Society

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

From now on, we must all be equally stupid

A lecturer at a reasonably well-respected northern plate-glass university was somewhat perplexed by a student who complained about her poor marks for an essay. She had a statement of Special Educational Needs. She insisted that this had not been taken into account in the marking of her paper. My acquaintance was hauled before the university authorities to explain why he had marked her so low. ‘Because it was awful work, the work of a cretin,’ he replied. Ah, perhaps, they told him. But you haven’t taken into account the fact that she has Special Educational Needs. That’s why the paper was awful. So you need to allow for that fact

Claire Fox

Archers abusers

It’s been going on for months now and I must make a confession. I secretly endure a nightly battering in the privacy of my home; it’s been relentless, torturous and psychologically damaging. But before anyone rushes to rescue me or phones a government helpline, fearing I am the victim of some dastardly wife beater — I should explain that the culprit is Radio 4’s The Archers and its relentless and addictive domestic abuse storyline. My torment was supposed to end last Sunday night, with the conclusion of Helen Titchener’s trial for stabbing her bullying, much-hated husband Rob. When the jury foreman announced not guilty, I was with the rest of

Roger Alton Roger Alton

This looks like the greatest rugby side ever

British Lions fans of anervous disposition should avoid the telly of a Saturday morning. Live before your very eyes, as the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship unfolds, is the rebirth of an extraordinary new All Blacks side, now without Carter, McCaw, Ma’a Nonu and all. And, scarily, evenbetter than that World Cup-winning side. Warren Gatland, be very afraid. Our own Maro Itoje, the Saracens and England lock, wins every game he plays. The All Blacks win every game they play. How many players eligible for the Lions would get into the current Kiwi starting XV? Probably just Itoje. And how many from the rest of the world would get in? Again,

Emily Rhodes

London’s lost rivers

I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep of Farringdon Road below and realised that it had to be the path of a river, not just a road. Indeed, I was soon to learn that the river Fleet runs directly beneath, coursing down to meet the Thames by Blackfriars Bridge. The Fleet is perhaps the most famous of London’s lost rivers; it was once large enough for boats to navigate it, and an anchor has been discovered as far up as Kentish Town. As for the lower stretch of the Fleet, its earliest recorded cargo were the stones

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The new world of work is a jungle but don’t call workers ‘animals’

The TUC general secretaryFrances O’Grady doesn’t get a lot of airtime. Compared with predecessors a generation ago, such as Vic Feather and Len Murray, she is all but invisible. But in her Congress speech at Brighton on Monday, she struck a note that must have resonated with many of the public who have no idea who she is when she spoke of ‘greedy businesses that treat workers like animals’. She was referring to zero-hours contracts, below-minimum-wage rates such as those effectively paid at Sports Direct’s Shirebrook warehouse, and rock-bottom fees per delivery offered to self-employed Hermes parcel-van drivers and Deliveroo fast-food couriers. And of course anyone not fundamentally opposed to

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

In a Birmingham jail, I found the point of Michael Gove

I went to prison last week, in Birmingham. Early start, off on a train from Euston. It was my kids’ first day back at school, as well, so I called them just before I went through the gates. ‘Daddy’s in prison?’ said my seven-year-old, incredulously. ‘Listen,’ I said to my wife. ‘She’s not allowed to turn up in her classroom and tell everybody that her daddy’s in prison.’ And then she laughed and I laughed, and I went inside and handed over my phone and went through a gate, and then another gate and then another gate and then so many more gates I rather lost count, and then I

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

A remarkable testament of hope for Zimbabwe

‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.’ This comes from Robert Browning’s ‘Epilogue’. It is quoted (though not of himself) in a staggering book by an author who in my eyes holds as good a claim to exemplify its spirit as anyone in the 20th-century history of Africa. Yes, anyone, including the many brave black freedom fighters, from Nelson Mandela down, who kept their heads held high when the odds seemed all against them. Even on Robben Island, even in

Lucy Vickery

Selfie | 15 September 2016

In Competition No. 2965, an enormously popular one, you were invited to write a poem about a verse form, written in that form. It was Edna St Vincent Millay’s sonnet-about-the-sonnet ‘I will put Chaos into fourteen lines’ that inspired this challenge but there are other similar examples — Robert Burns’s fine ‘A Sonnet upon Sonnets’, for one: ‘Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings;/ What magic myst’ries in that number lie!…’ There were plenty of poems about the sonnet in all its guises, but I was also drowning in limericks, clerihews, double dactyls, haikus, cinquains, pantoums, ottava rima, terza rima… Accomplished entries from D.A. Smith, Jane Blanchard, Frank McDonald, Hugh King,

Wednesday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Comment threads are closing, thankfully – but the underpants brigade have won

 ‘Oh please not more lies from the LibLabCon BLIAR propaganda machine!’ ‘If the author of this article had read the documents of the Council of Chalcedon in the original Greek, then he might not throw around the word “monophysite” with such casual abandon.’ ‘Only one way to stop the Caliphate capturing every village hall in this once green and pleasant land and no I don’t mean green as in Ms Caroline Lucas – Vote UKIP!’ I’ve just invented these comments, but if you’ve been anywhere near a newspaper website over the past decade they’ll sound familiar. These days, however, they’re a bit harder to find. That’s because ‘below-the-line’ comment threads

Helen Nugent

The business of dying: funeral costs soar

It is more than half a century since Jessica Mitford published her landmark work of investigative journalism, The American Way of Death. But her exposé of the specific and often nefarious ways the funeral industry had made the average service more expensive remain pertinent today. Back in 1963, Mitford, one of the celebrated aristocratic Mitford sisters, reflected on the mortuary’s talent for re-branding — bury became inter, coffins became caskets, morgues became preparation rooms. This, she argued, sanitised the funeral business and allowed those in the trade to hike up prices. An updated version of Mitford’s book was published in 1998, two years after her own death, and is still widely available and widely read. Perhaps it’s no surprise

Tuesday

Andrew Sabisky

The education Green Paper is surprisingly bold

Yesterday afternoon the government released a new Green Paper which focussed on its initial proposals for expanding the number of high-quality school places throughout both the primary and secondary sectors. This task is particularly urgent given the existence of a demographic bulge currently passing through the primary year groups. The proposed reforms are united by an overarching theme, which is a desire to provide a higher-quality education for the children of those parents who are ‘just about managing’ (a phrase the document frequently returns to), and whose earnings are just above the free school meals cut-off (around £16,190). The paper tackles the problem of how best to meet the needs of this group

Keith Osborne

Is the Older People’s Shared Ownership Scheme all that it seems? We investigate

The housing crisis is often seen from the perspective of younger homebuyers when the lack of affordable housing is a problem that affects all ages. It’s why the government-backed Older People’s Shared Ownership Scheme (OPSO), specifically designed to help people aged 55 and over, can be such a lifeline for an age group often overlooked when it comes to housing needs. Yet, is OPSO everything it appears to be? What is the Older People’s Shared Ownership Scheme? Part of the government’s Help to Buy initiative, OPSO is a part-rent/part-buy scheme that allows homebuyers to purchase a percentage of a new home instead of paying the full property price. It’s aimed

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

By making misogyny a crime, we are sleepwalking into tyranny

Should it be a crime to hate women? This unfortunate question is thrown up by the news that misogyny might soon become a hate crime across England and Wales. Two months ago, Nottingham Police launched a trial ‘crackdown on sexism’, investigating cases of, among other things, ‘verbal harassment’ and ‘unwanted advances’ towards women. Now top coppers from across the country are looking into criminalising misogyny elsewhere. I find this terrifying. Misogyny is vile and ridiculous and I feel privileged to live in an era when, in the West at least, it is in steep decline; an era in which women work, run things, outdo lads at school, and no one bats

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

L’Epicurienne

This competition has now closed. Read Jonathan Ray’s post-competition blog here. I’m hoping you might forgive a little self indulgence with our latest competition.  My dear old dad Cyril Ray – formerly assistant editor of this very magazine (in the days of Inglis, Levin and Whitehorn) and twenty times the writer about drink (or indeed anything else) that I could ever hope to be – died 25 years ago this month. He wrote and edited countless books about wine, food and social history including Merry England, Bollinger, Lafite, Cognac, In a Glass Lightly and the long-running series The Compleat Imbiber. The tome dearest to his heart, however, was a slim volume

Monday

Rebecca O'Connor

Keeping finances secret can be bad for your wealth (and health)

How much do you know about your spouse? Hair colour, date of birth, where they grew up, what they do for a living…how much they earn, perhaps? Not so much that last one, according to a number of respondents to a popular thread on Mumsnet last week. The proportion of respondents who do not know how much their husbands and partners earn was surprisingly high. ‘I have a rough idea,’ said one. ‘We keep our finances separate. As long as he pays his share of the bills, it doesn’t matter,’ said another. Really? Prudential, the insurer, found that 12 per cent of Brits do not tell their partners what they earn. Such

Helen Nugent

Rail fares, holiday visas, housing and pensions

Commuters spend more than a tenth of disposable income on annual rail season tickets, a BBC investigation has found. Figures also show some commuters pay almost 40p per mile of railway while others pay 11p per mile. Campaigners for better railways said people were ‘astonished’ so much of their income was going on travel. Train operators say rail travel is better value for money than running a car. The Government said it had capped rail fares in line with inflation. Holidays British holidaymakers could be forced to pay for visas to travel to Europe as a trade-off for the Brexit vote, the Home Secretary has admitted. The Telegraph reports that Amber

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Why CofE schools must resist becoming more religious

The Church of England’s relationship with state education seems simple enough. Its schools have been a major source of strength, significantly slowing its rate of decline over the past few decades. Many congregations have been swelled by parents seeking a better-than-average state education for their offspring. From an Anglican point of view, what’s not to like?  Well, this: selection by church attendance is unpopular with those who do not benefit, giving the Church an image problem with its non-members. This makes some of its members, including me, uneasy. Also, the integrity of church attendance is in doubt, in parishes near a popular school. The cliché of the pushy parents faking

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Hillary Clinton leaves 9/11 memorial after suffering ‘medical episode’

Hillary Clinton has made an early exit from a 9/11 ceremony today after suffering a ‘medical episode’. The 68-year-old Democrat presidential candidate is said to have left the event abruptly, with Fox News reporting that she appeared to faint just before 10am as family members of the 2,977 victims were reading through their names. According to a witness at the scene, Clinton’s ‘knees buckled’ and her security team rushed her to a nearby van. Clinton’s campaign have since released a statement putting her departure down to her feeling ‘overheated’. Leaving her daughter Chelsea’s apartment this afternoon, Clinton told reporters she was ‘feeling great’. However despite her words, this situation will play into Donald Trump’s

Saturday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Before anyone sounds off about grammar schools, ask first where their children go to school

There’s a good reason and a bad reason why David Cameron hasn’t added his mite to the argument about the reintroduction of grammars, which his Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, sounded off about yesterday. The good reason is that it would be the worst of form for the former Tory PM to diss his successor, even if he disagrees with her. The bad reason is that he’s got a dog in this fight; his son Elwen. You remember all the fuss about the rumour that little Elwen might be going to a feeder prep to St Paul’s, the private school? The Camerons invoked media privacy to see off discussion of that

Rose Asani

After years of desperation, at last there is a glimmer of hope in Syria

Sat on the dusty ground with the heat of the sun beating down on her, Nur looked exhausted. Arms wrapped around her knees, head bowed. I wondered if she had the energy to even get up again. Next to her was a suitcase and a couple of plastic bags, her whole life packed away. Three young children huddled behind her, their hands clutching at the back of their mothers clothes. Tiny, frail young lives who have witnessed conflict and terrors unimaginable. The eldest, a girl, looked up at me as I approached. Big eyes set in a hollow face stared out and through me without a flicker of emotion.  It