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Society

Thursday

Polly Morgan

Women are still scared to talk about IVF. Let’s change that

As a result of a ruptured appendix, I am infertile. The appendicitis was followed by gangrene and peritonitis, which permanently blocked my fallopian tubes and left me having to do IVF for a chance to have my own child. I have never felt shame about my situation but I have felt isolation and grief, both of which would be very much more bear-able if people were prepared to talk openly about in-vitro fertilisation — to dispel the taboo that still surrounds it. IVF in its various forms is incredibly common these days. More than 2.5 million babies born in the past seven years began their life in a Petri dish.

James Delingpole James Delingpole

A Supreme Court justice and the scary plan to outlaw climate change

How do you make an imaginary problem so painfully real that everyone suffers? It’s an odd question to ask, you might think, but it’s one that has been exercising some of the brightest minds in the legal firmament, led by no less a figure than Lord Justice Carnwath of the Supreme Court. Last month, at an event whose sinister significance might have passed unnoticed had it not been for the digging of Canadian investigative blogger Donna Laframboise, Carnwath contrived to nudge the world a step closer towards enacting potentially the most intrusive, economically damaging and vexatious legislation in history: an effective global ban on so-called ‘climate change’. The setting was

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Finally, a business rates reform! If only I knew what it meant

This column has repeatedly cried that something must be done about business rates. Yes, it’s fair to ask businesses, as well as individual citizens, to contribute to local public-sector provision — even though businesses can’t vote. But it was far from fair during the recession to go on collecting £26 billion a year from hard-pressed firms based on an arbitrary multiplier applied to out-of-date rental valuations, in many cases long after those values had slumped to the point at which the rates were a higher cost than the rents. The same firms were being charged all over again for basic services such as refuse disposal, and complaints that the system

The Spectator

Bulgarian tragedy

From ‘Bulgaria and Greece’, The Spectator, 9 October 1915: The fact that the British people will in all probability soon be at war with Bulgaria is a matter of very deep regret, for this nation has always watched the development of the peasant state with strong sympathy… But though we can and do sympathise with the Bulgarian people, it will be quite impossible to prevent the consequences of their king’s evil deeds from falling upon them. War is a stern business, and the allies cannot alter their course of action even though they understand Bulgaria’s difficulties. Regret it as we may, the Bulgarian people will have to reap the harvest they

Alice Oswald

Alongside Beans

weeding alongside beans in the same rush as them 6 a.m. scrabbling at the earth beans synchronised in rows soft fanatical irresponsible beans behind my back breaking out of their mass grave at first, just a rolled up flag then a bayonet a pair of gloved hands then a shocked corpse hurrying up in prayer and then another and then (as if a lock had gone and the Spring had broken loose) a hoverfly not looking up but lost in pause landing its full-stop on a bean leaf (and what a stomach bursting from its zips what a nervous readiness attached to its lament and using the sound as a

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What could the Conservative party offer a working class teenager from Moss Side?

David Cameron had the best warm-up act possible today for his speech: before he was speaking, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had her turn. It’s a bit odd to describe someone who has been Scottish Tory leader since 2011 as a ‘rising star’, but the truth is that Davidson’s profile has been rising over the past year, and not just because of the Scottish referendum. Her speech was a pretty good demonstration of why this MSP should get an even higher profile in the Tory party across the UK: passionate, insightful, clear and human. Seb explains her key message, which was that the Tories cannot be ‘seen as decent technocrats’,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Who really won in the battle over right to buy?

David Cameron’s key policy theme in his conference speech was housing, and it included the announcement that the government is accepting housing associations’ offer of a voluntary extension of the right-to-buy to their tenants that allows them to avoid legislation. The Prime Minister said: ‘And in our manifesto, we announced a breakthrough policy: extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants. Some people said this would be impossible. Housing associations would never stand for it. The legislation would never pass. ‘Let me tell you something. Greg Clark, our brilliant Communities Secretary, has secured a deal with housing associations to give their tenants the Right to Buy their home. That

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The Vatican ‘Family synod’ and the sex abuse scandal that could engulf Pope Francis

Pope Francis’s three-week Synod on the Family began on Sunday. Most of the 279 ‘Synod Fathers’ are senior bishops, many of them cardinals. They have no authority to change any aspect of Catholic teaching or pastoral practice. They are discussing the ‘hot button’ issues of communion for the divorced and remarried and the spiritual care of gay Catholics — but, once the meeting is over, power will rest entirely in the hands of the Pope. Conservative Catholics aren’t happy. Last year, at a preparatory ‘extraordinary’ synod, officials hand-picked by Francis announced in the middle of the proceedings that the Fathers favoured a more relaxed approach to gay relationships and second

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron makes home ownership the focus of his ‘turnaround decade’ conference speech

David Cameron’s conference speech today will include plans to increase home ownership, which has become a personal mission of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The Tories convinced that people are more likely to vote for them if they are homeowners, and are well aware of polling that shows most people want to own their home in this country. So David Cameron will overhaul planning rules that his advisers believe slow down development – the section 106 requirements that mean developers must include affordable homes for rent in their plans – so that more homes that people can afford to buy are built. This reform will see the Tories

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Let’s stand alongside Bahar Mustafa

  The Goldsmith’s imbecile Bahar Mustafa has been arrested for tweeting something with a hashtag ‘kill all white men’. Obviously, she is a foul cretin. Obviously her previous moments in the limelight – organising fatuous protests from which straight white men were banned, for example – lead one to the position that any horrible fate which befalls her could not possibly be unpleasant enough. She is an ass, a halfwit. But then she is only a sort of personification of the abject stupidity which reigns within our universities; a cringing political correctness, a terror of free speech and a loathing of our country. God knows how we sort all that

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Denis Healey was one of the most entertaining lunch guests I’ve ever had

Denis Healey and my father Deryk Vander Weyer — a big cheese at Barclays and spokesman for the high-street banks during Healey’s chancellorship — had a lot in common. Both were clever, cultured, iconoclastic products of good Yorkshire grammar schools; both wartime majors and post-war socialists (my father finally turned right when he began to appreciate the merits of Margaret Thatcher); both formidable in argument. ‘Now then, young Deryk,’ the then chancellor used to say, only half joking, ‘You’re the man to run the state bank for us after you’re all nationalised.’ Thirty years later, the mellower Healey of old age came north to Helmsley to give a talk about

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Don’t listen to the haters, Zara – a hairnet is the height of elegance

Zara Phillips has been spotted wearing a hairnet, and people do not approve. ‘Zara swaps tiara for Corrie hairnet’ runs one headline, with the article comparing her to Coronation Street’s Ena Sharples. I think we can all agree that a hairnet, on its own and minus a hat, isn’t the best look in the world. Mind you, having said that, I do know certain men who think hairnets are ‘rather sexy’. I suppose it takes all sorts – and it is the sort of thing that someone in a Jilly Cooper novel might say. I imagine that Rupert Campbell-Black, for instance, might have a thing for hairnets. Anyway, I’ll admit now that

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Jonathan Portes fired as NIESR director

So farewell, then, Jonathan Portes. As CoffeeHousers may know, he was chief economist in the Cabinet Office under Gordon Brown but in recent years he has been director of the NIESR, an economic research institute, which he used as a platform to continue leftist attacks against conservatives. He pretty much lives on Twitter, when he’s not bothering press regulators with nit-picking complaints against people with whom he disagrees. The NIESR seems to have finally had enough of being hijacked for his partisan purposes. It has announced his departure ‘by mutual consent and with immediate effect’. Okay, maybe ‘announced’ is overstating things: it has inserted a sly paragraph in the ‘about us’ section of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jeremy Hunt says new junior doctors’ contracts are ‘essential’ for seven day NHS

Jeremy Hunt isn’t going to back down on the changes to junior doctors’ contracts despite a growing row over the issue. When asked by Danny Finkelstein at a Times fringe about whether he might change his mind on the matter, he replied that the changes to the contract were essential to the introduction of the seven day NHS and so there would be no backing down. Hunt, who normally prides himself on his reasonable manner, was particularly critical of what the British Medical Association has been saying about these changes; claiming that they were systematically misleading people. There was no danger of triumphalism on Hunt’s part when he talked about Jeremy

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Tories are trying to make their majority permanent

This is the first conference since the election where the Tories won a majority and the first since Labour chose an unelectable leader. But, strikingly, George Osborne chose to use his speech to emphasise how the Tories must show the millions of working people who voted Labour in May that they ‘are on their side’. Osborne is a man seized of the opportunity presented to the Tories by Labour’s lurch to the left. He has spent the last few days picking off several of Labour’s best ideas. His aim to make sure that when—or, should I say if—the Labour party attempts to return to the centre ground of British politics,

Spectator Health

Health podcast special: exploring obesity

Obesity is not as straightforward as it might seem, and there are many, wideranging reasons behind it. In this View from 22 special, Spectator Health editor Max Pemberton discusses Britain’s worsening obesity crisis – and what can be done about it – with Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP and journalist, Dr Aaron Parkhurst, a medical anthropologist at University College London and Julia Manning, chief executive of 2020 Health. How much of a role does gender and ethnicity play in obesity? Does where you live affect your weight? Are socioeconomic factors important, and have modern lifestyles made the issue worse? And is there any correlation between lower income households and obesity? This podcast was sponsored by 2020 Health. Click Here to read the

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory abortions, spitting and the c-word: comedians let rip at People’s Assembly event

This morning Charlotte Church apologised on behalf of the People’s Assembly to a reporter who was spat at by protesters outside Tory conference in Manchester. The classical-singer-turned-activist says that she will pen an open letter explaining that this is not representative of what the People’s Assembly protests are about. However, she may want to save space in the letter for an extra paragraph or two covering last night’s People’s Assembly comedy night, titled ‘laugh them out of town’. Frankie Boyle, Sara Pascoe, Robin Ince and Francesca Martinez joined forces at the Manchester Academy for a night of ‘jokes’ at the expense of the Tories. The very mention of Jeremy Corbyn at

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Justine Greening shows new enthusiasm for her job and her own story

Justine Greening’s brief as International Development Secretary is really quite specific. It certainly doesn’t require wide-ranging speeches about social mobility or domestic policy. And while Greening didn’t give a wide-ranging speech in her address to the Tory conference today, she did insert little snippets about her own life in a way that suggested she isn’t keen to remain International Development Secretary for ever. For instance, she said: ‘Wherever you are in the world, young people tell me they want the same thing, a job and the dignity of work. I know that the toughest year of my childhood in Rotherham was the year my dad was unemployed.’ And she also

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Yes, the Pope met a gay priest — that doesn’t mean Catholic doctrine is about to change

Well, the Vatican isn’t the place I know a bit if the sexual orientation of the Polish priest who’s just outed himself as gay wasn’t known to everyone from the Swiss Guard to the cleaners. But still, for Mgr Krzysztof Charamsa to declare in a press conference not just that he’s homosexual but actually in a sexual relationship with his boyfriend Eduard – who looked a little less dazzlingly pleased with himself than the priest – was not just a gigantic thumbed nose to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for which he worked, but to the synod on the family which is just starting. One of the

Saturday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition: Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress has her say (plus: rock star novelists)

The invitation to step into the shoes of Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress attracted a jumbo entry. Clearly lots of you think it’s high time she had her say. But you weren’t the first to pipe up on her behalf. Marvell’s seductive overtures failed to persuade the Australian (male) poet A.D. Hope. Here’s an extract from his blistering reply, ‘His Coy Mistress to Mr Marvell’, published in 1978: Had you addressed me in such terms And prattled less of graves and worms, I might, who knows, have warmed to you; But, as things stand, must bid adieu The contemporary American poet Annie Finch wasn’t having any of it either. Her equally