Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Podcast: Cameron the radical, animal welfare and student sex

How will Cameron be remembered in years to come? As a steady-as-she-goes pragmatist or a radical reformer? In actual fact, he’s both. No modern Tory leader has been so good at looking calm under fire, yet there is a more radical Cameron. The insouciance is partly an act. In this week’s podcast, Freddy Gray, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth examine these two sides of Cameron. With the party conference looming, and the election just eight months away, Cameron needs to make the case for Tory radicalism. The Manchester dogs’ home fire has revealed our strange attitude to animal suffering. There is a glaring double standard in our adoration for our pets

Bruce Anderson

In praise of the Loire – cradle of civilisation, and wonderful wines

Rivers are the cradles of civilisation and the Loire is an outstanding example. It is one of the head-waters of modern France. By the 7th century, the region had emerged from the Dark Ages and was building on Roman traditions to lay foundations that would endure. St Martin, Clovis: we are at the beginning of a recognisably French history. War is both an expression of civilisation and its curse — but also, occasionally, its saviour. In 732, that nascent French history was in danger of eradication until one of the most important battles in European history took place at Tours, near the Loire. Charles Martel defeated a powerful invading force

Aidan Hartley

From Burma — or maybe Saigon — to Manchester via Calcutta

England   We dropped off our daughter Eve at her new school in the Midlands and started the long journey home to Africa. On the train we sat down and my wife Claire looked as if she’d seen a ghost when she saw the elderly lady in the opposite seat. After ten minutes Claire said, ‘I’m sorry I keep staring at you, but you look exactly like my grandmother. Where are you from?’ The woman said she was from Trinidad, but her family was originally from Kerala, in India. Claire said her grandmother was from Calcutta. Our son Rider looked puzzled. ‘Where are we from?’ For him the counties whizzing

Neil Clark

Václav Klaus: The lies Europe tells about Russia

Václav Klaus has made a habit of saying things others shy away from saying, but it doesn’t seem to have done him much harm in the popularity stakes. Quite the opposite: the 73-year-old ardently Eurosceptic free-marketeer has legitimate claims to be regarded as the most successful ‘true blue’ conservative politician in Europe over the past 25 years. He was, after all, prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 1998 and then his country’s president for a further ten years, from 2003 to 2013. So when we meet after a typically hearty Serbian lunch — at the International Science and Public Conference in Belgrade — I am keen to

Melissa Kite

Why do we care about the mutts from Manchester and not the chickens from KFC?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Melissa Kite, Camilla Swift (and Charlie the dog) discuss animal welfare” startat=630] Listen [/audioplayer]We love animals more than we love people. Of course we do. Following the recent fire at a Manchester dogs’ home, people donated £1 million and blocked the M6 with their cars as they arrived in their multitudes to adopt the displaced animals. It would have been heartwarming, it really would, if we hadn’t also demanded the death of the teenaged boy named on Twitter as the suspect in the arson attack. All over the internet apparently normal people, including ‘friends’ of mine on Facebook, called for a 15-year-old boy to be burned alive. I

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Students – bunk off your sex classes and learn on the job

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Brendan O’Neill and Amelia Horgan discuss student sex” startat=1174] Listen [/audioplayer]The freshers heading off to university this month won’t only be bombarded with invites to join clubs and enough free Pot Noodles to sustain them till Christmas. They’ll also be swamped by advice on how to have sex. These young men and women, who probably thought that squirm-inducing sex-ed classes were a thing of their childish pasts, are in for a rude awakening. For now, sex education extends into adulthood: students must now have ‘consent classes’. At some universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, they’ll be compulsory. You’re an 18-year-old guy who’s been in a happy, lovely sexual relationship

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Michael Fallon: parliament needs the ‘courage’ to vote for war

The Ministry of Defence is like a sauna on Sunday. The air circulation system has been switched off and the place is hot — and deserted. Yet when you reach the Secretary of State’s floor, a small team is hard at work. As you enter Michael Fallon’s office, you see why. On an easel sits a map of Iraq and Syria. Tellingly, though, this isn’t the only map on the stand. Sitting behind it are ones of Pakistan, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. It emerges later that the one of Ukraine has gone missing. Fallon is 62, but he has the energy of a man half his age.

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The greatest joy of playing Grand Theft Auto V? It lets you give the finger to the PC brigade

The last — and only — time I had sex with a whore she was so impressed by my performance that she begged me to do it all over again. I thank the drugs. Before popping out in my stolen car for my rendezvous with my skanky ho, I had smoked a couple of fat blunts which I’d found ready prepared for me by my bitch next to my beer fridge and it put me in just the right mood. But none of this was ‘real’. I was playing the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV) and enjoying the transgressive thrills of living the life of a young black

Lucy Vickery

Prose poem

In Competition No. 2866 you were invited to pick a well-known poem and write a short story with the same title using the poem’s opening and closing lines to begin and end the piece. I liked Mike Morrison’s use of the first line of Eliot’s ‘Whispers of Immortality’ as a springboard into an intriguing snapshot of the lexicographer Noah Webster. Equally impressive was Josh Ekroy’s imagining of an alternative and far from uneventful life for Mr Bleaney, who is reincarnated as a ruthless terrorist. Other star performers were Max Ross, Sid Field, John O’Byrne and Ashani Lewis. The winners earn £25 each. G.M. Davis takes £30. ‘My old flame, my

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Is the US using bank fines to bring allies into line against Russia?

Here’s one for all you conspiracy nuts out there, prompted by readers’ comments on my recent item about whether BP has been unjustly targeted by the US political and judicial establishment. I gather there’s a theory that the hounding of non-US banks by the US Department of Justice for sanctions-busting and trading misdemeanours has a more sinister foreign-policy impetus behind it. Notably — according to Conflicts Forum, a website I’m told is breakfast reading for trainee spooks — the $9 billion fine imposed by US authorities on BNP of France for financing trade with Iran, Sudan and Cuba may also have been intended to punish the French for refusing to

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Was the phrasing of the Scottish referendum question designed to create division?

It is a trick which often works on children. Do not tell them to eat vegetables; instead ask whether they want broccoli or spinach. Question such as ‘Red or white?’ or ‘Still or sparkling?’ are examples of placebo choice: a psychological hack which works rather like the placebo ‘door close’ buttons in lifts (which are usually not wired up to anything but exist to give impatient people the illusion of control). Such questions give the feeling of choice without offering much at all. The hack needs to be viewed with caution since it can subtly transmute ‘I prefer B to A’ into ‘I want B’. Watch out for canny estate

Wednesday

Tarek S Arab

It’s up to each woman to decide whether the pill’s benefits are worth the risks

According to a new paper published in the journal Cancer Research women taking combined oral contraceptive pills (COCP) have a 50 per cent increased risk of developing breast cancer. Frightening stuff – or is it? Oral contraceptive pills have many benefits; they provide excellent contraception, decrease pain and bleeding during periods, they can help towards restoration of normalisation of hormones in women with polycystic ovary syndrome and they significantly decrease the risk of ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, colon cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. They do have risks, however, among them an increase in the risk of breast cancer. This risk needs to be put into perspective in order to fully assess whether the benefits

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: A treat from a German private

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: Excellent use is made of captured documents, and we are treated to excerpts from a letter by a German private which deals with the fighting capacity of the British soldier:— “With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches, in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire, and they then open a truly hellish fire on the unsuspecting cavalry. This was the reason that we had such heavy losses. . . . According to our officers, the English striking forces are exhausted. The English

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Are Syria air strikes legal? Perhaps not, but why should we care?

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’ Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this. This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head. I recall back then being on an edition of Question Time where, rather than expressing

Carola Binney Carola Binney

My dyslexia means I can’t spell, but I can be a spy

Apparently, I’d make a good spy. I may not be discreet or fluent in Russian, but I do have one rare quality that GCHQ prizes: I’m dyslexic. The intelligence agency apparently employs more than 100 dyslexic and dyspraxic spies, who lend ‘neuro-diversity’ to the war against terror. Speaking to The Sunday Times, the head of dyslexic and dyspraxic support at GCHQ praised dyslexics’ ability to analyse complicated information in a ‘dispassionate, logical and analytical’ way. Dyslexia doesn’t have to be a ‘learning disability’: it merely means that you learn in a different way to the majority. My mild dyslexia made primary school difficult, but I’ve since come to see it

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: Miliband bashes rich and big business to pay for NHS ‘Time to Care’ fund

Ed Miliband, due to address Labour conference shortly, is to announce a £2.5 billion NHS Time to Care Fund for thousands more nurses, doctors, caseworkers and midwives. Time to Care will get its money from a £1.1 billion clampdown on tax avoidance, a mansion tax on properties worth more than £2 million and US-style fees for tobacco firms. As James said earlier, this is crude but effective Labour politics and appeals to areas where they are strongest. It appeals to the party’s base by bashing the rich and big business, while appealing to the wider electorate on an issue they care about and that annoys them. For many people who

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Yes movement slowly moves through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief

No-one has died. No-one has been stabbed. Someone, I suppose, may have been punched. So let’s retain some sense of perspective as we consider and try to make sense of the last few days in Scotland. It is only day five. People deal with grief at different speeds. So, pace Ms Kubler-Ross, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many Yes voters are still in Denial. Many others have made it to Anger. Some have got as far as Bargaining. Most are certainly still in Depression. Only a few have reached Acceptance. True acceptance, I mean. There’s a lot of Yes we lost but if you look at it differently we

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Why shooting Wigmore Hall was the kindest thing to do

On Saturday, the Daily Mirror published a front-page photograph of the racehorse Wigmore Hall with a gun to his head, about to be put down, having broken its leg. Unsurprisingly, the paper’s decision was met with dismay and anger from the racing community. But perhaps more surprising is that the RSPCA appears to be on racing’s side. In February last year, Melissa Kite wrote in this magazine that she feared that the RSPCA might have set their sights on horse racing. But it seems promising – and strangely sensible – of the RSPCA to have spoken out against both the Mirror and the pressure group Animal Aid, which supplied the

Molly Guinness

The Spectator: defending drunkenness since 1828

University terms are getting started and this year’s Freshers may be glad to read that The Spectator has always staunchly supported the right to get drunk. In the late 19th century, the magazine took issue with the Permissive Bill, which would allow individual parishes to vote on whether or not to ban the liquor trade. ‘Unless the swallowing of alcohol is a mania in se, a positive offence against morals, then the advocates of the Permissive Bill have no logical standing at all, are simply trying to enable the majority to oppress the minority into acting on the majority’s opinion in a matter of indifference. They might just as well

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Aerial warfare

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: The early afternoon papers of Friday publish a Reuter telegram to the effect that a Zeppelin flew over Ostend at eleven o’clock on Thursday evening, dropped three bombs, and flew away again. The damage was one office wrecked and one dog killed. If that is the bag of one Zeppelin in Ostend, what, after all, would be the bag of one hundred Zeppelins in London?