Society

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Do you have a ‘story’?

As someone who worked full time in the office for 24 years and has now worked full time from home for nearly 21 – always, in both periods, on the staff – I can see both sides of the argument. But I do think the sequence matters. I would have had no idea how to work for my employers if I had begun at home. Indeed, the entire concept of a newspaper then – and even, to a large extent, now – depends on its collective capacity to find, write and edit news fast. Much of that stimulus comes from being in the same building. On Monday, Andy Jassy, the

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Prince Andrew will struggle to recover from A Very Royal Scandal

Sensational dramas about the Duke of York are rather like London buses: you wait five years for one, and then two come along at once. Amazon Prime’s three-part series, A Very Royal Scandal, which focuses on the notorious Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, is released tomorrow. The show follows the perspective of both the journalist Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) and, more surprisingly, Andrew himself, in another of the ever-chameleonic Michael Sheen’s superb performances. A Very Royal Scandal follows Netflix’s depiction of the interview, Scoop, which was released earlier this year. A Very Royal Scandal takes a more considered approach, daring to hint that Andrew was actively bad Whether the royals

Tuesday

Owen Polley

Oasis should run a mile from this Irish rebel band

Liam Gallagher, it is fair to say, is not renowned for thoughtfulness or tact, particularly on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Still, many fans will have been appalled to learn that the singer apparently wants the Irish republican band, the Wolfe Tones, to perform at Oasis’s shows in Dublin next year. In response to a suggestion that the ‘rebel’ group should be added to the bill at Croke Park, Liam tweeted, ‘I’m up for it, let’s do it!’ The Wolfe Tones are best known for their song Celtic Symphony, which features the refrain, ‘Ooh, ahh, up the ‘Ra,’ in celebration of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It was the PIRA

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

It’s a pity Thierry Breton didn’t resign sooner

The spectacular resignation of Thierry Breton from the European Commission suggests that the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is not quite as useless as her numerous critics suggest. Breton’s departure was overdue. Credit to von der Leyen for wielding the long knife. Breton’s arrogance was exceeded only by his uselessness. After Mario Draghi’s taxonomy of European decline last week, the role of Breton as commissioner in charge of the single market was a nonsense. Draghi said Europe is on a path to self-destruction, becoming nothing more than an open-air museum, sustained by tourism. Breton’s arrogance was exceeded only by his uselessness Gavin Mortimer wrote here that Draghi

Jonathan Maitland

The Huw Edwards scandal shows that the BBC never learns

Albert Einstein wasn’t thinking about the BBC when he defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result’, but he could have been. The BBC’s latest scandal, involving its former star presenter Huw Edwards, has followed a remarkably similar trajectory to the last two marmalade droppers that embroiled the Corporation. So will the BBC finally learn its lesson? The way the BBC dealt with Huw Edwards – once the embodiment of BBC culture and values but now a disgraced sex offender who admitted making indecent images of children – has strong echoes of the Jimmy Savile and Martin Bashir scandals. In both those cases,

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Coconut placards and the truth about free speech in Britain

When you describe what happened, you realise how ridiculous it was. A woman was dragged to court for holding up a placard that featured a drawing of a palm tree with coconuts falling from it. Superimposed on two of the coconuts were the faces of Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak, who was Prime Minister at the time. And that was it. Hauled before magistrates for carrying a daft illustration through the streets. Anyone who doubted that our liberty to speak is in peril has surely been shaken awake now. So, yes, I believe it is hateful. But should it be illegal? No This is the case of Marieha Hussain, a

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The trouble with the Champions League

The revamped Champions League kicks off this week with all the gushing hyperbole we have come to expect from this glossy, money-saturated event. Five British football teams will be in action along with a record 31 others for the first-round ‘league’ stage. The difference this year is that the marketing blitz is accompanied by earnest attempts to explain the new format – which is a tad complicated to say the least – and sell it to us.  There is one super-size ‘league’ in which teams play eight of their 35 (!) rivals once We are now getting the ‘Swiss’ system, invented in the late 19th century by Julius Muller, a

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

When will EU flag wavers get the message?

Arguing about the last night of the Proms is as much of an annual tradition as the music itself. Usually this hubbub has something to do with it being the very last place, or occasion, where people sing along with a straight face to ‘Rule, Britannia’. This year though the storm revolves around EU flags being confiscated by Proms’ security staff. There is nobody more committed to the EU than a certain type of British Remainer What seems to have sparked the flag crackdown at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday was a gathering outside by a pro-EU campaign group called ‘Thank EU For The Music’. Ten thousand EU flags

Sunday

Robin Ashenden

Oasis obsessives should broaden their horizons

For those of us not into Oasis in the 90s, the past month’s mania over their reunion has been baffling. Songs like ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ may have hit the spot but as individuals Oasis seemed far from engaging. As John Harris said in his book The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, ‘It was difficult to think of any group whose career had combined stratospheric success with such stubbornly limited horizons.’ Liam’s wild man antics were risible and often pointlessly insulting The band didn’t appear to read or have interests outside music, Liam’s wild man antics were risible, and they were often

Saturday

Julie Bindel

How gender ideology corrupts rape crisis centres

Yesterday, Mridul Wadhwa – a trans-identified male and the head of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) – resigned, after a scathing report on the centre revealed how it had been corrupted by gender ideology. The report was commissioned by Rape Crisis Scotland, which was forced to act after the ‘serious failings’ of the ERCC were exposed in an employment tribunal judgment in July this year.  The case had been brought by a former ERCC employee, Roz Adams, who had been victimised by the centre because she held gender-critical beliefs. A judge found that she had been unlawfully discriminated against and unfairly dismissed, simply because she asked whether rape victims could be

Imogen Yates

Fraser Nelson, David Whitehouse, Imogen Yates, Sean McGlynn and Ruari Clark

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Fraser Nelson reflects on a historic week for The Spectator (1:15); David Whitehouse examines the toughest problem in mathematics (6:33); Imogen Yates reports on the booming health tech industry (13:54); Sean McGlynn reviews Dan Jones’s book Henry V: the astonishing rise of England’s greatest warrior king (20:24); and Ruari Clark provides his notes on rollies (26:18).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Owen Polley

Republicans are trying to twist the truth about the Troubles

For many years, republicans have clamoured for a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, who was gunned down in front of his wife and children by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA). This week, they finally got their way: in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, announced an independent probe into the 1989 killing of the Belfast solicitor who frequently represented IRA men. While his loved ones are no doubt delighted, the relatives of other Troubles’ victims are unhappy that this level of scrutiny will not be applied to the deaths of their family members. During the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, at least 3,500 murders were

Alexander Larman

There’s nothing cool about Starbucks

If you’ve ever visited Starbucks, you may enjoy the overpriced coffees or bewildering assortment of half-sweet, half-savoury drinks – espresso frappuccino, anyone? But you may also agree with a mystery shopper who said: ‘It can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic.’ Anyone with even the most slightly unorthodox name can testify to the last: it has become a running joke on social media to see randomly scrawled words on the coffee cups that may, or may not, bear some relation to the person who has ordered it. But before Starbucks defenders start to attest to the group’s brilliance,

Rev'd Dr Helen Hall

Witch hunting is no longer a thing of the past

Witch hunting didn’t end in the Middle Ages. Along Kenya’s Kilifi coast, elderly people are being accused of witchcraft, attacked and killed. At least one person a week is targeted and left unable to return to their own land. One man who did survive recently, 74-year-old Tambala Jefwa, lost an eye and is now covered in scars. Something terrifying seems to have escaped the pages of the history books and is stalking the present. Belief in witchcraft remains common in parts of Africa and, indeed, around the world. Recent events in Kenya are by no means isolated: in the early 2020s, the Democratic Republic of Congo saw an alarming surge

Friday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The sham of an assisted dying ‘citizen’s jury’

It is remarkable that the BBC decided to give the latest PR exercise in favour of assisted suicide a big push by running it as news today that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ citizen’s jury of 28 people has decided that euthanasia should be legalised. In a kind of broadcasting imprimatur it declared that the jury was ‘representative’ of the population as a whole and should therefore be regarded as indicative of the way sentiment is going. Now that’s power: to frame dubious propaganda exercises organised by people already committed to change as the state of the nation. What wouldn’t I give to have the job of writing headlines for

Thursday

Debbie Hayton

What has the SNP got against school blazers?

The much-maligned school blazer has come under attack once again, this time by Scottish government. In new guidance issued this morning, head teachers north of the border have been told to either ditch them, or make them optional within their uniform policies. Head teachers who know their pupils rather better than first minister John Swinney and his meddling SNP ministers have been entrusted to ‘be clear that these are not needed or expected’. School blazers are far more than a piece of clothing. For £14 the child is endowed with a mobile office The reasons are not only the perceived cost, but the way in which pupils ‘may feel that uniform restricts

Charlie Walsham

What the BBC gets wrong about the Gaza conflict

This week, the BBC was accused of breaching its own editorial guidelines on more than 1,500 occasions and displaying a ‘deeply worrying pattern of bias’ against Israel in a report that drew its findings from an analysis of four months of BBC output. Editorial bosses at Broadcasting House have questioned the methodology of the research, which was led by litigation lawyer and pro-Israel campaigner Trevor Asserson. But having worked inside the BBC newsroom throughout the conflict, I have drawn some unsettling conclusions of my own when it comes to the Gaza conflict. To find out how we ended up here, we must return to the beginning. Four days after the

Paul Stott

The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and a well-known figure in the Islamic world, has been convicted of the rape and sexual coercion of a woman in a Geneva hotel, after a court overturned an earlier acquittal. Professor Ramadan has been jailed for three years, two suspended, over the 2008 incident. Ramadan was a poster boy for those in authority The verdict marks a remarkable fall from grace for Ramadan, who was raised in exile in Switzerland, and skilfully navigated the Francophone, English and Arabic speaking worlds as an academic, campaigner and theologian. His father, Said Ramadan, was central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s development in Europe.  While Ramadan

Eliot Wilson

We all know the NHS is broken – but can Labour fix it?

There are few surprises in Lord Darzi’s review of the National Health Service, not least because much of it has already leaked out. Health Secretary Wes Streeting declared immediately after Labour won the election that the NHS was ‘broken’. Darzi, a surgeon and former Labour health minister whom Streeting commissioned to undertake the probe, appears to have reached a similar conclusion in today’s report, though not in as few words. ‘We have crumbling buildings…and parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins,’ Darzi says ‘We have crumbling buildings, mental health patients being accommodated in Victorian-era cells . . . and parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins,’ Darzi says. His diagnosis is that Britain

Melissa Kite

How to find out what organisations are saying about you 

Every time I have a protracted ding-dong with a big organisation, I put in a request under data protection law to see what they’ve been saying about me behind my back. Anyone can do this. If you get into a row with a charity after complaining they’ve put your direct debit up without telling you, for example, you could then do a subject access request (SAR), asking them to send you a copy of anything mentioning you in their files, and they would send you back loads of emails in which various people in their offices discussed how to handle your complaint. The law requires them to do this, but