Society

It’s only been a month since the new Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, declared that the ‘era of culture wars is over’. Yet this morning the Daily Telegraph reports that teachers in training courses will be taught to challenge ‘whiteness’ in lessons, to ensure future educators are ‘anti-racist’. The guidance in question has emerged from universities, rather than from the government itself – specifically from the National Education Union in England (and funded by Newcastle University) and from ten universities north of the border who have endorsed an ‘anti-racism framework’ drawn up by the Scottish Council of Deans of Education. Some of the guidance includes instructions on how to ‘disrupt the

The jibe, commonly attributed to Napoleon, that England is a nation of shopkeepers, was at least a sort of compliment. Britons embodied, it seemed to suggest, the bourgeois virtues of thrift, industry, self-reliance and pragmatism. But what would a latter-day Napoleon see if he looked at us now? A nation of busybodies, bluenoses and snitches intent not on minding the shop but on minding each-other’s business. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from the news that Kirstie Allsopp has been reported to social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to travel round Europe with a friend to celebrate the end of his GCSEs. Allsopp shared her pride in her son’s

Sumy, Ukraine In the city of Sumy, the jumping off point for the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk region, the night is punctuated by the sound of explosions, the staccato fire of anti-aircraft batteries, and occasionally the whir of Iranian-made Shaheed suicide drones. In a parking lot in the east of the city a dozen cars were burned to a crisp on a recent Saturday morning, incinerated by one of Moscow’s Iskanders, a hypersonic missile that travels at Mach six and has a range of more than 300 miles. Meanwhile in a basement cellar in the city dozens of young Russian conscripts, taken prisoner in Kyiv’s recent land-grab, were being

I can think of few things worse than being a tourist. So I must admit that I did manage a smirk, as I swelter my way through yet another Italian summer, at reports that the mayor of Portofino has apparently banned air-conditioning in an attempt to preserve the beauty of his town.  Yes, of course, I enjoyed the vision this conjured up of the bling and buy rich who these days infest the bijou little seaside town sweating like pigs – or the poor.   Portofino, then, is a perfect example in microcosm of the carcinogenic effect of tourism on the soul and spirit of a place ‘Portofino blows whistle on air

Around the tolerant British dining table, there are few opinions which will see you shunned, instantly. ‘Bring back the birch’ might be one, unless you’re supping with someone who recently had a bike stolen. ‘Xi Jinping has really good hair’ will certainly silence people. However if you say ‘keeping pets is usually wrong, especially cats and dogs’, I can guarantee universal rejection. Still, the point needs to be repeated – not least because we have new, disturbing evidence of the damage these pets are doing: to the environment. Fluffy may not look like an ecological supervillain, but I am afraid it is the case That evidence comes in the ongoing collapse

Heading to the UK is a longstanding rite of cultural passage for many Kiwis. People like my youngest son, who will be visiting Britain for the first time this autumn, are a big part of the tradition. But so is returning home again. New migration figures are putting paid to that last bit. Record numbers of New Zealanders appear to be picking up sticks and decamping from the Antipodes, and a lot of them aren’t bothering with return tickets.  It may be that New Zealand’s charms are wearing thin What the ultimate cost of this is for their nation remains something of an open question, but for now the numbers are ‘just phenomenal’,