Society

Thursday

Christopher De Bellaigue

Islam’s lost Enlightenment

I am quite used to people smirking into their sleeves when they hear that I’ve just written a book called The Islamic Enlightenment. The really helpful wags say they expect something along the lines of The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew, which was billed as a collection of all the memorable aphorisms of the former US vice-president, and contained only blank pages. So, the Islamic Enlightenment — good for a laugh. But we’re all familiar with the serious argument that lies behind the jests; that Islam has not been through an Enlightenment, a Reformation, or any of the other rites of passage that have formed our modernity, and that,

Fieldfare

to 2295: Juicy

The shared name was PERRY (18), shared by GRAYSON (28) Perry and Perry MASON (2). GP, whose alter ego is CLAIRE (3), is a TURNER (32) Prize winner. PM is a lawyer created by Erle Stanley GARDNER (27); Della STREET (10) is PM’s secretary and Paul DRAKE (37) is his private investigator. PERRY was to be shaded.   First prize Frank Anstis, Truro. Runners-up Les Verth, Newton Mearns, Glasgow; Chris Butler, Borough Green, Kent.

Joanna Williams

The post-fact world suits feminism just fine

We now know that the video of a cyclist confronting a catcalling driver, which spent much of yesterday being circulated on social media and covered in the national press, was staged. Barely had viewers finished cheering on the woman as she tore the wing mirror off the side of her harasser’s van than the truth emerged. An eyewitness told the Sun, ‘They practiced the scene two or three times with the motorbike riding behind them. You could see there was already damage to the wing mirror, it was loose.’ The company that hosted the video, Jungle Creations, has now issued a statement claiming that although it was under the impression that

Jane Kelly

Storm Doris is here. It’s time to panic

Today is Storm Doris’s day.  A woman called Helen Chivers, not Shivers as she should be, from the Met Office was on Radio 4 this morning telling us that giving human names to gusts of wind is a really good thing because it makes everyone aware of the dangers of bad weather. We must keep our ears glued to the radio, the way you see in old war films and remain very alert because Storm Doris is going to be windy and there will also be snow in Scotland. I’m not taking any chances and will retire to the cellar under my house. Yesterday I was alerted to other new dangers in

Laura Whitcombe

What you need to know before buying health insurance for kids

If you’ve had enough of battling to get the kids a doctor’s appointment, or don’t want them waiting months to be seen by a specialist, there is an alternative. You could take out children’s private medical insurance that will pay for some or all of the diagnosis and treatment your child may require. Such policies come with a long list of benefits. For example, most offer same-day video and phone consultations and can arrange specialist appointments and procedures much faster more than through the NHS. ‘Another valued benefit,’ says Kevin Pratt, consumer affairs editor at MoneySupermarket.com, ‘is the cash payment that is made to the parent for each night that

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator podcast: May’s third way

On this week’s Spectator podcast, we discuss Theresa May’s Third Way, whether we could have an Uber for social care, and look at Mies van der Rohe’s unrealised plans for a Mansion House skyscraper. On the cover of this week’s magazine, Theresa May plots a course through the twin perils of Scylla and Charybdis, as she creates a new centreground between nationalism and globalism. So says James Forsyth, who writes this week on the new binary that has emerged in international politics. James is joined to discuss this on the podcast by Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. On the emergent dichotomy, James writes that: “Forget left and right — the new divide

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books podcast: Daniel Dennett and the evolution of minds

In this week’s podcast I’m talking to the philosopher Daniel Dennett — whose new book takes on one of the biggest and most intriguing problems of all: consciousness itself. In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Prof Dennett makes the case that consciousness itself is a sort of illusion — and that the same evolutionary mechanisms that gave us opposable thumbs can account for our ability to do maths, compose music, wonder what would have happened had Germany won the Second World War, and think about the idea of thinking. This superbly lucid explicator tells us, too, about how “post-truth” is not just a political fad, but a threat to

Helen Nugent

Business rates, Barclays, mortgages and Centrica

The row over a sharp rise in business rates rumbles on – but now the government has bowed to sustained pressure and announced help for small firms. The Guardian reports that Philip Hammond will announce new measures in the budget on 8 March following comments by the communities secretary that more should be done ‘to level the playing field’. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, Theresa May said that small businesses left with the highest rate increases would be given help. Stamp duty The Times reports that ‘sharp increases in the stamp duty on expensive homes are costing the Treasury as much as £500 million a year’. According to new analysis by Paul Nash, a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The worrying tale of the British IS bomber

Ronald Fiddler doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, which perhaps explains the British Isis fighter’s decision to change his name. Either way, Fiddler’s death during a car bomb attack in Mosul has sparked an almighty row. It’s emerged that Fiddler is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid compensation – reportedly as much as £1m – by the Government after being released. The Times says the worrying element of this case is the flaw exposed in the way jihadists are monitored; ‘A chain of blunders’ allowed Fiddler to travel to Syria to join Isis in the first place, the paper says, and it’s difficult not

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Thank God for overpriced lawyers!

When you buy a house in Britain, there is an extensive and well-established series of checks you must perform to ensure the property is suitable for habitation. When undertaking a survey, you should ensure that the boundaries of the property conform to those recorded at the Land Registry, and that the property does not lie on a flood plain or risk structural damage from coastal erosion or subsidence. Unfortunately, there seems to be no mechanism to protect householders from the worst possible eventuality — which is to find out that you have a lawyer living next door. Wherever you have a shared wall or fence, there exist countless opportunities to

Bruce Anderson

Cats and clarets

Call me a sentimental old whatever, but watching a four-year old hearing The Tale of Samuel Whiskers for the first time, read by someone who could do the police in different voices, took one as far from the Waste Land as is possible. It also made me think about moggies, which brought back memories of a trip to Kabul. Outside the Portakabin where we were billeted, there was a notice: ‘Please do not bring cats into the living quarters.’ No one puts up an instruction like that without the expectation that it will be disobeyed. One can imagine why, and how very British. It is to the credit of the

Lucy Vickery

You’re toast

In Competition No. 2986 you were invited to submit a poem about a deadly foodstuff.   My inspiration for this assignment was the appalling news that toast can kill you, which is yet another depressing indication that everything good is bad for you. Or perhaps, as Max Gutmann suggests in the closing couplet of his winning entry, it’s safer simply to regard all food as a potential enemy.   Honourable mentions to Mae Scanlan and Jennifer Moore, and £25 each to the winners. D.A. Prince scoops the bonus fiver.   Amanita phalloides! Yes, my darling, just for you — hunter-gathered when your need is homely soup to add them to.

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why I’m glad that Unilever saw off predatory robot Kraft Heinz

I was sorry Kraft Heinz’s £115 billion bid for Unilever collapsed so fast — unveiled on Friday, it was dead by Sunday. Not that I saw the aggressor as a worthy potential victor; but a longer battle would have provided great material for column-sermons on good and bad capitalism. Aha, I hear you ask, but which side is which? Unilever is the Anglo-Dutch maker of Dove soap and Magnum ice creams. With its dual headquarters in London and Rotterdam, its multi-layered bureaucracy and its bosses who bang on about social responsibility, it might be seen as a big fat corporate proxy for the European Union — in urgent need of

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Killing spree of the fluffy green idiots

Who do you think was responsible for Europe’s biggest environmental disaster of the past three decades; one that caused more widespread damage and killed more people than even the nuclear accident at Chernobyl? Was it a) greedy and selfish capitalists, probably linked to Big Oil, riding roughshod over the stringent health and safety regulations our wise, caring politicians have designed to protect us and our natural environment? Or b) an alliance of fluffy green activists, campaigning journalists and virtue-signalling politicians, united on a noble mission to save the planet from the greatest environmental threat it has ever known? If you guessed b) then you may appreciate why we climate sceptics

Frank Field

Brutish Britain

Life in Britain has become much cruder, meaner and more spiteful practically everywhere. It can be seen in people’s behaviour on the street; in those abominable neighbours from hell; in companies piling up the profits with no care whatsoever for the degree to which they are sweating their workers on terms that, until quite recently, would have been unimaginable. The incivility of one to another can be seen most sharply and poignantly in the degree of cruelty to children which, at the beginning of my working life, would have had every alarm bell ringing wildly. Children have to be almost on the point of being murdered before they are taken

Mary Dejevsky

Make way for Ubercare

There is much to be faulted in Uber, which has branched out from delivering people into delivering meals, under the unappetising name UberEats. But even I, someone who can rarely bring herself to write the word ‘sharing’, as in economy, without inverted commas, am prepared to give credit where credit is due. Uber has made private door-to-door transport accessible to far more people than before. It has thus done a lot of people a favour and hugely expanded the market, harnessing new technology to do so. It has provided jobs for people who did not have them, or who prefer to work in the semi-autonomous Uber way. It’s made me,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Are satanic abuse cops 120 per cent gullible?

I got lost in the forest near my house while walking the dog the other week. The path I was on, and which I thought I knew, narrowed until it was scarcely a path at all. The trees closed in and brambles tore at my legs. Somewhere, high above, I could hear the importuning mew of a buzzard. And then I reached a small clearing where the tall grass and the broom had been flattened. There were signs that a fire had been lit in the centre, and there were the shadows of human footprints in the hard earth. I immediately felt sick inside — for I knew exactly and

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why we need to cancel the Oscars to save the Oscars

Oscar has a problem, and I say that as a fan. If I could, I’d take one of those famous statuettes by its tiny golden hand, and show it a happy life in the bars, restaurants and movie theatres of its native Hollywood. But, clearly, others don’t feel the same way. The number of people who tuned into the Academy Awards last year was the lowest it has been for eight years. Even the traditional box office boost for victorious movies isn’t necessarily worth as much as it used to be. Viewing figures and box office receipts are, however, only the visible tip of what is a deeper problem: the

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Tom Watson’s ‘dab’ dance at PMQs

Tom Watson and Jeremy Corbyn haven’t always been the best of pals but Mr S is pleased to see that Labour’s deputy leader was fully behind Corbyn at PMQs today. In fact, Watson seemed so supportive of his boss for a change that he applauded Corbyn’s questioning of the Prime Minister with a ‘dab’. The ‘dab’ – which involves hiding your face in the crook of your elbow, while stretching both arms out in a skyward salute – has been hailed as the latest ‘goal celebration craze‘ among football players, so it’s good to see Watson is in touch with popular culture. Labour’s deputy leader also joins the likes of failed presidential candidate Hillary