Society

Thursday

Roger Alton Roger Alton

What football can tell you about Jim Murphy (and what Jim Murphy can tell you about football)

The author of a rather brilliant little book about football could just hold the key to Labour’s otherwise negligible prospects in next year’s election. Jim Murphy is the last of the devout Blairites left on the scene, following the fratricidal killing of David Miliband, the departure of James Purnell to big bucks at the BBC, and the decision of the head of the church himself to spend more time with his mansions. After 2010, the Ed Miliband team reshuffled him out to international development. Murphy is direct, angry, utterly undeferential and passionate about everything he does. Remember him doggedly campaigning to keep the Union during the Scottish referendum, lugging his

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris: the barbarism of the Twitter mob

Are we heading for a new barbarism? Is this the return of the 18th-century mob? Here are more questions than answers. I ask because when all the fuss about Emily Thornberry and her photo tweet from Rochester has died down, we shall be left with something more disturbing than whatever sin she may or may not have committed. We’ve just seen demonstrated the speed, the destructiveness, the sheer violence of the modern tempest that information technology can create. In the world of opinion, climate change has arrived already. As a workaday columnist, I reflect that I could equally easily write a spirited defence of Ms Thornberry; or a spirited attack;

The Spectator

From the archives | 27 November 2014

From ‘Sedition in Ireland’, The Spectator, 28 November 1914: If the press is to be muzzled, why do not the muzzling laws hold good in Ireland? It is against all common-sense to place Ireland in a privileged position — to give roving licences to any Irishmen who care to kill recruiting. Men have been arrested in England for spreading foolish false reports, which were not very much worse than the gossip of idiots. Why have the deliberate, callous preachers of sedition been allowed for so long to go untouched in Ireland?

Misti Traya

Pacific-sized love

Grandpa turns purple in the sun. He says it is because we are Filipino, but my skin never colours that way. I watch him mystified as he calls to the pigeons. His whistles are strong and long and loud. They are all of his breaths pushed out, part Kools, part Budweiser, part Mentholyptus Halls. The wind scoops them up and makes them hers, using their smoky song to amplify her sound. Pigeons come flying home and Grandpa Melvin smiles. Some of them go straight to the coop and rest their tired wings. Air is thick in Hawaii, sticky sweet like mangoes, orchids and coconut milk. Other pigeons feast on the

Joshi Herrmann

The hidden price of more overseas students at British public schools

Just a decade or so ago, most public‑school-educated parents felt obliged to give their children the same start in life they themselves were given — selling off heirlooms to send their Jacks and Henriettas off to Eton, Stowe, Cheltenham Ladies or St Paul’s. These days the price is just too high, says Andrew Halls, head of King’s College School in Wimbledon, and he’s been honest enough to name the cause: the hordes of prospective parents from other countries, oligarchs and oil men, all jostling for places for their progeny. They push the price of an elite ‘British’ education up beyond the reach of any ordinary Brit. He’s brave to raise the

Jenny McCartney Jenny McCartney

The agony of dying gadgets

It’s hard, being a technophobe today. The condition is defined as ‘a fear, dislike or avoidance of new technology’, which in slow-moving times — involving a popular shift from the fountain pen to the rollerball, say — should be manageable, but electronic change is coming so fast now that one is rarely without an encroaching sense of panic. We technophobes are often compelled to use technology, of course, and we can certainly sniff the magic of its portal into a world of limitless information. And so we pick up rudimentary skills, painstakingly and with a grudging suspicion, and our second-greatest fear becomes that this old, now-familiar technology will suddenly break

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Forget corporate social responsibility: just do a proper job

A theme of this autumn has been conversations about corporate reputation and how it is guarded or lost. To name but three, I have kicked this around at a ‘Trust Forum’ sponsored by the lawyers DLA Piper at Oxford’s Said Business School, at a lunch hosted by the wealth managers McInroy & Wood, and in an interview with Lord (Stuart) Rose, former Marks & Spencer chief, at last week’s York Business Conference. The essence is that most big companies feel their reputations are increasingly fragile, and that public trust is now routinely and unfairly denied to them. Non-banks blame banks for letting the side down. All companies blame the media

Wednesday

Apollo Magazine

Apollo Awards 2014: Museum Opening of the Year

This article first appeared in Apollo magazine Apollo magazine are pleased to announce the Apollo Awards 2014 shortlist for the Museum Opening of the Year, which recognises some of the most important new museum or renovation projects to be completed between October 2013 and September 2014. The winner will be announced in the December issue of Apollo. Find out more about the Apollo Awards. Aga Khan Museum, Toronto Highlights from the Aga Khan Museum’s collection have been touring the world for several years. Now for the first time, more than 1,000 artefacts spanning as many years of Islamic history and three continents have a permanent home designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki. The collection includes

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: In sickness and in health

Health, health, health. Viewers of PMQs must be sick of it by now. Health this, health that. Health, health. On and on. Ad nauseam. Today’s exchanges involved the usual tussle over which Superman can save the NHS. Dave and his virile economy or Ed with his honked out assertions that he’s the patient’s champion? The only place where healthcare isn’t massively overstretched is west Africa. Tory Edward Garnier revealed that a spanking new hospital in Sierra Leone, completed with UK money, and run by Save the Children, is currently treating just five patients. So that’s how you hit waiting time targets. Run the place so badly that everyone runs in

John O'Neill

When do the children of migrants become British?

When do the descendants of immigrants go from being migrants to being natives? That’s the question raised by a MigrationWatch UK study which says that the impact of immigration on the 4.6 million increase in the UK’s population since the millennium has been ‘substantially underestimated’. Why? Because the government’s statistics agency doesn’t attribute the 1.3 million children born to foreign-born parents to migration. Sir Andrew Green, the chair of MigrationWatch, said that: ‘It is now undeniable that the massive scale of net migration has been the main cause of our population growth and that, in the future, our population growth is likely to be almost entirely due to migration.’ The Office for National Statistics says

Steerpike Steerpike

Oldie friends again? Richard Ingrams and Alexander Chancellor end bitter feud

‘Tis the season for forgiving, and Mr S is pleased to report that what Vanity Fair called ‘one of the juiciest rows in recent Fleet Street history’ appears finally to have been put to bed. After months of squabbling in the press, Alexander Chancellor and Richard Ingrams were seen chatting amiably at the launch of Teresa Waugh’s novel A Long Hot Unholy Summer. The row started after The Oldie magazine let go its founding editor Ingrams to make way for his old friend Alexander Chancellor. Ingrams was furious, and he let the gossip columns know it. ‘He’s a bloody fool for taking the job!’ he said. But bygones be bygones,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The latest immigration madness: prove you love your wife (or husband)

Sometimes it is the small things that tell you everything you need to know about the madness afflicting British politics at present. Consider this small detail from the new immigration bill: All proposed marriages and civil partnerships involving a non-EEA national with limited or no immigration status in the UK are to be referred by registrars to the Home Office. This will give the Home Office more time and scope to identify and investigate suspected sham marriages and civil partnerships and to take effective enforcement action. Why does this matter? Because it alters the relationship between citizens and the state. Once upon a time the state presumed you were innocent

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Digging for victory

From The Spectator, 28 November 1914: After discipline and rifle shooting comes entrenching. We suggest, as a practical proposal, that every corps should practise its men at least once a week in trench digging. There ought to be no difficulty even in towns in inducing some patriotic man to lend them a piece of ground for the purpose. Further, in every district two or three model trenches should be prepared under expert direction. Trenches are not very difficult things to dig, but there are right ways and wrong ways of constructing them, and one practical example which can be inspected and copied is worth a hundred directions on paper. Spade-work

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Facebook insists it does tackle terrorism as finger points at site for Rigby messages

Facebook is responsible for hosting a conversation Rigby murderer Michael Adebowale had about killing a solider, according to the Telegraph. Both the ISC’s report and the committee’s chairman Malcolm Rifkind have been critical of an ‘internet company’ for not alerting the security services to the conversation. ‘Had MI5 known about the conversation,’ says the report, ‘there is a significant possibility that MI5 would then have been able to prevent the attack’. Facebook are on the defensive and have refused to comment on the speculation Adebowale discussed killing a solider on their site. According to a spokesman: ‘Like everyone else, we were horrified by the vicious murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby ‘We don’t comment on individual

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are Tristram Hunt’s plans for private schools a class war or just a bit pointless?

Tristram Hunt has managed to get a great deal of attention for his proposals for private schools helping out state schools, with even his own (private but sufficiently stuffed with Socialist children to be OK) alma mater getting rather annoyed at what it calls a ‘tasteless’ policy which espouses ‘what some might deem an offensive bigotry’. In summary, the Shadow Education Secretary wants to make the £700 million worth of tax breaks that the private sector enjoys conditional on the schools helping those in the state sector by sharing facilities, deploying teachers to help out with lessons, and making sure that they participate in the same leagues for sports, debating and other

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Sir Malcolm Rifkind suggests internet companies are ‘a safe haven for terrorists’

The battle between the spooks and the geeks is heating up. A new report into the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby has suggested that the brutal attack could have been prevented if an internet company (which remains unnamed in the report) had allowed online exchanges between the two killers to be accessed by intelligence services. While the 191-page report suggests that both MI5 and MI6 made errors, the real villains to emerge are the US-based web giants. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who chaired the report, has suggested that internet companies are ‘providing a safe haven for terrorists’. The report says: ‘What is clear is that the one party which could have made a

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why we should use the language of Christianity in public discourse

There was an interesting exchange last night at the annual lecture for Theos, the think tank that does God. After a speech by the economist Will Hutton which paid tribute to Catholic social teaching as a way of looking at economics, the floor was given over to the two MPs, Jon Cruddas and David Willetts. Jon Cruddas was fluent in the language of community, solidarity and fraternity, precisely, as he said, because that’s what Christianity is about, and he is of Irish Catholic stock. He observed that the fundamental principle that you should do to others what you would have them do to you was universal – it translates into

Sebastian Payne

Five things you need to know about the Lee Rigby report

Could the intelligence services have prevented the murder of Lee Rigby last year? Probably not, but there was more they could have known and possibly done, according to a report from the Intelligence and Security Committee (pdf) out today. While the committee has praised the intelligence services for the work they do, there are criticisms levelled at people both in and out of government. Here’s what you need to know: 1. Although errors were made, Rigby’s murder was unlikely to have been prevented The report credits the intelligence agencies for protecting Britain from a ‘number of terrorist plots in recent years’ — one or two serious plots each year. However, a ‘number of errors’

Monday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

By caving in to religious misogyny, ‘anti-racist’ liberals reveal their inner racist

Even by the low standards of English lawyers, the men and women who run the Law Society have behaved like shameless hypocrites. Instead of confining themselves to offering professional advice, they set themselves up as Islamic theologians. In a practice note on Sharia-compliant wills, the Law Society advised the 125,000 solicitors in England and Wales to urge Muslim clients to discriminate against women, non-Muslims, adopted and ‘illegitimate’ children. ‘Male heirs [should] in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir,’ it said, and ‘non-Muslims may not inherit at all’. Likewise ‘illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs’ and should not be left a penny. The Law

Olivia Cole

Paddington Bear talks to Spectator Life about manners, marmalade and Portobello Road

This is an extract from Spectator Life, available with next week’s issue of the Spectator: You adapted very well to life in London — were you concerned about how you might get on working in Hollywood? I was rather worried at first, but then I discovered I only had to go as far as Elstree to do my filming, which meant I was able to come home each night to 32 Windsor Gardens. I did offer to go on the bus but I think Mr King was a bit worried I might get lost so they sent a special car to pick me up every day. Spectator Life has heard