Society

Monday

Luke de Pulford

Islamic State’s ‘Jizya tax’ for Christians is pure propaganda

Christians continue to be slaughtered in the Middle East. But as reports of genocidal atrocities mount up, our governments have found a new reason to sit on their hands. Christians, the theory goes, don’t have it as bad as the Yazidis. As ‘people of the book’, Christians enjoy privileged status. Rather than suffering the full extent of Islamic State’s depravities, they can pay a tax (Jizya) in return for protection. It sounds credible and contains just enough theology to bamboozle the secular population of the international community. Here’s the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights: ‘While Christian communities still living in Daesh controlled territories live difficult and often

Helen Nugent

Parents willing to pay tens of thousands more to live near a top school

I have no recollection of my first day at school. I was four-years-old so it’s not surprising that I can’t dredge up the memory. I do recall, however, refusing to return to nursery after being scared witless by Father Christmas. Back then (late 1970s), kids were dropped off at a new school and expected to get on with it. Today it’s markedly different. Ahead of my four-year-old niece’s foray into education, she has visited the school at least twice and had a couple of home visits from her teachers. Luxury! But there were still tears this morning, from daughter and mum. And I’ll be fretting all day, desperate to know how

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn calls in UB40 to bolster his campaign

Although a poll in the Times last week suggested that Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour leadership with an even bigger mandate than last time, some party insiders claim it is a lot closer than many think. So, perhaps that’s why Corbyn has called in the help of… UB40. Yes, the British reggae band are to join Jeremy for a special press conference as part of his campaign. The Labour leader says he is ‘delighted’ to receive the endorsement of UB40 as they are ‘one of the most successful British reggae acts of all time’. Meanwhile, UB40 repay the compliment. Jimmy Brown, the drummer, says they support Corbyn because ‘he is

Helen Nugent

Employment, student accounts, food prices and homeowners

Ill-health or disability is forcing one in eight people to stop working before they reach the state pension age, according to the TUC. The union found almost half a million people have had to leave work for medical reasons within five years before they were due to retire. In March the Government announced an independent review into the state pension age. The Government said it already provides support for ill or disabled workers. Research by the TUC, however, points to a significant north/south divide. In the south west of England, just one in 13 people blamed sickness or disability for leaving work. However, that figure rises to one in seven in the

Robert Boutflower

Bologna

All right, I’ll admit it – where exactly is Bologna in Italy? If you are a devotee of all things Italian, particularly the food, then I expect you already know but… for the rest of us it’s ‘somewhere up North, maybe?’ And what can a ‘wine finder’ turn up? Well, the first thing to say is that it has an international airport, so you can get there via Ryanair or BA, or you can drive/train past Milan and keep going across the country to the eastern seaboard. Bologna, in all its glowing redness yet anonimity, sits in the middle of Emilia-Romagna’s Po valley and you really can’t miss it. That’s

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why is Mother Theresa criticised for not doing things that weren’t her job?

Mother Theresa has been canonised today; cue for contained rapture on the part of her Missionaries of Charity and supporters in Rome and a rather different kind of satisfaction on the part of her critics, who now have a useful opportunity to air their objections to her work and cult. It’s hard to think of two groups not so much at odds but at cross purposes. The BBC news reports on the canonisation by the excellent Caroline Wyatt rehearse some of the more familiar criticisms: her hospices lack the best medical equipment and good hygiene; moreover, she took money from dictators. And according to representatives of Hindu nationalist groups, she

Alec Marsh

London’s old elite is discovering how it feels to be priced out

‘Super-rich foreigners are “forcing” the old money elite out of London’s prime postcodes.’ So declares London’s Evening Standard newspaper – confirming what the rest of us knew anyway. Indeed it was in the Spectator three years ago that I pointed out that central London was turning into Venice – a zombie city devoid of actual life with absentee foreign owners undermining its identity. The lights aren’t on and no one’s at home, because they’re in Monaco or Dubai or Shanghai. And now, thanks to a new report, we all – including even the Evening Standard’s property correspondent – know it’s true. According to Dr Luna Glucksberg of the International Inequalities Institute (good

Saturday

Daniel Hannan

President Islam Karimov: ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’

Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan from 1990 – 2016, died yesterday following a stroke. Here’s what Daniel Hannan wrote about him in 2003: A strange little row has been bubbling away over the past two months concerning our ambassador to Tashkent. You may have seen the odd headline about it in the inside pages of the broadsheets but, unless you have a particular interest in diplomatic affairs, I suspect your eye will quickly have skipped on to the next story. Why, after all, should we be especially interested in Uzbekistan? A tremendously important region for Britain during the Great Game, of course, but hardly of vital strategic interest today. Yet the

Francis Wheen

How scheming ratbags spread lies on social media

It’s a safe bet that any post starting ‘What the mainstream media won’t tell you’, or words to that effect, will refer to something that has in fact been extensively reported in the ‘MSM’. And so it is here. I’m reproducing this Anonymous meme because a lovely Facebook friend of mine posted it, and it struck me that this is how many lies are spread on social media: scheming ratbags taking advantage of decent people’s better natures. After all, from what Anonymous say about William Kamkwamba he sounds great, so let’s sabotage the media conspiracy of silence by sharing his story. Kamkwamba is indeed an inspiring young man; he deserves

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: taking poetry in new directions

Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’) prompted me to ask for poems about either the North or South or one comparing the two. Midlands man John Priestland felt that something was missing: We know the North is at the top, The South is at the bottom, But isn’t there another part That Lucy has forgotten? But that didn’t stop the rest of you producing a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry that took me from the bridge table to North Korea and beyond. Impressive contributions from Hamish Wilson, Samantha Skyrme and Ann Drydale were narrowly

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Swedish model. How not to welcome refugees | 3 September 2016

For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration. And this was brought to stark British attention last week when a Birmingham schoolboy was murdered with a grenade in Gothenburg. So, what has gone wrong in Sweden? To answer that question, Lara Prendergast is joined on the Spectator podcast by Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi. Ivar says: ‘Basically the Swedish idealism ran into a

Friday

Tom Waterhouse

The inside story of how the Brexit vote was won

In the months before the referendum, the ‘Leave’ campaign’s press operation had been in control of the campaign. But in the last three weeks, the baton was passed over to the ground campaign to get us over the line. Running a good ground campaign relies on three key phases. The first two of these – identification and motivation – are largely self-explanatory. Find target voters then work out how to enthuse them. The final stage is about getting out the vote – making sure people actually go to the polling station. This means ensuring your supporters vote in greater numbers than the other side (what’s known as ‘differential turnout’). The key to

Toni Saad

Why won’t junior doctors just admit they want more money?

Junior doctors are striking again: this time, for five days in a row over several weeks. This level of industrial action is without precedent in the history of the NHS. Even though I will soon be employed as a junior doctor under the terms of the contract, I think the decision to strike is scandalous. In the early stages of this row, it was possible to sympathise with junior doctors’ discontent about having a contract imposed on them. Now it has become harder and harder to know what it will take to please them. The contract they were offered was a good deal — even the BMA said so. Yet for

Rachel Springall

One month on, what the base rate cut means for you

It’s a month since the Bank of England cut the base rate to 0.25 per cent, the lowest level in more than 300 years. As expected, this has dealt a severe blow to savers while the mortgage market continues to thrive. Savings The Bank of England’s decision to drop the base rate has officially fuelled the fire of rate cuts across the savings market, resulting in August becoming the worst month of the year for reductions. There were a devastating 354 cuts made, compared to just three rate rises. This means that for every rate rise during the month there were 118 cuts. Worse still, some providers’ reductions were over five

Helen Nugent

Jobs, lending, energy bills and inheritance

Companies have cut new graduate jobs for the first time in four years because of fears about the economy since the Brexit vote. The number of vacancies has fallen by 8 per cent compared with last year, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ annual survey. The Times reports that the latest figures follow four years of growth and last year the number of graduate jobs increased by 13 per cent. This year’s fall also reflects nervousness about the effect of the incoming apprenticeship levy, which will be introduced in April with the aim of raising cash from business to fund expanded training in the workplace, the association said. Meanwhile,

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

It’s no surprise fellow medics are turning against junior doctors

When the BMA announced a new round of strikes they will have been prepared for a backlash from certain quarters. The criticism yesterday from Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May, who accused striking doctors of ‘playing politics’, won’t have come as a surprise. But what is different about this latest, unprecedented industrial action are the attacks on junior doctors now coming from fellow medics. For the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to intervene as they did last night indicates a significant shift in this drawn-out dispute. Here’s what they said in a statement: ‘The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is disappointed at the prospect of further sustained industrial action by junior doctors.

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Queen’s Gambit rejected

One of the most reliable methods of frustrating chess computers is to play 1 d4 but then avoid the well-trodden paths of the Queen’s Gambit, in favour of delaying central occupation with c4. Instead white aims for an early e3, possibly supported by the queenside bishop fianchetto, or Bf4. The former is known as the Colle Attack, while the latter is called The London System. Such great masters as Zukertort, Capablanca, Alekhine and even our reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen, have used these less explored ways of entering the middlegame. Now the ever-industrious Cyrus Lakdawala has attempted to impose order and structure on the various transpositional possibilities and multifarious strategic

Raymond Keene

No. 424

White to play. This is from Palucha-Skettos, Bhubaneswar 2016. Here White destroyed the black position with a typical tactical thrust. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 6 September 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 … e3 Last week’s winner R.G. Chaplin, Woodford Green, Essex

Taki

High life | 1 September 2016

Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. Its president, Richard Dunhill, flew 32 backgammon players to New York and had them board the QEII for the return trip to Southampton. The backgammon players were a varied group. As with cricket of old, there were gentlemen and there were players. For players read hustlers and small-time con men. Among the gents were players such as Michael Pearson, now Lord Cowdray, some very nice Americans, like Porter Ijams, whose aunt was canonised, and yours truly. The hustlers were a more amusing bunch. There was Jean-Noël Grinda, a French tennis player

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 1 September 2016

A new footpath from the village down to the beach opened earlier this year to a great fanfare. It was cut through virgin woodland using JCBs and furnished with stout wooden National Trust gates, fences and handrails. At one point the path is lined with gigantic exotic plants, escapees from the ‘lost’ tropical garden of a long-since demolished old cliff-top house. What they are God only knows, but they are thriving magnificently beneath the shelter of the cliff. ‘It’s like going for a walk in bloody Africa,’ observed reactionary old Grandad to Oscar as we trotted down this path for the first time the other day. One of these triffids