Society

Perhaps the worst excuse for Britain’s massive international aid budget is that the cash will stem immigration pressures because richer countries emit fewer emmigrants. As economists cal tell you reverse is true: emigration is an expensive journey and when the poorest countries become wealthier, more people can afford to make it. So Priti Patel was not quite right when she told the Independent’s website that… …tackling the global challenges of our time such as drought and disease which fuel migration, insecurity and instability is the right thing to do and is firmly in Britain’s interest. Tackling drought and disease is, unquestionably, the right thing to do. But the link to migration is rather more complicated. Paradoxically, it is

In 1942, a man called Manfred Alexander turned up, unannounced, on my grandfather’s doorstep in Berlin. My grandfather knew him only slightly. He hadn’t seen him for several years. Like countless Jews, Manfred had been herded onto an eastbound train the year before, bound for God knows where. He’d ended up in a Concentration Camp in Minsk, run by the Ukrainian SS. There, after a terrible winter, a German guard whom he hardly knew hid him beneath the coal in the tender of a steam train which was carrying wounded German soldiers back to Berlin. Back in Berlin, cold and hungry, Manfred headed straight for my grandfather’s apartment on Grolmanstrasse.

Although drinking excessive levels of alcohol is up there with Olympic cycling and democracy as things the British excel at, the same cannot be said for dealing with the aftermath. Over the festive season we splash more than £2 billion on trips to the pub as punters take exhortations to have a merry Christmas a bit too literally. But our subsequent hangovers cost the economy almost £260 million through sick days and a lack of productivity. A night on the tiles tends to leave people feeling a little defenceless the next day. However, for those of us who have no option but to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning,

At my local carol concert this week, I couldn’t help but despair at the state of the singing. It was just so dire. And it got me thinking: is the same dreadful crooning taking place at churches and carol concerts up and down the country? Are the tone-deaf spoiling age-old songs elsewhere too? If so, it’s a worrying indictment of just how bad British singing has become. Fortunately, when I was growing up I was always in choirs. Being in the Gluck glitterati, I lived a sheltered life, hidden from the tone deaf and silent myriad. There was never a sermon too dull, or wedding too icky, when I was exposed to the hymn belters.

Christmas, for many people, begins at exactly 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve. It’s the moment when everything stops, frantic present-wrapping, mince-pie making and tree-decorating ceases and calm briefly takes hold. The reason? A single boy treble whose voice, clear and fragile as glass, pierces through the chaos with those familiar words: ‘Once in Royal David’s city/ Stood a lowly cattle shed…’. The service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, and its annual broadcast on BBC Radio 4 is as essential a part of contemporary Christmas folklore as stockings and Santa Claus, plum pudding and presents. Ageless and timeless, it seems as though there must always have been

I believe it was Christmas 1971, and I was up in Phu Bai, north of Danang, south of Hue. It was a miserable time, I was lonely and my career as a journalist was going nowhere. There wasn’t even any fighting going on to keep one’s mind occupied. On Christmas Eve I went to a Catholic church and was the only round-eyed man there. I prayed rather hard and after that, as by miracle, all my prayers were answered. I became a roving correspondent for an American weekly and have never looked back. To read more from our Spectator survey of answered prayers, click here