Society

Thursday

Toby Young Toby Young

France began breeding jihadis in 1989

E .D. Hirsch Jr., the American educationalist and author of Cultural Literacy, has a new book out that may throw some light on why France has such a problem integrating its Muslim population. Called Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories, it’s a comprehensive attack on the progressive approach that has done so much harm to schools in the West. Hirsch identifies three ideas in particular: that education should be ‘developmentally appropriate’, with the emphasis on learning through discovery; that it should be ‘child-centred’, taking account of different ‘learning styles’; and that the overarching aim of education should be the cultivation of ‘critical thinking’ skills. I’ve spent

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 1 September 2016

Q. We have a heavenly house in Corfu where we go as often as possible. The best thing about it is the intelligent Corfiot couple who look after it for us. Everything is spotless, the cooking is perfect, and their competence make us the envy of all our local expat friends. Now someone has told me that when we are back in England, our couple host wild parties and sleep in the master bedroom. There has been no damage, but instinct tells me that what she says is true. I don’t want to humiliate the couple with a showdown because I don’t want to lose them. But how else can

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Real legs and fake people

The Soho Hotel is an actors’ hotel. They come for press junkets and interviews that reveal nothing because there is nothing to reveal; in fact, I have long suspected that this consuming nothingness, screamed across newsprint with all the conviction of denial, is the point of them; anything to evade reality and bring forth the realm of stupid. So it doesn’t matter that the Soho Hotel doesn’t know what it is; that is a benefit, quite possibly a design. Actors don’t know who they are either, and this is why they feel comfortable in the Soho Hotel. It is another mirror. It is part of the Firmdale Group, which has

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 1 September 2016

Home Britain rejected a call by Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France who hopes to return to power next year, ‘for the opening of a centre in England to process asylum requests for all those who are in Calais’. More than 9,000 migrants camp at the so-called Jungle near Calais; it was Mr Sarkozy who in 2003 helped implement the bilateral treaty that allowed Britain to place border officials on the French side of the Channel. Southern Rail reinstated 119 of the 341 daily services it cut in July. Katrina Percy resigned as the chief executive of the Southern Health NHS Trust following criticism that the deaths of people with

Dot Wordsworth

Taxi

Old Quentin Letts was on the wireless the other day asking ‘What’s the point of the London black cab?’ Between much shouting from my husband (a sign he is paying attention) I heard an old cabby explain that the word taxi came from its German inventor, whose name was Thurn und Taxis. Really! There is no defeating this blunder, which is all over the internet. In reality taxi came into English from the French taximètre (1905), where the first element represents taxe, ‘tariff’. Taxis are hackney carriages. Autodidact cab-drivers cite an origin from Middle Dutch, in which an ambling horse was called hackeneie. But why did the Dutch call it

Lavatch

2276: Iron Man

Definitions in ten clues contain a misprint; corrections spell out a theme word. Unclued lights are four pairs of words of a kind, each relating to the theme word in a different way. Elsewhere, ignore one accent.   Across 11    Like some parasites? See ten in rotten tree house (12) 12    Statesman needs iron, regularly pale (5) 14    Flexible tenures for colony’s workers? (7) 16    Anglicans right, one’s sure to sin (4) 17    Libertine pockets good cosmetic (5) 22    Small horn’s whorl (8) 23    Climber’s average place to drop back (7) 24    Soundness of ship oddly slow across Channel (6) 25    Slat from special row (6) 27    Logical method has

Tove Lifvendahl

Sweden’s refugee crisis

 Stockholm For a British boy to be killed by a grenade attack anywhere is appalling, but for it to happen in a suburb of Gothenburg should shatter a few illusions about Sweden. Last week’s murder of eight-year-old Yuusuf Warsame fits a pattern that Swedes have come slowly to recognise over the years. He was from Birmingham, visiting relatives, and was caught up in what Swedish police believe is a gang war within the Somali community. Last year, a four-year-old girl was killed by a car bomb outside Gothenburg, another apparent victim of gang violence. Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi discuss the Swedish model for migration on this week’s Spectator podcast:

Heri Joensen

Save the whale-hunt!

 Toftir, Faroe Islands Almost twenty years ago I founded a heavy metal band called Týr. Our songs, with titles such as ‘Blood of Heroes’ and ‘Lady of the Slain’, might not appeal to all Spectator readers — but we’ve released seven albums and toured several times across Europe and America. Our album covers depict bloodstained swords and skulls; nobody finds them too upsetting. But when I posted a picture of myself cutting up a whale on Facebook, all hell broke loose. I live in the Faroe Islands, where whaling has been part of our way of life for centuries. Last month, I was working on a long-finned pilot whale the

Lavatch

to 2273: Numbers

Round the perimeter run the titles of three songs from the musical Guys and Dolls, epitomised by SKY (28) Masterson and SARAH (11) Brown, and NATHAN (19) Detroit and Miss ADELAIDE (39): A BUSHEL AND A PECK, IF I WERE A BELL and SIT DOWN YOU’RE ROCKIN’ THE BOAT.   First prize P.L. Macdougall, London SW6 Runners-up D.P. Shenkin, London WC1; R.J. Green, Llangynidr, Crickhowell, Powys

Toby Young Toby Young

Podcast: Is it wrong to ban the burkini?

For about a year now, James Delingpole and I have been doing a regular podcast for Ricochet, the American website dedicated to conservative news and commentary. It’s called ‘London Calling’ and you can hear the latest one here. Among the many topics covered on this episode are the French burkini ban, Robert Tombs’s ‘The English and Their History’, my appearance on Any Questions last week and James’s appearance this week (alongside Diane Abbott). We also talk about the West London Free School and what we did on our holidays.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Hey Black Lives Matter UK: here’s some perspective on Glastonbury vs Notting Hill Carnival

Here’s a thing. Shortly after my column for this week’s magazine appeared online, Black Lives Matter UK put out the following tweet: Hey Rod Liddle: where were your calls to ban Glastonbury in order to prevent white-on-white crime? https://t.co/dnktIKwfqT — #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) August 31, 2016 Rather than answer this sliver of delusional idiocy myself, I’ll leave it to Ken Marsh, chairman of the Police Federation: ‘Last year we had an officer stabbed. This year colleagues were assaulted, abused and spat at. How can that be right? It’s completely and utterly unacceptable. ‘The Glastonbury music festival had 40 arrests this year. Notting Hill had 10 times that amount. ‘Year after year

Simon Read

Borrowing from friends and family can have serious consequences

If a pal turned to you for financial help, would you lend a hand? If you have the cash it’s hard to say no, but for the sake of your future friendship that may not be such a good idea. Money can be the root of all sorts of relationship evils. It’s the cause of many families or friends fracturing and so any planned financial arrangements need to be treated with extreme caution. Research published today by StepChange debt charity shows one in three people who owe money to loved ones reporting negative effects caused by their financial problems. One in 20 says borrowing from a friend actually led to

Helen Nugent

Energy, pensions, property and savings

The gap between the best and worst performing energy firms is the widest ever, according to Citizens Advice. Small energy firm Extra Energy attracted 80 times more complaints than the best performing supplier SSE between April and June. Extra Energy received 1,791 complaints per 100,000 customers, which was worse than its record low of 1,682 complaints in the previous quarter. SSE improved its ratio to just over 22 complaints, the charity found. Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: ‘The latest league table shows some suppliers are getting much better at sorting out their customers’ problems, but it’s disappointing to see others getting worse at dealing with complaints.’ The second and

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The latest junior doctor strikes are a sign of desperation

The junior doctors row bubbles on. This time, medics will walk out for five back-to-back days starting on September 12. Predictably, Jeremy Hunt has condemned the strike; and the BMA is blaming Jeremy Hunt. It’s a bitter and somewhat dull stalemate which will bore many for its endless intransigence. Yet beneath this, it’s clear this latest industrial action will cause chaos: the strikes comes at such late notice that contingency plans put in place before industrial action earlier this year will not have been made. The strike is messier, too, for the increasing remoteness of a sensible compromise being struck. The BMA’s Mark Porter dismissed the 73 concessions made by

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Swedish model. How not to welcome refugees

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

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Club cricketers: Zimbabwe needs you

Make sure you tell everybody about Zimbabwe,’ said the lady at our block of flats in suburban Harare as we set off on the long journey to the Eastern Highlands and another match, this time at Mutare. We are a ramshackle and elderly cricket team, though we have pulled in a couple of youthful ringers, one an Oxford Blue and another a former Test-match 12th man. But it is a long time since a real England team toured this country — a few ODIs in 2004 I think. Gordon Brown blocked a tour of England by Zim in 2008, and I am told that David Cameron personally made sure that

Lucy Vickery

North and South

In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing the two. -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’), which inspired this challenge, produced a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry that took me from the bridge table to North Korea and beyond. The winners earn £25 each. Frank McDonald pockets £30.   In the north there’s a fish with a serious wish To break out and be queen of the sea, And she tells all the others we’re sisters and brothers Who ought to get

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Dear God, am I going to start liking Ed Balls?

What the hell is going on with Ed Balls? Back in the horrible doldrums of the last Labour government, he was the most reliable total bastard around. There was Gordon Brown himself, of course, throwing phones at people and using his special sinister voice when he spoke about children, and Damian McBride, who had a reputation for being the nastiest spin-doctor there ever was, although he only ever texted me twice and actually quite nicely. Balls, though, was the spirit animal who tied the whole thing together. So many years later, it is almost impossible to convey how weary and stale that government was by the end. How it seemed

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

My fascist moment on the ship of failures

There are no roads from the Peruvian river port of Iquitos, but the rich take aeroplanes. Those who cannot pay to fly may pay the premium for the 40ft motorised express canoes that take only a day to roar to and from the upriver port of Yurimaguas with its bus station. But losers in the global race cannot afford speed. For them there are only the big, slow, hot, lumbering cargo boats: nearly four days’ journey from Iquitos to Yurimaguas. So the moment a passenger walks up the gangplank and strings their hammock between the iron rafters of the open–sided deck, we can guess he or she is not one