Society

On Monday, Amber Rudd found herself in a difficult position in the Commons over the Home Office’s blunder-ridden child sexual abuse inquiry. In response to an urgent question from Lisa Nandy, she was forced to confess that despite her previous statements, she had known that Dame Lowell Goddard quit as chair amid allegations of racism rather than loneliness. Now onto its fourth chair, Alexis Jay, MPs are fast losing patience with the inquiry. While Rudd has the undesirable task of taking the heat over an inquiry set up by her boss Theresa May, today it was the turn of Home Office staff and inquiry members to offer their version of events to the Home Affairs

There’s always one. One colleague, friend or family member who starts banging on about Christmas months in advance. One smug person who risks a punch in the face for boasting ‘I’ve done all my Xmas shopping’ before the clocks have gone back. Thanks all the same but I don’t want to know how many days it is until December 25. I have no interest in seeing the M&S festive range. And I have zero appetite for a sneak preview of the John Lewis Christmas ad. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and all that it entails. The bulging stocking (yes, my mum still does this), the tin of Quality Street, the

The fall of the pound has been the political event of the week, but is it all bad news? Many thanks to Civitas for allowing us to republish the below essay, an extract from a pamphlet (pdf) about the merits of a low currency and case for keeping the pound at its new competitive levels.  Many people in the market and much of the commentariat are currently concerned with the recent weakness of the pound on the exchanges. They are barking up the wrong tree. The real sterling crisis is that the pound has been too high. Accordingly, the Brexit-inspired bout of sterling weakness was extremely good news for the

The seasonal challenge to submit a poem about autumn in the style of the poet of your choice was predictably popular and brought in a stellar entry: high fives all round. There were a couple of nifty twists on Philip Larkin; G.M. Southgate’s autumnal take on his poem ‘The Trees’, for example, which begins: The trees are falling out of leaf Like something almost being lost They’re waiting for the autumn frost The summer has been all too brief And here’s a taste of Basil Ransome-Davies’s clever reworking of ‘This Be the Verse: They let you down, the leaves on trees That get the accolades in spring, But five months

Both Brendan and I have written about the strange martyrdom of Louis Smith.  But here is an ugly coda. As readers may recall, the Olympic athlete got drunk at a friend’s wedding and, along with a friend, ended up doing a joke version of the Muslim call to prayer. Something to do with Aladdin apparently. Anyhow, before they knew it the phone-video had made its way onto social media and from there to The Sun. Soon sinister Muslim spokespeople were reminding everyone that their religion was to be ‘respected’ and never to be ‘mocked’. Smith has apparently been getting death threats since then. All of which tells us nothing new

I first encountered the Triskelion, the traditional coat of arms of the Isle of Man, when I saw Laurence Oliver’s film of Shakepeare’s Richard III. At the crucial Battle of Bosworth, Lord Stanley, the Earl of Derby and feudal lord of the Isle of Man switches sides and betrays Richard. His three-legged triskelion banners are seen hurtling down on King Richard’s forces just before the immortal lines, ‘A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!’   The only knights in action on the Isle of Man in the past weeks have been those on the chessboard. Congratulations are due to the organisers and sponsors for attracting a hugely powerful field