Get a free copy of Douglas Murray’s new book

when you subscribe to The Spectator for just $15 for 12 weeks. No commitment – cancel any time.
SUBSCRIBE

Society

Wednesday

Violet Hudson

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 27 April 2016

Asda shoppers need to be careful when picking up a so-called bargain from the supermarket giant’s shelves: the chain has been warned by the Competition and Markets Authority not to mislead customers with ‘confusing price promotions’ according to the BBC. From now on, multi-buy offers will represent better value than single-buy, and ‘was’ prices will have to be on the shelf longer than ‘now’ prices. Richard Lloyd, of Which? magazine, which investigated the supermarket, said ‘Asda has been found breaking the rules and now must immediately clean up their act.’ The Guardian reports that Britain’s growth will have slowed in the last quarter from 0.6 per cent to 0.4 per

Gráinne Gilmore

What you are telling us about the housing market

Every month, some 1,500 households across the country tell us what they think has happened to the value of their home over the last month, and what they expect to happen to its value over the next year. This data is then crunched into something called the House Price Sentiment Index, or HPSI for short. The name doesn’t trip off the tongue, but the index, produced in conjunction with Markit Economics, gives us a good glimpse into the housing market. Sentiment is important for housing — it can determine decisions by discretionary buyers, those who are not motivated by necessity, such as a move for work, for school or to

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Cruz-Kasich alliance has failed to stop Donald Trump

Another Tuesday, another triumph for Donald Trump. The Republican frontrunner had a clean sweep at last night’s primaries, winning easily in all the states that voted. He took all the delegates from Pennsylvania Maryland,  Connecticut, and Delaware — plus 9 of 15 in Rhode Island. After his huge victory in New York last week, that means he has won around 200 delegates in the last seven days. Before last week, it looked very much as if Trump would fall short of 1237 delegates, which is the majority he needs (in theory) to win the nomination in the first round of voting in July. Now, he is on course not only to

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron’s old pal on why she won’t vote for Zac: ‘he doesn’t look as if he cares’

As Zac Goldsmith lags behind Sadiq Khan in the polls ahead of the London mayoral election, it’s a case of all hands on deck in order to boost his chances come polling day. However, while David Cameron used PMQs last week to do exactly this — attacking Sadiq Khan for his links to extremists — the Prime Minister has still failed to convince members of his inner circle that Goldsmith is the man for the job. After Cameron’s sister-in-law Emily Sheffield appeared to get behind Sadiq Khan’s campaign earlier this month, one of Cameron’s closest friends has today declared that she won’t be bothering to vote in the mayoral election. Writing in her Times column,

Tuesday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Will the human rights industry ever admit that it has Christian roots?

Helena Kennedy’s two-part radio programme on human rights was very predictable. She did a lot of hand-wringing. She spoke some passionate rhetoric about our common humanity. She quoted Hannah Arendt. She consulted a lot of non-Western thinkers, a lot of fellow human rights lawyers, and a token critic of the concept of human rights. The first part put much emphasis on the ancient global roots of the concept. Look how it is anticipated in this ancient Iranian or Mesopotamian or Buddhist document. I think this is misleading. Though many ancient cultures had impulses in this direction, they were frail. It was the Christian West that gradually heaved such aspirations into politics.

Steerpike Steerpike

Grayson Perry declares war on macho men: ‘Bear Grylls celebrates a masculinity that is useless’

As more and more people identify as ‘gender-fluid’, there is growing hostility in some quarters towards traditional gender stereotypes. In fact, for some the term ‘masculinity’ has become a dirty word. Grayson Perry — the cross-dressing Turner prize-winning artist — is one such person. Perry has recently spent his time creating a whole television programme for Channel 4 dedicated to highlighting the problems that stem from ‘masculinity and manly men’. Top of his no-no list? Bear Grylls. Yes, Perry says that the Old Etonian adventurer is a ‘hangover’ who represents a ‘masculinity that is useless’: ‘Try going into an estate agent in Finsbury Park and come out with an affordable flat. I want

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The TUC’s claim that childless men get a raw deal is nonsense

There is, of course, no crime more dreadful in modern society than discrimination. And how dreadful that new forms of it are being uncovered every day. The latest foul piece of bigotry, it turns out, is employers favouring male employees with kids. According to the study by the IPPR, and commissioned by the TUC, today, fathers in full-time employment earn a ’21 per cent wage bonus’ compared with male employees who don’t have children. With women, apparently, it is the other way round, with mothers earning 11 per cent less than female employees without children. The research is based on a sample of 17,000 people born in a single week

Lynne Bateson

How to close the gender pay gap

Nearly half a century after Ford Dagenham women sewing machinists struck for equal pay, a new survey shows women are still being penalised in the workplace – for having children. Equal pay for equal work is enshrined in law thanks to the bravery of those strikers, yet a cavernous gender pay gap remains. But now it is the demands of childcare — rather than sexist bosses — that is the enemy of equality. A TUC report has shown that fathers earn 21 percent more than other men. Mothers over the age of 33 typically earn 15 per cent less than women without children. Men usually work longer and harder when

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why pretend that female footballers are as good as male ones?

Yay – Izzy Christiansen! Yay – Beth Mead! I daresay you were as thrilled as I was to see that these two women had been named as, respectively, PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year and PFA Women’s Young Player of the Year. Izzy plays for Manchester City, Beth for Sun’lan. You have never heard of either of them. You will never see them play ever. Both are worse at football than the worst player your club has ever employed. Yes, worse than Seth Johnson. Worse than Ade Akinbiyi. And yet they were given equal billing by the BBC at the Professional Footballers’ Association awards with Riyad Mahrez and Dele Alli. I have nothing

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Hunt hits back – but is he now pulling his punches?

Jeremy Hunt has not done himself any favours in the past with his comments about junior doctors. But today – the first time junior doctors have ever walked out without providing emergency cover – was the time for sounding conciliatory. The Health Secretary said it was a ‘very, very bleak day for the NHS’. Hunt went on to add that: ‘The reason this has happened is because the Government has been unable to negotiate sensibly and reasonably with the BMA over a manifesto pledge’. His emphasis on the Conservative’s ‘manifesto pledge’ is a clear part of the Health Secretary’s tactics to win over the public and Hunt repeated his focus

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The ‘Luxleaks’ whistleblowers trial should concern us all

The trial of Antoine Deltour, Raphael Halet, and Edouard Perrin opens today in Luxembourg. Reporters should mob the courtroom. Camera crews should block the streets outside. I cannot think of a more important case, or one that reveals more clearly how tax havens punish those who reveal injustice rather than those in multinational businesses and accountancy firms who are –  oh, how can I put this without troubling the legal department? – who are, shall we say, content that the authorities do not apply the same level of scrutiny to them. After the Panama leak revealed how dictatorships and organised crime, along with less colourful evaders and avoiders flourished, let

Calum Miller

All-out strikes will not kill patients. An exodus of junior doctors will

Until now, it has not been clear to most people what the junior doctors’ strikes are all about. It began about a total pay cut masquerading as a ‘basic pay rise’. Then it became about protecting doctors’ family and social lives at weekends. Most recently, there have been accusations of sexism. Somewhere in the middle, the more marketable concern about patient safety was introduced, and has risen to the forefront of the junior doctors’ campaign. Last time I wrote, I considered the plausibility of these claims. I suggested that the strikes are primarily about doctors’ quality of life. This is no cause for shame: everyone has the right to campaign

Steerpike Steerpike

Department of Health’s PR push backfires

With the junior doctors’ strike now in full swing, it’s fair to say that these aren’t the most harmonious days staff at the Department of Health have ever seen. Perhaps that’s why they are looking for a new Director of Communications to take charge of the department’s ‘external and internal communication activities across a complex and high profile agenda’. Alas, so far they don’t appear to have had much luck enticing candidates to the public relations role. Despite enlisting the help of ‘executive search firm’ Veredus, the search is still on and recruiters appear to be spending their time sending unsolicited messages to members of the lobby. Sam Coates, the Times‘s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Junior doctors should be completely ashamed by today’s strike

The junior doctors’ strike that starts today has a strong claim to be the most selfish and irresponsible piece of industrial action in British history. They are refusing to carry out even emergency care between 8am and 5pm today and tomorrow. This walk out, the first all-out strike since the NHS’s creation, isn’t over some issue of high principle. It’s about money. The main sticking point in their negotiations with the government is that Saturday shouldn’t be treated as a normal working day. The BMA’s suggestion at the weekend that it was prepared to call off the walk out if the government didn’t impose the new contract, but instead pilot it

Monday

The Spectator

The Spectator reader survey

The Spectator exists to inform, entertain and infuriate. If you have a few minutes, we’d love to know more about your opinion of the magazine and the website. Which writers do you like? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? If you could change one thing, what would it be? If you would like to let us know your thoughts, we’d be delighted if you could take our survey, which takes around five minutes to complete. After finishing it, you will be entered into a prize draw to win a year’s subscription to the magazine (or a year’s extension if you are already a subscriber). To

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The hounding of Boris for his ‘Kenyan’ comment is the dumbest Twitterstorm yet

Normally, Twitterstorms, those unhinged uprisings against a politician or celeb who has dared to make an outré utterance, are best treated like tantrum-throwing two-year-olds. Stand back, let them do their foot-stomping, and wait for them to exhaust themselves. But the storm over Boris’s ‘part-Kenyan’ remark in relation to Obama is different. This Twitterstorm has been so dumb, and so destructive, that it cannot simply be allowed to pass and take its place in the bulging book of Times People Went Unnecessarily Crazy About Something. No, we need a reckoning with this Twitterstorm. We need to take stock. As a keen watcher of Twitterstorms, I’m struggling to remember any that have

Moira O'Neill

Are Shakespeare’s musings on money still relevant today?

You may this weekend have attended one of hundreds of events around the country to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Willliam Shakespeare’s death in 1616. Few writers have ever caught our imagination like the Bard of Avon. Many of you will have studied his plays at secondary school, examining their universal themes of love, revenge, sorrow and comedy. But now personal finance is on the National Curriculum (it forms part of citizenship for 11-16-year-olds), could works such as Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice be used to educate children about managing their money? And can adults aiming to pay off debts and save for the future

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Jeremy Hunt steps up war of words with junior doctors ahead of strike

Now that Jeremy Hunt has rejected a proposed cross-party pilot scheme for new junior doctors’ contracts it seems this week’s strike looks certain to go ahead. The industrial action is due to start tomorrow morning and junior doctors will walk out again on Wednesday, but the war of words for this week has already begun in earnest. The Health Secretary has fired the opening salvo in his letter to Dr Mark Porter. Hunt said the strike: ‘…seriously risks the safety of many who depend on the NHS’ Dr Porter, the BMA council chair, has been on Today defending the industrial action which will see junior doctors walking out and not

Sunday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

As Matt Ridley discovered, public appointments go to ‘green’ candidates

In last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, I mentioned how outside candidates for civil service and public appointments feel ill-used by the system. My piece prompted more correspondents. One tells me that little effort was made, when he applied for a permanent secretaryship, to give him the information about the post which was available to insiders but not to people like him. The question on which he had five minutes to speak was ‘The Secretary of State has set out a number of clear priorities for the Department, covering safety and wellbeing of children, educational excellence and preparing young people for adult life; as well as the equalities agenda. How would you lead

Saturday

Ella Whelan

Women don’t need feminist instruction manuals

Another day, another instruction manual is published on how to be female. ‘Girl Up’ by Laura Bates, author of ‘Everyday Sexism’, is out this week. It is intended to be a handy guide for women on all the ‘lies they told us’. Who are they? ‘They’ means anyone who disagrees with the contemporary feminist line: that women are weak, vulnerable and oppressed. But ‘Girl Up’ is merely the latest instalment in a series of feminist manuals. It began in 2011 when Caitlin Moran – the world’s most annoying woman – published ‘How To Be a Woman’. Ever since, media savvy feminists have continued to reel out book after book of female