Society

Wednesday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

If atheists do have values, what are they?

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian by Julian Baggini. Now that nearly half of Britons say that they have no religion, he observes, some believers are saying that atheism is also a sort of faith. Though an atheist, he is not of the Dick Dawkins school, and so does not respond with Dickish bluntness. He is not one of those ‘zealous’ atheists who sees religion ‘as an offence to human rationality.’ People like that do seem to have a sort of crusading faith, he says. Excessive trust in the power of reason can be dangerous, he adds. He admits that the ‘meaning and value’ that atheists find in life

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My take on the England football team

Apologies for the lack of blogs – I’ve been on jury duty for two weeks. Hang the bastard, regardless of the evidence, was my watchword as jury foreman. Anyway, normal service will soon be resumed. In the interim, let me give the few of you who care about football my take on the England team at present, and its chances in France next month. I was of course delighted we beat the hideous, cheating, Turks – and in the end with something to spare. But what we learned was this: Playing Jamie Vardy on the wing is stupid. Put him in the centre with Harry Kane. So that means some

Helen Nugent

Chaos at HMRC leaves taxpayers out of pocket

Pity the taxman. As reviled professions go, it’s up there with estate agents, traffic wardens and, er, journalists. Now comes the news that more than three million people may have paid the wrong tax after chaos at HM Revenue & Customs left callers waiting for over an hour to speak to staff last year. In a stinging report, the National Audit Office said that the quality of service at HMRC ‘collapsed’ over an 18-month period between 2014 and 2015. Call waiting times tripled during that time, as some customers were kept on hold for up to an hour. One in five callers – 4.2 million people – hung up after waiting an average of

Lance Forman

London Cure Smoked Salmon

Most people are unaware that smoked salmon emerged from the East End of London around the turn of the last century, when Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, wistful for the taste of home, started preserving fish in the traditional methods of Poland and Ukraine. When they realised they could buy salmon from Scotland cheaper and fresher than the Baltic, a tradition was born: Scotch salmon cured in London. Initially for enclaves of Eastern Europeans in Stepney Green and the environs, smoked salmon became a prized delicacy, served only at celebrations and special occasions, and not widely available for sale. Until the 1980s a dozen smokehouses thrived in London. Like with

Tuesday

Jack May

The NUS is made up of careerists playing at being students

Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and wary of not lobbing their mortarboards too vigorously, students graduating in the coming weeks are set for a tough time – there’s a housing crisis, a difficult economic climate, and the average starting salary for graduates hovers perilously on the £20,000 mark. Comforting, then, that the National Union of Students has our back. Fighting valiantly against the so-called ‘marketisation’ of higher education, they offer dogmatic principles we can rely upon: namely, that university education must be free to receive; that all elected governments are secretly conniving against the people; and that all those on large salaries are somehow inherently evil. All very honourable and right-on, but these are metrics worth measuring the

Helen Nugent

Is the cashless society a good thing? Definitely not

On a quiet news day, not much happens if you’re a reporter. It’s tempting to sit back, surf the internet, check your social media profiles and mull over dinner prospects. Then there’s the lure of online shopping sites: ASOS, Amazon, you name it, they’re there at the click of a button. Ordering online can be dangerous. It doesn’t really feel like spending money, particularly if you have a debit or credit card set up already. All it takes is a few seconds to spend hundreds of pounds. I know because I’ve done it. Now comes the news that we are moving ever closer to becoming a cashless society. According to

Helen Nugent

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 24 May 2016

Summer is approaching and with it the news that, in a boost to Britain’s tourist industry, nearly one third of Britons will take holidays in the UK this year. According to Asda Money, British holidaymakers will spend an average of £1,310 on their summer breaks, with people in the East Midlands the most likely to choose home over abroad for a holiday. Asda Money says that going on holiday as a family will cost £782 in accommodation and transport and £529 in spending money. Meanwhile, Gocompare.com Travel Insurance is urging Brits holidaying abroad this summer to plan ahead and check the passport requirements for their holiday destination – otherwise they could be seriously out of pocket

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The lies of meritocratic Britain

In England after the Norman Conquest the worst insults you could throw were class insults. So long has feudal prejudice survived that we unconsciously echo the Anglo-Norman aristocracy when we use ‘villainous’ (from villien) and ‘churlish’ (from ‘churl’). The churl of the 1300s might have reflected that, however miserable his life, it was not his fault that he had been born into servitude. His suffering was the result of an unjust society not a real reflection of his worth. No one shouts ‘churl’ or ‘rustic’ or ‘villien’ today.  We live in a meritocratic country and feudalism is long gone except for a few gaudy spectacles around the monarch. So they

Monday

Emma Simon

New government pension freedoms will fail

The pension revolution rolls on. Next year more than five million retired people will be able to enjoy the new ‘pension freedoms’ and cash in their annuity. I imagine the daytime TV ads are in the pipeline already, showing cheery pensioners completing the Daily Telegraph crossword in their new conservatory, or heading off into the sunset on a luxury cruise. It’s not hard to see why many pensioners might be looking forward to this opportunity. Not because they want to waste their hard-earned savings on fripperies, but because many will be unhappy with the annuity they were forced to buy at retirement. Until recently most people bought an annuity with

Helen Nugent

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 23 May 2016

Britain moved another step closer to becoming a cashless society last year. According to Payments UK, which represents the major banks, building societies and payment providers, 2015 was the first year that cash was used for less than half of all payments by consumers. The story made it to the front page of The Guardian. The paper reported that cash usage will be eclipsed by debit cards and contactless payments by 2021. As for 2015, cash made up 45.1 per cent of payments, compared with 64 per cent in 2005, and is expected to fall to just a quarter by 2025. More than one billion ‘wave and pay’ transactions took place last year.

Sunday

Douglas Murray

al-Baghdadi, luvvies and affordable housing: the worst predictions of the EU referendum

It’s that time of the week again, when I promised to round up the worst contributions to the Brexit debate. The Prime Minister got the week off to a good start by claiming that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the famed head of ISIS, is a supporter of ‘Vote Leave’.  In fact the putative world Caliph has yet to come out for either side in the UK referendum, though the attacks in Paris last November suggest that the EU’s weak external borders and absent internal borders have been working out nicely for the terrorist chief.  As a result the smart money is on al-Baghdadi coming out for ‘Remain’, though I’m sure nobody

Ed West Ed West

Facebook is helping the left to eat itself

I hate Facebook, mostly because it’s full of other people’s happiness. I appreciate this makes me a terrible person, but it’s a bit like being at the wedding of a contemporary whose life has panned out perfectly, leaving you to reflect on your own inadequacies and failures. I know half the happy people on Facebook are probably dying inside, but that’s no consolation. I’ve long suspected that the site is terrible for people’s mental health, but it’s probably also terrible for the political process, too, helping to drive polarisation, especially in the United States. It’s something that people really don’t appreciate the danger of. Normal decent people who would be horrified

Saturday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Hillary’s America | 21 May 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. What should we expect from a Hillary Clinton presidency? The Democrat frontrunner is now the firm favourite to win the White House, assuming that she can defeat her Republican rival Donald Trump. But what would her victory mean for America? In his Spectator cover piece this week, Christopher Buckley says one of Hillary’s prevailing characteristics is her ability to bore. He also argues that Clinton’s politic shapeshifting over the years may have enabled her to stand the test of time, but it’s also

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: my life as a skunk

The latest competition was inspired by the endeavours of Charles Foster, who, in his fascinating, funny book Being a Beast, recounts his attempts ‘to learn what it is like to shuffle or swoop through a landscape that is mainly olfactory and auditory rather than visual’. As a badger he took up residence in a hole and ate earthworms (they taste of ‘slime and the land’). And as an urban fox he ‘lay in a backyard in Bow, foodless and drinkless, urinating and defecating where I was, waiting for the night and treating as hostile the humans living in terraced houses all round — which wasn’t hard’. It’s a mighty tall

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Paul Mason puts number of immigrants in Toxteth down to the slave trade

Yesterday Pat Glass came under fire after she described a voter — who expressed concerns about a ‘scrounging’ Polish family — as a ‘horrible racist’. With the Labour MP since criticised for refusing to listen to voter concerns about immigration, the topic was at least up for discussion on last night’s Question Time. As David Dimbleby chaired a panel — which included Amber Rudd, Ukip’s Paul Nuttall and Paul Mason — in Walsall, an audience member raised concerns that immigration in the UK disproportionately effects places like Walsall and Toxteth rather than Islington and Morningside. At which point Mason — a former member of the Trotskyist Workers’ Power group — interjected, telling the man that the

William Kay

Paying for financial advice: whose job is it?

Buried in the Queen’s Speech this week was an unassuming little sentence that could transform our collective ability to deal with the ruthless financial services industry – but don’t hold your breath. The Government signalled that it is bracing itself to take on the challenge that has defied all of its predecessors – to produce a widely accessible, State-backed source of financial advice. The Queen said: ‘A new money guidance body would replace the Money Advice Service and be charged with identifying gaps in the financial guidance market to make sure consumers can access high-quality debt and money guidance.’ Details so far are sketchy, suggesting that the new scheme has

Helen Nugent

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 20 May 2016

As the digital revolution continues apace, it has emerged that Britons over the age of 60 are the fastest growing group of people taking to contactless card payments. According to Barclaycard, contactless spending within the older age group has more than doubled in the last year. Its growth has been most noticeable in Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Separate figures showed that total spending on contactless cards hit £1.5 billion for the first time in March. The Barclaycard data suggests the number of silver surfers using ‘touch and go’ payments increased by 116 per cent over the last 12 months. The Times reports that British shoppers have provided a glimmer of

Thursday

Peter Jones

How Rome did immigration

Last week it was suggested that the questions asked of London mayor Sadiq Khan had nothing to do with racism, but more with multiculturalism. As St Ambrose could have said, ‘If you live in Rome, live in the Roman way; if elsewhere, as they do there.’ Until the large-scale irruption of Germanic tribes fleeing the Huns in the 4th century AD, eventually ending the Roman empire in the West, Romans had been fairly relaxed about immigrants, temporary or permanent. Many came under compulsion: hostages, prisoners of war and slaves, this last group keeping wages low across a range of service industries. Rome itself actively welcomed foreign doctors and teachers, while lawyers, diplomats,

Joan Collins

Diary – 19 May 2016

Not only are today’s young girls having to work hard on their abs, butts and glutes, now the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian are instructing the poor lambs in the art of keeping their ‘lady garden’ in mint condition. Subject to the approval of their best mates, apparently, the formerly taboo subject of ‘down south’ is now open for discussion. Some celebs now cultivate, manicure and moisturise the ‘no-fly zone’ with as much effort as they put into their faces. Whatever next? Will Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt suddenly inform all studs how to take care of their gentleman’s gentleman? I’ve been on Twitter for four years now

Raymond Keene

Cyrus the Great

I think I hold the world record for the greatest number of chess books written (or co-written) and published. At the last count I managed to identify 199, with several of them translated into a total of 13 different languages. Last week, a new book by the prolific Cyrus Lakdawala dropped through my letterbox. Lakdawala seems to be producing a book every month and I fear he is threatening to overtake me. His latest tome is an exposition of various methods of combating the Sicilian Defence. These include an early c3, in order to build up a formidable pawn centre for White, a quick Bb5 and the feared Morra Gambit where