Society

Labour wants the next election to be about the NHS, one of their strongest issues. Party strategists have been struck by how it has been rising up voters’ list of concerns and now want to keep it there. Ed Miliband’s pledge today that Labour will ensure that people who fear they have cancer are seen and tested for within a week is astute politics. It keeps the NHS near the top of the political agenda. It is also paid for by a levy on the tobacco companies, which have few friends and little public sympathy. Meanwhile Labour can claim that this is a prudent use of £150 million as cancer

October 18 is ‘anti human-trafficking’ day by 2007 Act of European Parliament; along with ‘anti-slavery day’ by 2010 Act of UK Parliament. So there’s that, for the 29.8 million people worldwide estimated to live in forced servitude. Over at SlaveryFootprint.org, your correspondent learns that I personally make use of 37 slaves in my London routine, mostly through my consumer electronics and my larger-than-average appetite. The survey, laden with factoids about the coerced labour behind shrimp cocktail and mascara, is macro-analysis at its mushiest – and a far more worthwhile use of 15 minutes online than all the ‘carbon-footprint’ calculators put together. The UK’s draft Modern Slavery Bill, due to be in force by next summer, goes past mere symbolism. Though you

From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: NEVER did a people and their Sovereign and his Consort deserve greater honour than the Belgians and their King and Queen. They have drunk the cup of misery and horror to the very dregs. “Their heads are bloody though unbowed.” The invaders have used against them the strength of a giant and the baseness of a giant, but all attempts to terrorize them into submission have been in vain. They have disputed every inch of ground that they could dispute with heroism, yet not with the madness of despair or with mere blind courage, though there has been plenty of that. They have been

Over in my day job, I recently wrote a piece about ‘superfoods’ and the myths that a particular kind of food can protect you from illnesses. The only food advice for which there is consistent evidence is that you should eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables; all this stuff about how you should eat pomegranate to make your liver healthy, or whatever, is complete nonsense. One of the items that keeps cropping up was broccoli. It contains a chemical called sulforaphane, which supposedly helps with diabetes, lung disease and breast cancer. Naturally, the evidence for all this is lacking: the tests were all carried out with

Our society, almost without dispute, can tolerate the publishing of a man’s naked selfie, while the release of a woman’s naked selfie causes outcry. Mark Davies explored the issue earlier this week, but it deserves further scrutiny. There is an important distinction between Brooks Newmark’s naked pictures and Jennifer Lawrence’s, and it comes down to the gaze that falls on them. Nobody is inherently is a sexual object; it is only the eye of the beholder that has the power to sexualise. A 12-year-old girl wearing shorts is not sexual; she is sexualised through the gaze of others. Lawrence’s naked selfies are far more likely to be sexualised than Newmark’s. There may well be people who get a kick

It was Eighties night at Mark’s Club on Thursday evening for the launch of Tory PR guru Lord Bell’s memoirs. Some refreshing honesty from the spin man, who admitted ‘I don’t know why I wrote this book.’ A who’s-who of Tory peers, including Lords Chadlington, Archer and Lloyd Webber, knocked back champagne, with Michael Portillo resplendent in at least three shades of pink. Meanwhile Rocco Forte chased Christina Odone around the room, and Andrew Mitchell looked glum in the corner. Bell may not know why he wrote the book, but at least it’s been an eye opener for him. In his speech at the soiree, he said: ‘James Henderson, who