Society

On a windswept square beside the river Spree, across the road from Berlin’s Museum Island, there is a brand new building which epitomises Germany’s shifting attitude to its imperial past. For 500 years this was the site of the Berliner Schloss, seat of Prussia’s royal family. After the second world war it was demolished, and now it’s being rebuilt from scratch. The Berliner Schloss has always been a barometer of German history. It was the residence of Frederick the Great, that daft enlightened despot who put Prussia on the map. In 1914, Kaiser Bill addressed his loyal subjects from its balcony. In 1918, Karl Liebknecht stood on this balcony to

This is an extract from Hugo Rifkind’s column in the new issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow. Remember how much fun it used to be getting a new phone? I think of a friend a few years ago who was getting his first iPhone. He’d been on a waiting list, and he found out it was coming in on a Saturday when his newish girlfriend was coming to stay. She’d want to spend the weekend having wild and inventive twentysomething sex, he realised with a sinking heart, and perhaps going to the local farmers’ market. Whereas he’d want to spend it playing with his new iPhone. So he told her

I could recite the standard advice on instructing an estate agent in my sleep. Always invite three to do a valuation, don’t go for the one who quotes the highest asking price, and haggle on commission. However, it’s not until you sell your own house that you realise this mantra doesn’t even begin to prepare you for the shark-infested waters ahead. Here was the biggest investment I have ever made, my only source of equity, the once-dream home where I had raised two children. Here was my soul writ large on Rightmove. Tread softly? Any pride I once felt was trampled into the ten tons of dust disturbed by ‘decluttering’ it

In my Dispatches documentary on the generation wars, which has just aired on Channel 4, I interviewed Iain Duncan Smith about the pensions triple lock. He thinks it has turned into a monster, and discussed how it led to his resignation. He cut working-age benefits and believed that he had cut to the bone. But he was asked to go further. The ‘triple lock’ – that pensions should rise by earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent, whichever was the highest – was intended a piece of spin. But when inflation hit zero, that turned out to be one of the most expensive pledges David Cameron ever made. Duncan Smith told me how,