Society

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Snowflakes are now triggered by the term ‘snowflake’

This has got to be the own goal of the year. Millennials want people to stop calling them ‘snowflakes’ because it is an unfair term of abuse that damages their mental health. Get your head round that if you can. In response to the accusation that they’re soft, oversensitive and too easily wounded by words and ideas, young adults are effectively saying: ‘No we aren’t. And if you keep saying we are, we will be plunged into mental despair.’ There aren’t enough faces and palms in the world to express the exasperation such a self-defeating defence deserves. This epic self-own was uncovered in research by Aviva. It surveyed 2,022 Brits

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Donald Trump is right: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

The Israelis are doing it again. That thing they do when someone, anyone, even a total nishtgutnick like Donald Trump, comes along and tosses them a few warm words. Their little hearts leap to be told that, on balance, all things being equal, they have a right to exist, perhaps even to defend themselves, and that calls for their destruction are jolly well not on. Recognition is a miser’s feast but Israel gorges on it like a banquet.   They are dining out on Donald Trump’s proclamation ‘that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and that the United States Embassy to Israel will be

David Butterfield

The Guardian’s tabloid switch is a big mistake

‘Since you’re here…we have a small favour to ask’. These words may ring a bell for you – or just sound the spam alarm, coming as they do at the end of any Guardian online piece. For times are hard in Graunville: in recent years, the Guardian has lost tens of millions annually and, as a result, the paper has got out the begging bowl. Now its editor, Katharine Viner, has announced the latest cost-cutting ruse: lopping the paper down – from January next year – to a tabloid format. This is a great shame. Viner claims that the shrinkage would preserve ‘the same amount of journalism’ and went on to justify the change by saying:

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If Damian Green lied I don’t blame him

I first viewed pornography at the age of 12, when a school friend showed me a magazine called, I think, Razzle. The centrefold was a naked lady with what appeared to be a large and potentially ferocious rodent between her legs — a coypu, perhaps, or a capybara. I had never seen anything like that before. ‘Look at that flunge!’ my friend enthused. I had never heard the word before, either — I think it was a kind of portmanteau of ‘clunge’ and ‘flange’, both words with which I was familiar. ‘I bet your gimmer hasn’t got one like that,’ he added, spitefully. Gimmer is rural Teesside slang for a

Harry Mount

Rise of the glamocracy

The world may be dazzled by Prince Harry marrying a divorced, mixed-race American TV star. But his grand friends and royal cousins will hardly bat an eyelid. Because they’ve been marrying celebs (and Americans) for the past decade or so. In a subtle, gradual change in the British upper classes, the aristocracy has given way to the glamocracy. Gone is the blue-blood obsession; gone the marrying off of smart cousin to smart cousin which has continued since Agincourt; gone the Mrs Bennets frantically flicking through Burke’s Peerage, desperate to marry off their boot-faced daughter to the local squire. These days, young royalty and aristocracy are increasingly mixing with, and marry-ing,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Why Stokes should be picked for Perth

And so to a cloudy, chilly Adelaide, more like London in October than Australia in the early days of high summer, for one of the most thrilling Ashes Tests of modern times. Now the key moments in the fate of these Ashes are becoming very clear. Forget Joe Root putting Australia in, or Steve Smith’s unimaginative reluctance to give his bowlers more work and enforce the follow-on on the third day under the lights. Forget that rousing final session for England as the pink ball seamed and darted and hooped as if it were on crystal meth, and the Aussies were reduced to 53 for four. Forget even that extraordinary

Lucy Vickery

Shipping lines

In Competition No. 3027 you were invited to submit a poem inspired by the Shipping Forecast.   Life-saver, lullaby, poetic reminder of our maritime heritage, the Shipping Forecast celebrated its 150th anniversary this year. Charlotte Green has described it as the nearest she ever came to reading poetry on air; Carol Ann Duffy ended her poem ‘Prayer’ with the lines ‘Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer —/ Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre’; and Seamus Heaney wrote a beautiful sonnet ‘The Shipping Forecast’.   Its incantatory magic inspired a entry that was funny, poignant and varied, in both content — cricket, adultery, the choppy waters of Brexit — and form (haiku, sonnet,

David Butterfield

The Watford Gap

In a shallow dip between two unremarkable Northamptonshire hills you will find a road, a motorway, a railway and a canal jostling for position. It is neither a place of natural beauty nor a spectacle of human ingenuity. Yet it has been the subject of books, art exhibitions, pop songs and even a (mini) musical. This is Watford Gap, a three-mile break in the limestone ridge that runs from the Cotswolds to Lincolnshire. Perched between Daventry and Rugby, it subtly marks the watershed of the Nene and Avon to the east and west. However understated the depression geographically, it’s of high status culturally. For this is the gateway between the

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The LSE’s skulking assassins are a terrible advert for the City’s global aspirations

The revenge tragedy at the London Stock Exchange whose plot I outlined last month has reached its third act, but the carnage may not be over. Chief executive Xavier Rolet has left the building, rather than staying one more year as the LSE first announced, and declared that he won’t come back under any circumstances. Despite whispers that ‘aspects of his operating style’ sparked this row in the first place, Rolet is due a £13 million golden farewell — which the Daily Mail called ‘obscene’ but his fans see as fair reward for all the value he has delivered. Chief among those fans is LSE shareholder and hedge-fund princeling Sir

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The royals don’t exist, so they have my full support

Prince Harry does not exist and soon Meghan Markle will cease to exist too. None of the royal family exist. This truth, which has come to me rather late in life, has taught me how to stop worrying and love the monarchy. Despite my boyhood admiration for King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, I was always a bit of a republican. Not a tumbrils and guillotine kind, nor even, really, a campaigner for abolition, because as the decades have rolled it has become impossible not to feel respect for the Queen’s hard work; and besides, as the Australians have learned, there’s not a lot of point in removing the monarchy unless

Wednesday

The Spectator

Could investing in website names make you an internet millionaire?

With the savings of the nation languishing around 1%, it’s no surprise that UK consumers are turning to increasingly creative ways to make their money work that little bit harder. Even with the arrival of a plethora of savings-focused banks such as RCI Bank, the savings horizon remains bleak for those yearning for the good old days of a 5% savings rate with FSCS protection. This backdrop has helped to fuel the rise of more consumer-friendly and increasingly mainstream financial investment opportunities. This includes everything from investing in property, via firms like LendInvest, and Kuflink, investing in corporate bonds via firms like WiseAlpha, or even investing in personal loans via

The Spectator

Ignore the motorheads telling us that we all need new cars

The motorheads are at it again. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the UK auto manufacturers lobby group, lobbed another rusty torque wrench at the government this morning, announcing that UK new car registrations are down 11.2 per cent year-on-year. The decline is led by a collapse of nearly a third in sales of diesel-engined cars. Inevitably, some blamed the fall on ‘uncertainty caused by Brexit’. The SMMT itself doesn’t take this tack: instead it points the finger at ‘months of confusion and speculation about the government’s air quality plans and its policies towards diesel cars’. Its suggested remedy is no surprise: ‘fleet renewal is the fastest way to

Joanna Williams

In defence of Saturday jobs

In August 1988, after weeks of practice, I created the perfect Mr Whippy ice cream. I was 14 and I had a Saturday job in a cafe. When the sun shone I’d get to lean out of the serving hatch, chat to passers-by and sell ice creams. Rarely have strawberry sauce and sugar sprinkles been so lovingly applied to such gravity-defying cornets. Go to your local cafe this Saturday and the chances are you won’t be served by an over-enthusiastic 14 year-old. Figures released to the BBC this week, under the Freedom of Information Act, show the number of teenagers with part-time jobs has declined markedly in recent years. Businesses

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Social media is the propaganda tool the Nazis could only dream of

Last month, the venture capitalist Roger McNamee drew parallels between the persuasive powers of Facebook and those of Joseph Goebbels. McNamee made a mint from early investment in the social media site but he believes Facebook has since adopted the techniques of Hitler’s spin doctor to create a climate of ‘fear and anger’. It’s not just Facebook, of course, it’s the internet in general that has contributed to this new golden age of intolerance. In a recent interview with the Times, Silicon Valley guru Jaron Lanier, the man who coined the phrase ‘virtual reality’, said the way internet companies monitor our behaviour gives them the power to: ‘…change people’s character…to corral

Steerpike Steerpike

Cambridge News headline fail

Oh dear. It turns out it’s not just the British government having a bad week. The latest issue of Cambridge News is out and the splash is… a ‘100-T SPLASH HEADING HERE’. It turns out the paper went to print before anyone had a chance to write a headline on the first page… Wow. It’s real. This’ll be featured in newspaper sub-editing courses for years. And available at all good newsagents near you today, folks. pic.twitter.com/JS8YpuedVW — Chris Rand (@ChrisRandWrites) December 6, 2017 The paper’s editor-in-chief David Bartlett has apologised to readers for ‘this mistake which happened due to a technical problem’. Still, at least Bartlett had a successful Christmas

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

#MeToo is the gift that keeps on giving

‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open,’ wrote the American poet and activist Muriel Rukeyser in 1968. It took just short of half a century, but 2017 was the year in which #MeToo made this prophecy a reality. The phrase was coined in 2006 by the black American activist Tarana Burke, who was inspired to use it after finding herself without words when a 13-year-old girl confided in her that she had been sexually assaulted, later wishing she had just said ‘Me too’. But it spread virally – like some mass cyberspace inoculation against isolation – just a few weeks

Tuesday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

The British Army’s muddled attitude towards military dogs

Almost every day a new email pops into my inbox from the website ‘change.org’. One day they’ll be asking me to sign a petition to free Nazanin Ratcliffe, the next to lower the age for bowel cancer screening. Once you sign one, the requests keep coming. But the other day, one in particular caught my attention. Novelist and former SAS sergeant Andy McNab had started a petition entreating the Defence Animal Centre (the home of the Ministry of Defence’s canine training squadron) to save the lives of three former service dogs. The three dogs – Kevin, Dazz and Driver – were all due to be put down this week, a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Could the Manchester Arena bombing have been stopped?

Today’s report into the Manchester and London terror attacks makes for devastating reading, spelling out as it does the horrors of the murderous events in which 51 people lost their lives. The details are further daunting for making it clear just how great the threat facing Britain from Islamist terror continues to be. Much of the focus today though has rested on a question: could the attacks have been prevented? The answer is not clear but there are certainly reasons to think that at least one of the attacks could have been stopped. While there is little evidence to suggest that the Westminster Bridge attack could have been thwarted, the

Monday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

It’s rural customers and the elderly who will be most affected by RBS’s latest closures

On Friday, RBS announced plans to close 259 of its bank branches. That’s a quarter of its outposts. 62 of the closures are Royal Bank of Scotland branches, while the other 197 are NatWest. This isn’t the only announcement of bank closures in the past couple of days, either. Lloyds are also closing 49 branches, and Yorkshire Building Society are closing 13 – but the RBS closures are certainly the most dramatic, and the ones that will affect the most people. Of course, yet again the reason given to the public for these closures is that the bank branches are underused. It’s the standard argument; more customers are using online