Society

We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 12: Katherine Forster, a mum-of-three, describes her experiences as an intern at the Spectator this summer: My name is Katherine and I’m an intern at The Spectator. What does that say about me? If you had to guess, you’d probably assume I was just finishing university and that I’m perhaps the niece or goddaughter of someone important. Because that’s how the media works, isn’t it? That I’m probably unpaid, but it doesn’t matter because my parents will sort me out — that’s if they didn’t buy this internship for me in a charity auction in the first

With Christmas – and its potential for gifts of money from generous Godparents – fast approaching, now is a great time for children to open up their first savings account. Here are some of the best deals on the market right now, according to data from moneyfacts.co.uk.

The Church of England being what it is, it was pretty well inevitable that the new Bishop of London should be a woman and as it happens the woman in question is Sarah Mullally, 55, at present suffragan bishop of Exeter. I spoke to her this morning before Downing Street made the announcement – wouldn’t you just love to know if the PM added her mite? – and the bishop designate gave every impression of being a nice and decent person, and a committed, almost certainly evangelical, Christian. Very much in the mould then of another evangelical, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also a former Chief Nursing Officer who worked

Diane Abbott – Public sector at risk if migration collapses The Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has told Andrew Marr that British businesses and essential services such as the NHS require a certain level of migration from Europe after Brexit and that a ‘collapse’ in numbers could pose a serious risk to the UK economy. Abbott claimed that a Labour government would clamp down on bureaucracy with regard to EU migration and that she would implement ‘fair rules’ and ‘reasonable management’: AM: Do you think that the number of people coming here from the EU will go down after Brexit if you’re in power? DA: You should talk to British

James Flynn’s research on the eponymous Flynn Effect, showing massive gains in IQ in 14 nations in the course of the 20th Century, was leapt on by hard-working teachers, social policy wonks and dieticians. It rebutted claims that IQ was immutable and implied that ambitious interventions in families and schools could be effective. The gains Flynn discovered were so large, they suggested an average child would be regarded as a ‘genius’ by their great grandparents. However, Flynn has now changed his mind. In a speech he gave earlier this year at the International Society for Intelligence Research, and now published in Intelligence, a peer-reviewed academic journal, Flynn announced that this

The uproar about fake news hides as much as it reveals. It is not just that propaganda has a history as long as the history of politics. The psychological turn modern thinking has taken with its emphasis on groupthink and confirmation bias lulls us into believing modern societies are up against citizens caught in a kind of madness. And that thought is a little too comforting. Dismissing your opponents as insane may be psychologically satisfying – perhaps one day researchers will find humans have a cognitive bias to do it. Contemptuous waves of the hands, however, fail to understand how charlatans use rational and moral objections to journalism to lead