Society

Thursday

4 Aug 2016

Secularism’s view on violence is less humane than Christianity’s

Let’s say that a man kills a few people at random in your neighbourhood – on the street in broad daylight. Is it better or worse if he justifies his killing spree as part of a holy crusade? In other words, which is worse – terrorism or meaningless psychotic violence? I am aware that this is something I perhaps should not admit, but when reports emerge of such attacks, I sometimes catch myself hoping that it is terrorism, not just meaningless madness. Maybe the journalist in me wants a chunkier story, linked up to world events. But the main motive is wider, I think: we can view the evil of

Tom Goodenough

‘Stimulus now’: Bank of England cuts interest rate down to 0.25pc

As expected, the Bank of England has cut base interest rates down to 0.25 per cent- the first movement since rates were cut to an ’emergency’ low of 0.5 per cent in March 2009. There’s a “clear case for stimulus, and stimulus now” said Mark Carney, BoE governor – so the money printing machine is being put back into action. About £60 billion is to be created electronically, and used to lend money to the government via gilt purchases. It will save Theresa May’s government a fortune: the rate of interest charged on the many loans it takes (ie, gilt yields) collapsed to 0.63pc today; almost half the rate they

Harry Wallop

Which? is turning into Britain’s overbearing nanny

Which? was once upon a time known as the Consumers Association, and it used to do a sterling job of explaining which washing machine to buy and how to avoid being ripped off at a bureau de change. But the charity now seems to have become less interested in fighting consumers’ corner and more interested in being Britain’s nanny-in-chief. This morning it has rounded on supermarkets — once again — for promoting obesity. Its research has found that special offers and promotions in supermarkets tend to be used to push sugary drinks, chocolate and breakfast cereals rather than carrots and cucumbers. Its researchers found that of the 77,165 promotions they looked at, 53

Andrew Gilligan

How the British bobby turned into Robocop

To the casual glance it looks like a normal police car — same markings, same lights, same faces at the wheel. Only the two small yellow circles, one at each of the top corners of the windscreen, tell you that this is a mobile armoury. It will often be a BMW X5: a SUV’s suspension copes better with the weight of the weapons, the gun safe, the ballistic shields. Inside, the occupants will be wearing Glock 17 pistols and have access to weapons which could include, in ascending order of bullet size and ‘penetrative power’, the Benelli Super 90 shotgun, Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, the G36 carbine, the

Laura Whitcombe

We’ll need Noah and his Ark to escape the new flood of junk mail

I recently returned home from a fortnight’s holiday only to fight to get my front door open. Not because the emptied bins had been left on the doorstep yet again, or because I’d left a key in the lock. No. Instead, a sea of junk mail had flooded my hall, jamming the door as I tried to get in. The worst offenders were local take-aways and restaurants. I counted eight Domino’s pizza menus alone, which given how long I was away means the chain must be clocking up flyer drops at a rate of at least one every two days. These were accompanied by countless broadband, TV, phone, clothing and homeware

Helen Nugent

Interest rates, retirement, digital detox and luxury homes

One story dominates the financial news today: the prospect of the Bank of England cutting the base rate for the first time in seven years. It is widely expected that interest rates will drop to 0.25 per cent at lunchtime. The base rate has stayed at 0.5 per cent since March 2009. Last month the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted to hold interest rates, despite economists predicting a cut. While a reduction is by no means a sure thing, there is increasing pressure on the Bank to act after recent poor economic data. ‘Economic data since the referendum have weakened sharply. There is a real need for more stimulus now,’ said

Tom Goodenough

London knife rampage: Police hold Norwegian-Somali suspect

One woman has been killed and five injured after a knifeman went on the rampage in Russell Square, London, late on Thursday night. Police said the lady who died was an American in her sixties. Those injured were British, Israeli, Australian and American. Police earlier said ‘terrorism is one possibility being explored at this stage’ but went on to say they found no evidence of radicalization or anything to suggest the man held – a 19-year-old Norwegian of Somalian ancestry – had been motivated by terrorism. The attack happened just after 10.30pm on Thursday and the response from police – on the day the Met unveiled their new specialist anti-terrorism squad – was

Roger Alton

A gold standard of cheating

With the Olympics almost upon us our thoughts turn inexorably to the art of cheating. And while we should deplore all malignant efforts to gain an unfair advantage, cheating is an integral part of the Olympic story. After all, if, as Damon Runyon said, all life is six-to-five against, who can blame a few for trying to tilt the balance back a bit? Even the ancients did it. The Romans were said to have used their shields to reflect sunlight on to their testicles. This increased their testosterone, and performance levels rose. I wonder if this still works on everyday domestic tasks where performance can be a problem? Remember the

Anthony Whitehead

Blood and soil

A declaration of nationality is a profound statement. To say ‘I am British’ suggests that somehow I am composed of Britishness — that my fabric, my very being, is British. Except I personally, apparently, am not particularly British. The results are back from my DNA ethnicity test, and I am 63 per cent Irish, 20 per cent Western European, 11 per cent Scandinavian and 3 per cent Iberian. How do I feel about my nationality now? Half a test-tube of saliva was all it took for Ancestry, the genealogical organisation, to come up with these figures and, once you get results like this, the immediate reaction is to say: ‘Well it doesn’t

Paul Wood

Clueless in Syria

The other day I was speaking to a Kurdish journalist who was held in Isis captivity for ten months. He and a colleague had had the bad luck to run into an Isis checkpoint in Syria. ‘How do you perform the midday prayer?’ they were asked after their car was waved to a halt. Unable to answer — they were not believers — they were immediately beaten around the head. Then one of the jihadis from the checkpoint was put into the back of their car and they were told to drive to the Isis base. The fighter had a pistol pointed at them the whole time, which was superfluous

The Spectator

Entrenched wisdom

From ‘Armour of offence’, The Spectator, 5 August 1916: The soldier must never forget that it is his business to stand upon the offensive, not upon the defensive, and that for the offensive the power of rapid movement is essential. That is why, as the Germans are finding, and as the Austrians certainly found in Poland, you may make your trenches too defensible, too deep, too narrow, and generally too good. Deeply dug and laboriously protected trenches are splendid if judged only by their power to save people’s lives, so long as there is no in-fighting, but they may become veritable death-traps. In order to drive your enemy back you

Kevin O'Sullivan

Zero tolerance, zero sanity

For 20 months, I stood accused of a hate crime: homophobically motivated common assault. The British Transport Police pursued my case with extraordinary zeal. So too did the Crown Prosecution Service. I was plunged into a world where common sense withered and died. The nightmare began when I was travelling home to London after a funeral in Kent. I was chatting with a friend on the train when a strange man started shouting at us from across the carriage. ‘Shut up!’ he yelled before accusing us of conducting a sexist and misogynistic conversation at high volume. This was, in his opinion, ‘offensive’. Brendan O’Neill and Kevin O’Sullivan discuss the real hate crime

Brendan O’Neill

We are not a hateful nation

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country. It’s been bad for years, they say, but has become worse since the EU referendum. Police forces tell us that hate crime has ‘soared’ in recent weeks; there’s been an ‘explosion of blatant hate’, according to some newspapers. Twenty-first-century Britain, it seems, is a pretty rancid, rage-fuelled place. Brendan O’Neill and Kevin O’Sullivan discuss the real hate crime scandal: If you feel this doesn’t tally with your experience of life in Blighty in 2016,

Lucy Vickery

May day

In Competition No. 2959 you were invited to submit a poem on a political theme entitled ‘May day’. There was a good turnout, but the mood was overwhelmingly bleak despite the efforts of a relentlessly optimistic few, Tim Raikes and Alanna Blake among them. But there was much to admire, including a neat riff from Frank McDonald on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (‘Shall Maggie be compared to Theresa May / Who is more cautious and more temperate?’, a ‘Jabberwocky’-inspired submission from Andrew Bamji and Alex Lynford’s clever Blakean turn. Nicholas Hodgson, Martin John, George Simmers, G.M. Davis, John Whitworth and Michael Copeman were on top form too. The winners are printed below and

Hugo Rifkind

Thank God for Sir Philip Green, the perfect modern hate figure

Good old Sir Philip Green. Where would we be without him? So often, those national hate figures let you down. That lady who put a cat in a bin in 2010, for example. Bit of a tragic loony, in the end. Likewise Tony Blair. Not this one. His diamond has no flaw, and we can all join in. He’s perfectly awful in every way. He looks the part, too. Rich-guy hair, of the sort most rich guys don’t deign to have any more. Nonexistent at the front, lacquered and far too long at the back. Brilliant. Clothes that don’t quite fit, because he clearly pays a stylist to tell him

Michael Henderson

Munich notebook

It has been a strange week in Munich; a week of deceptively cool mornings, afternoons hot enough to fry eggs and thunderstorms at twilight that have turned streets into streams. A week of reflection, too, capped last Sunday by a service of remembrance in the cathedral, attended by Chancellor Merkel, to honour the nine young lives taken in the shooting at the shopping centre which sent a tremor through Freistaat Bayern, and through the nation. One more tremor. It has been the summer of terror in Bavaria. Würzburg, Ansbach, Munich. But the Münchners have taken it well, in as much as one ever takes these things well. Along Maximilianstrasse, where

Wednesday

3 Aug 2016

Andrew Griffiths

The delivery drones are coming – and will be a complete nuisance

You can’t watch the video promoting the new Amazon drone delivery service without checking the date for signs of 1 April. While superficially absurd, there is something distinctly unsettling about this short film. It’s as though someone has made a satirical treatment of our consumer age, a reshaping of Chaplin’s Modern Times. The Charlie in this video is Jeremy Clarkson. He describes the process of the drone delivery service, as a parcel is prepared in an Amazon warehouse located at their research base ‘somewhere outside Cambridge’. ‘A miracle of modern technology is despatched,’ he tells us, as the warehouse roof opens like the top of a volcano in a Bond film. ‘It is an Amazon drone

George Hull

Can the Night Tube save London’s nightlife?

On Friday 19 August, London Underground will run its first night tube services as the capital congratulates itself on becoming the nation’s first 24-hour city. But while the Mayor’s office is intent on running trains for the city’s night owls, the rest of local government seems determined to tuck them up in bed. In the past 10 years, a savage assault on our nightlife has caused 40 per cent of London’s music venues to close. Those that are left face a constant struggle to retain a late license. George Hull, Mark Wilding and Kevin Dunning on the 24-hour tube: Tonight, if you trek into the city, you’ll be sorely disappointed

Steerpike

So Yvette Cooper, where are your refugees?

Yesterday the Home Office won its appeal against a landmark ruling that allowed four Syrian refugees living in the main camp in Calais to come to the UK. While the refugees will be allowed to stay, the appeal means that it will be difficult for more refugees to come to Britain this way in the future. Following the decision Yvette Cooper labelled Theresa May ‘a disgrace’. The Labour politician says she is appalled that May pursued this appeal and called on her to do more to help Syrian refugees. However, Mr S couldn’t help but think back to Cooper’s own promises when it comes to refugees. Last year, she was one of a number

Helen Nugent

Don’t expect the authorities to protect your home from flooding

Some years back, when I announced my decision to return to Manchester, I became the butt of a few jokes from my London pals. They mostly consisted of the usual clichés concerning whippets, flat caps and black puddings. There was also mention of ‘it’s grim up North’ and the weather. I’ll give them that last one. There’s no getting around it: it rains here. Where I live, on the border of Greater Manchester and Lancashire in the shadow of the Pennines, rainfall is such that I am constantly battling slugs and leaky gutters. Last year the floodwaters enveloped my small town. The cricket ground and the football club were completely inundated,