Society

Another preview from the Spectator Christmas special: Dennis Sewell looks at Ofsted and argues that the Chief Inspector of Schools must revamp his power-crazed organisation. Subscribe for just £73 for a whole year — including full print and digital access, as well as a £20 John Lewis voucher. What’s up with Sir Michael Wilshaw? The chief schools inspector was once seen as a pillar of common sense and an enthusiastic partner of Michael Gove in pragmatic schools reform. Now, he stands accused of trying to enforce a particularly toxic form of political correctness as his inspectors mark down a succession of rural English schools for being insufficiently multicultural — or as some newspapers inevitably

In The Spectator’s Christmas special, hitting the streets tomorrow, Pippa Middleton writes about truffle hunting, cowboy dancing in Wyoming and — as the Daily Mail has been quick to point out – Kim Kardashian’s bottom.  Subscribe for just £73 — including a year’s full print and digital access and a free bottle of champagne. A few days ago I went truffle hunting in Piedmont. It’s been a bumper year for white truffles in northern Italy — the best ever, according to some experts — thanks to climate change and an exceptionally wet summer. My guide was a brilliantly sharp-eyed Italian, Mario, whose dog Rex did the snuffling. Mario told me that dogs are better trufflers

We knew and we knew years ago. Anyone who has been paying attention has known for a long time that the CIA committed appalling acts of brutality in the years after 9/11. Anyone who paid attention has also long known that the agency’s torture regime – not too strong a way of putting it – produced very little in the way of useful intelligence. It was sadism masquerading as detective work; depravity disguising impotence and, in the end, the kind of programme that shames a nation. There are still some people who think it fine and dandy, still some people who think it’s a lot of fuss over not very much.