Society

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Yup. The left’s problem is that it never ‘calls out’ bigotry

What has the left been doing wrong? This is a question which has taxed many minds. But at last we have an answer – from the ever reliable Hadley Freeman of the Guardian. The first part of her paragraph below makes no grammatical sense whatsoever – but it’s the sentence I’ve put in italics that does it for me. ‘Similarly, terms such as “mainstream media, or MSM” (translation: journalism I don’t like), “experts” (people who say things I don’t like) and “identity politics” (politics that don’t assume the primacy of straight white men) were redefined, while not-very-codified euphemisms such as “swarm” and “global order” continue to perpetuate racism and antisemitism. And

Toby Young Toby Young

Press regulation will silence pesky gadflies like me

Nineteen years ago I was threatened with a libel suit by Harold Evans because of an article I’d written in the Spectator about his departure as president of the New York publishing company Random House. Via his solicitors, Evans threatened to sue me for libel unless I paid his legal costs, gave a sum of money to charity and signed an undertaking that I would never write about him again. I can’t claim to have been a high-minded journalist taking on a corrupt businessman. It was more of a Mickey-taking piece, pointing out that the former Sunday Times editor, once a titan of British journalism, had become a humourless, self-important

Helen Nugent

Zoinks! When will financial firms stop pillaging our childhood memories?

I watched some extraordinary television yesterday. It was the kind of TV that makes your eyes widen and your jaw drop to the floor. Not Sherlock, obviously. Much as I love the uptight detective, I know what I’m getting when I press the play button. I mean Morph, the animated clay character who made his debut back in 1977 and has now been recreated for the Sky Kids channel. You read that right, Morph. In a homage to the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and The Sugarhill Gang, the legendary American hip-hop group, the diminutive children’s favourite and his cream-coloured pal Chas change (or, er, morph) into a couple of seasoned

Helen Nugent

House prices, Lloyds, pensions and credit cards

If you’re still lamenting the fact that Christmas is over and you’re back at work, there’s some positive financial news this morning. According to Halifax, house prices increased by 6.5 per cent last month compared to December 2015. It seems that Brexit worries have yet to hit the UK housing market. Halifax also said that the average house price was £222,484 in December, up 1.7 per cent on November, a bigger rise than had been expected. For the final three months of 2016, house prices were 2.5 per cent in front. According to the BBC, Martin Ellis, housing economist at Halifax, predicts that ‘while demand will wane this year, house prices

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: An overdue overhaul for mental health and May’s Trump-sized opportunity

Theresa May is launching yet another attempt to define herself as a politician today with a major speech on tackling the ‘hidden injustices’ of mental illness. The Prime Minister has won plaudits for taking on an issue which often gets ignored, says the Daily Telegraph. Yet it’s true that we have been here before, the paper says – pointing out that David Cameron made a similar pledge only a year ago. So what’s different? The Telegraph says there are ‘obvious benefits’ to May’s strategy to finally get to grips with this issue. But with the NHS in such a mess, her targets will be ‘hard to achieve’. There’s little doubt,

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC struggles with the N-word

Since Netflix released The Crown, the network has received much praise for its dramatisation of the Queen’s early years. In fact, the critical acclaim has led some screenwriters to declare that they would now rather write for Netflix than the BBC. Happily, last night’s Golden Globe awards gave cause for celebration to both parties. While the BBC drama The Night Manager won several gongs, The Crown, too, came away triumphant — winning best television series while Claire Foy picked up the best actress gong for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II. So, happy days? Perhaps not. Mr S was curious to hear that Netflix was not name-checked once this morning on Radio

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

‘Men against girls’ was a fitting description for Northampton Town’s 5-0 loss

Welcome to 2017! And eight days in, it’s time for one of those apologies again. You know, the cringing acts of self-abasement issued in order to save someone’s job and for which there was no need whatsoever. Northampton Town got well and truly stuffed by Bristol Rovers on Saturday. Five nil. And Bristol Rovers aren’t much to write home about – even Charlton hammered them. So Northampton manager Rob Page was incensed. He lambasted his team at half time and later said that it had been a case of ‘men against girls’. Yup. You know what’s coming. Here’s his apology: ‘After the match I made a comment, when speaking to

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Want to make a subject more appealing to students? Add a ‘trigger warning’

Before you read any further, be warned that this post contains some shockingly racy material. Well, not really – I just wanted to make sure you read beyond the first sentence. That’s what ‘adult content’ warnings are really for. When some mediocre TV drama begins with a warning about ‘scenes of a sexual nature’, I don’t suppose I’m the only person laying aside the remote and saying ‘oh goody!’ So I’m glad to hear that the ‘faux-warning’ is being extended to the study of religion at university. Students at Glasgow are being given ‘trigger warnings’ before being taught about the crucifixion of Jesus – more specifically, before being shown some

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Bitcoin is booming – is drug-taking the reason why?

The FTSE 100 ended the year strong, at 7142, and reopened even stronger. For 2016 overall the index gained 14 per cent, with multinational mining giants as top performers, while the pound lost 16.5 per cent against the dollar — those facts being closely related, since they mean London blue-chips are still cheaper in dollars than they were 12 months ago. Current optimism rests on the idea of a Trump spending spree on US infrastructure, but such is the perversity of markets that if common City wisdom decides that Brexit will actually boost the UK economy, stocks may fall as the pound resurges and foreign investors take profits. Meanwhile bitcoin,

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

If you want more Katie Hopkins, campaigning for press regulation is the way to go

Katie Hopkins did something dreadful this week, which is not unusual, because she craves such things. She retweeted praise — also not unusual, for she is narcissistic for a masochist — from a Twitter account called AntiJuden SS. The page even featured a swastika, should AntiJuden SS not have been clear indication enough. For Hopkins, however, neo-Nazi praise is a dog making love to your ankle. It would repel most people, but for her it still counts. Fake outrage begat fake outrage and Hopkins de-tweeted the retweet, and apologised: ‘My New Year’s resolution is to show contrition.’ To show contrition, not to be contrite; that is quite precise for Hopkins.

Saturday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The problem for Jamie’s Italian isn’t Brexit. It’s the menu, the prices and the narcissism

Jamie’s Italian is closing six branches, blaming Brexit. After all, what else could explain the lack of customers? The below Spectator review, from August 2015, offers some suggestions Jamie’s Italian is squeezed into the Devonshire Arms on Denman Street, Soho, borne on the duplicitous winds of TV shows and book deals. It’s an odd fit, like a Flump meeting Dante. The Devonshire was a pub at the end of the world, a Victorian dystopia made of violence and despair. Now Jamie Oliver — an aghast teenager running to fat even as he declares war on the Turkey Twizzler and the civilisation that wrought it — has sucked it into his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s extraordinary opportunity

It is the fate of all new prime ministers to be compared with their recent predecessors. Theresa May has already been accused of being the heir to the micro-managing Gordon Brown. Her allies, meanwhile, see a new Margaret Thatcher, an uncompromising Boadicea destined to retrieve sovereignty from Europe. But perhaps a more fitting model for May would be a less recent Labour prime minister: Clement Attlee. When Labourites reminisce about Attlee, it isn’t so much the man himself who makes them misty-eyed. It is the achievements of those who worked for him — Nye Bevan, Ernest Bevin and the rest. Attlee’s government created the welfare state and the National Health

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

How mass immigration is turning London back into a religious city

The bewildering influx of immigrants into London has had one effect that no one could have predicted 20 years ago: it’s making our capital city religious again. We’ve noticed – but only up to a point. Islam is visible: the women in niqabs, the new mosques, the Halal butchers. But the transformation of Christianity in London is harder to spot. If you asked the average Londoner how many Sunday churchgoers in the city were black, I suspect he or she would be startled by the answer: about half of them. My guest on this week’s Holy Smoke podcast is Ben Judah, whose knowledge of the demography of London was picked up by

Rachel Springall

2016 was a year for borrowers (pity the savers). What’s in store for 2017?

Few people are shedding any tears over the end of 2016, least of all savers. But it was a bumper year for borrowers. Let’s take a look at what happened to financial products in 2016 – and what’s in store for savers and borrowers in 2017.  Mortgages and housing market Last year saw a welcome increase in competition among mortgage lenders thanks to cheap funding from the Government, but the lowest of the low rates will not be around forever. HSBC withdrew the lowest fixed rate on the market at 0.99 per cent towards the end of 2016, which could give other lenders the green light to change their own

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May won’t get a better chance to deal with the social care crisis

What is the greatest problem facing Theresa May this year? The Prime Minister is preparing for her speech on what Brexit means (in which she will presumably have to speak in sentences rather than using random and meaningless slogans), but that’s not the only major policy issue that she should deal with in 2017. As I explain in this week’s magazine, Cabinet ministers are growing increasingly agitated at what they see as a paltry response to the social care crisis. As MPs, they are being lobbied by furious council leaders who say that nothing announced so far even comes close to alleviating the crisis. As ministers, many of them see the

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Britain’s booming economy and ‘whinging’ Whitehall

The front page of the Times makes happy reading for the Government this morning with its news that Britain’s economy grew at a faster rate than any other leading economy in the world last year. But while politicians are keen to act as cheerleaders on occasions like this, they are somewhat more reluctant to mention another ‘metric of success: immigration’. So says the Guardian in its editorial in which it argues that foreign workers wanting to come to Britain is a sign of just how healthy our economy is. Theresa May faces a challenge, the paper says, in addressing the worries of workers who want immigration to be controlled, while not

David Whitehouse

The death of the global warming ‘pause’ has been greatly exaggerated

The global warming ‘pause’ never existed, say the headlines. It’s a claim that has been made before, only to be refuted, yet now it’s back again. If there is one topic that sends a small subset of climate scientists’ temperature into the stratosphere, it’s the topic of the global warming ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’. This is the idea that global surface temperatures haven’t changed much for almost 20 years. Never in my experience of science have I come across a topic like it, and that’s because it means nothing, and everything. Global warming is about energy imbalance. Greenhouse gasses stop heat leaving the earth, so the planet is getting warmer. This is fundamental

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Missed chances

Magnus Carlsen has retained the World Championship but only after Sergei Karjakin, the challenger, missed some glorious opportunities. In game 9 Karjakin, already a point ahead in the match, built up a formidable attacking position, only to miss the coup juste at the critical moment.   Karjakin-Carlsen, New York (Game 9) 2016 (see diagram 1)   In the diagram position, Karjakin played 39 Bxf7+ which fizzled out to a draw after 39 … Kxf7 40 Qc4+ Kg7 41 d5 Nf5 42 Bc3+ Kf8 43 Bxa1 Nxh4+ 44 Qxh4 Qxd5 45 Qf6+ Qf7. What Karjakin missed was 39 Qb3 when all the variations work in his favour, e.g. 39 … Nf5

Raymond Keene

no. 438

White to play. This is from Carlsen–Karjakin, New York play-off (Game 4) 2016. What was Carlsen’s stunning move to retain the world title? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 10 January or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Nf5 Last week’s winner Iain Chadwick, Walton, Cheshire

Peter Jones

From Socrates to Osborne

Ex-chancellor George Osborne is planning a book to be titled The Age of Unreason. He says that ‘it will be my attempt to understand why populist nationalism is on the rise in our western democracies’. An Athenian would have been most surprised by that title’s implications. If the ancient Greeks are famous for anything, it is for the invention of western ‘philosophy’. By that is usually meant the attempt to explain the world in humanly intelligible terms, i.e. by the exclusive use of reason and evidence, without calling in aid the supernatural. This sort of thinking, begun by eastern Greeks in the 7th century BC, reached something of an apogee