Society

Imagine if a Ukip politician wrote about being on an aeroplane that was ‘heaving’ with black people. Imagine if he described becoming suspicious of them, and assuming, on the basis of no evidence, just a hunch, that they must be flying overseas to get up to no good. Imagine if he complained to British police about this ‘heaving’ group of dark-skinned air travellers, and the police agreed to interrogate them upon their return to Britain. There would be outrage. We’d see this as racialised suspicion. In which case, why has there been no outrage, not so much as a raised eyebrow, over what the Lib Dem Baroness Jenny Tonge did at the

From ‘The Magnanimity of Italy’, The Spectator, 18 July 1915: The Italian always aspires not only to do great things, but to do them in the great way, whether it be to build a church, a hospital, or a railway station, paint a picture, or write an ode. Picturesqueness and the refinement of miniature work—these appeal to him very little. He wants the big brush, the big canvas. What Sir Thomas Browne so well called ” the wild enormities of ancient magnanimity” inspire no fears in his mind. The grandiose does not alarm him, but only the mean and the petty. This great-heartedness is shown very clearly not only in

‘The Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.’ In that one sentence, Cardinal Pell puts his finger on what is wrong with Laudato Si‘, Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment. In that document, Francis waded into an argument about climate change and took sides. Moreover, he gave the impression that he was speaking for all Catholics when he did so; and, if by any chance he wasn’t, errant faithful should fall into line. In an interview in Thursday’s Financial Times, the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy stepped out of line. See above. It was a brave thing to do: Pell’s wholesale reform of

Quiet Fridays are the best sorts of days to bury bad news: or at least so the Whitehall wisdom goes. That doesn’t seem to have worked today, given that ministers’ attempts to bury three bits of awkward news have been picked up – and because it’s a relatively quiet news day, they’re getting a good amount of attention. Today is clearly a take-the-trash-out day, when ministers get rid of a load of announcements that involve them admitting they’re either doing something unpopular, or they’re not going to do something that they are supposed to be doing. Today’s trash includes: 1. The government is delaying the cap on social care costs