all be grateful because this might mean we can move on from the endless chatter about the Oasis reunion tour. From the moment the Gallaghers announced their lucrative concerts it was clear that a lot of people were going to absolutely lose their minds. News of the shows and ticket sales hit the front pages and stayed there for months. Would the brothers fall out before a note was sung? The suspense could have killed us. Celebrities and brands have hopped on the Gallagher bandwagon to try and cash in

Stephen Pollard

Is air conditioning ‘far right?’

If you want to understand what lies behind the rise of Reform and its consistent – indeed, deepening – lead in the polls, I have a suggestion: French air conditioning.   To be more specific, if you want to understand the difficulty Reform’s opponents have in tackling it and why the party’s rise seems inexorable, the row going on at the moment in France over air conditioning offers a guide. When you insist that wanting cool air is ‘far right’, you are in the same sphere as those who say that protecting borders is pandering to the far right The New York Times reports how Marine Le Pen has said, with her

Angela Epstein

Why an overhaul of A-levels is long overdue

It’s been forty years since I took my A-levels. Yet one particular dream still gatecrashes my sleep with irritating regularity: I’m in the exam hall, about to turn over the paper, but I’m trembling with terror because I haven’t done enough revision. Spool forward four decades and it might seem slightly nuts to think that despite being in my late 50s, the remembered stress of sitting A-levels should still stalk the subconscious. But given so much was riding on the outcome, perhaps it makes some degree of sense. It’s why I have every sympathy for the 821,875 students who sat A-levels this summer and who will receive their results this morning.

William Moore William Moore

Border lands, 200 years of British railways & who are the GOATs?

38 min listen

First: how Merkel killed the European dream ‘Ten years ago,’ Lisa Haseldine says, ‘Angela Merkel told the German press what she was going to do about the swell of Syrian refugees heading to Europe’: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – we can handle it. With these words, ‘she ushered in a new era of uncontrolled mass migration’. ‘In retrospect,’ explains one senior British diplomat, ‘it was pretty much the most disastrous government policy of this century anywhere in Europe.’ The surge of immigrants helped swing Brexit, ‘emboldened’ people-traffickers and ‘destabilised politics’ across Europe. Ten years on, a third of the EU’s member states within the Schengen area have now imposed border controls.

Douglas Murray

Clive of India must not fall

The only MP I have ever really wanted to marry is Thangam Debbonaire. The former Labour MP for Bristol West and I have little in common. But it has sometimes been a desire of mine to marry her and take her surname, so becoming Mr Debbonaire. Marital relations would doubtless be fraught, but on the plus side there would be the thrill of friends being able to say things like ‘Darling, you know the Debbonaires are coming for dinner?’ Which would more than make up for it. Since being booted out by the voters at last year’s general election, Debbonaire has been elevated to the House of Lords, where she

The Spectator

Letters: Nigel Farage’s biggest weakness

Bad friend Sir: Tim Shipman’s examination of Reform’s success in attracting female voters contains an important warning for Nigel Farage (‘March of the mums’, 9 August). He cites Luke Tryl of More in Common, who points out that Farage’s main Achilles’ heel when it comes to support among women is his closeness to Donald Trump. The US President has undermined Nato and western security, fawned over our enemy Vladimir Putin, damaged the world economy with his tariffs and promoted dangerous conspiracy theories, not least by appointing a vaccine-denying health secretary. Unless Farage can distance himself decisively from this arrogant and ignorant narcissist, it is not only women who will turn

Robert Hardman

How Princess Anne is celebrating her 75th birthday

When a previous milestone was looming in the life of Princess Anne, her 21st birthday, the late Queen asked her where she would like to have her party. There was Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, of course, although, with a mid-August birthday, might she prefer Balmoral? ‘None of the above,’ came the reply. The Princess wanted to hold a ‘discotheque party’ in Portsmouth on board the royal yacht Britannia. And so it is this Friday, as the Princess marks her 75th, that the most nautical member of the family (patron of everything from the Royal Yachting Association to the Mission to Seafarers) will be at sea with a cake for

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Down with exclamation marks!

Punctuation is a gendered thing. I’ve been trying to stop myself overusing exclamation marks and it’s been difficult. Exclamation marks are girly because they’re a way of taking the sting out of what you say; they make any pronouncement seem more tentative, less serious. They’re the equivalent of a disarming smile, the marker that says: ‘No offence!’ You add them at the end of a sentence to prevent anyone thinking that you’re being bossy or critical. They’re an economical form of non-confrontation. Women use them far more than men. Almost 20 years ago, a study in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that women used nearly three-quarters of the exclamation marks

Toby Young Toby Young

Wormwood Scrubs, my deserted little bit of paradise 

On the face of it, Wormwood Scrubs is not particularly appealing. I don’t mean the prison, but the common in the north-eastern corner of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is 170 acres of unsupervised scrubland with enough wooded areas to attract a smattering of predatory homosexuals – a poor man’s Hampstead Heath. Often, as I walk the dog around the perimeter, the only people I encounter are single men in tight T-shirts who eye me enquiringly as we pass. I respond by looking pointedly at Mali, as if to say: ‘Can’t you see I’m walking my dog, not cruising for action?’ Then again, Mali is a Cavapoochon, so perhaps they don’t

Catriona Olding

Medics make the worst patients

Provence Apart from three Covid years, the German rock cover band Five and the Red One (named, so they say, because one of them has a ‘fire mark’) have played a free concert on the Cours here in the village every summer since 2008. I first saw them in 2009 when my three daughters were teenagers. The four of us, along with our friends Monica and André, who were then in their mid-sixties, stood together near the front jumping up and down and singing along. Some of the wee ones who sat on their fathers’ shoulders behind us might have children of their own by now. Last year a rowdy