Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Islamophobia, breast-feeding and Bach

Rational fear Sir: An interesting contrast between the articles by Douglas Murray and Innes Bowen on Islamic influence in the UK (‘Save the children’, 14 June), and the one by Matthew Parris. Mr Parris sees no essential difference between faith schools. But Christians do not on the whole advocate holy wars against non-Christians, or demand that adulterous women be stoned to death, or that anyone who insults their religion should be beheaded. True, there was a time when the Church might have done all these things, but that was hundreds of years in the past and we are now more enlightened. Recent events in Syria and Nigeria, and now in

The Spectator

The bits of Magna Carta that David Cameron won’t want taught in schools

The not-so-great charter David Cameron wants every child to be taught about Magna Carta. Some bits he might want to leave out: — ‘If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age.’ — ‘No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband.’ Foul play Is there a correlation between bad behaviour from a country’s football team and violence in the country as a whole? WORST-BEHAVED TEAMS IN EUROPE Homicides per 100,000 people Ukraine 4.3 Romania

Peter Jones

How ancient Athens beat tax avoidance

The taxman will soon be ordering those planning dodgy tax avoidance schemes to declare them beforehand and pay the full tax on them up front. Only if HMRC finally decides the scheme is legal will the tax rebate be allowed. This is a very Greek principle, which could help with the problem of bankers’ bonuses. The 4th century bc Athenian tax system was very progressive: only the richest paid any at all. In times of war, those with a certain value of declared property were liable for an emergency tax (eisphora), levied at 1 or 2 per cent. These wealthy Athenians — numbered in the thousands — were grouped into

Dot Wordsworth

Terrorists still can’t ‘execute’ anyone

During the sudden advances of ISIS in Iraq, one visual image stood for their brutality. As the Daily Mail reported it, there was ‘a propaganda video depicting appalling scenes including a businessman being dragged from his car and executed at the roadside with a pistol to the back of his head’. I’ve heard from friends in the press, though not at the Daily Mail, that this description enraged readers. It wasn’t the fact, but the use of the word executed. This, they pointed out, meant the commission of a sentence imposed by a court, which was certainly not the case here. To execute, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it,

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What’s the cure for a workshy teenager?

Q. I agreed to give (paid) gap-year work experience in my own large garden to the grandson of an extremely nice neighbour. I need the assistance and, in theory, a willing and able novice could learn a lot from me. The boy is due to start soon but now I’ve heard from someone who’s been in close daily contact with him that during his recent study leave for A levels, he was rarely seen off a sun lounger, where he was not even reading but was glued to an iPhone or some gaming device and constantly yawning. I don’t want to fall out with my lovely neighbour but nor do

Toby Young Toby Young

It’s time to face down the greatest intellectual threat of our era (oh, and Ed Miliband)

As you’re reading this, I will still be recovering from the dinner I’m due to attend this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. Earlier the same day, I’m due to appear on a panel with various conservative grandees to discuss whether the other side has won. Classical liberals emerged victorious from the battle of ideas in the 1980s, thanks in part to the work of the CPS, but it’s beginning to look as though we’ll have to have the same arguments all over again. One reason for concern is the hard left turn

Dan Snow

Dan Snow’s diary: Making World Cup history

Could there be a more timely advert for the Better Together campaign than on the field of sport? What the England football team manifestly need is the man who is now the best British player, an offensive winger with the speed of a cheetah and the tactical brain of Rommel — proud Welshman, proud Brit, Gareth Bale. My obsession during international sports tournaments is to find appropriate historic parallels for every game. Holland made it easy for me with a destruction of Spain reminiscent of the 1639 annihilation of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of the Downs off the east coast of Kent: a decisive clash that ended conclusively

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes: Diana’s bed, Boris’s dirty trick and Prince Philip’s mystery tie

On Friday night, I went to Althorp, childhood home of Diana, Princess of Wales, to speak at its literary festival. My first duty was to appear on the panel of the BBC’s Any Questions? in a tent there. It was 30 years to the month that I had first been on the programme. Then it was at Uppingham School, presented by David Jacobs, and the panel included Roy Hattersley and Esther Rantzen. This time, it was presented by Jonathan Dimbleby, and the panel was George Galloway, Nigel Evans (the Tory MP who did not rape any men), and a beautiful woman called Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 June 2014

Home With war engulfing Iraq, Britain set about reopening its embassy in Tehran, closed in 2011. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, ruled out British military action. The government made it a crime to associate with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or al-Sham), the salafist armed movement known as ISIS. About 400 Britons were thought to be fighting on their side. The government can intercept Facebook, Twitter and Google without individual warrants, because they are based externally, the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism admitted in a law case. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, ran into heavy weather trying to prevent Jean-Claude Juncker being appointed president of the European Commission.

The Spectator

We won the Cold War – and then lost our way

It would have been easy enough to imagine the 25th anniversary of the Eastern European revolutions being marked with a conference on liberty held in honour of Lady Thatcher — a conference which was held this week. But that is just about the only thing which could possibly have been foreseen from the vantage point of a quarter of a century ago. Who could have predicted then that the stream of Eastern European migrants flooding westwards in the hope of a better life, so welcomed then in their Trabants, would come to be seen so negatively that the desire to keep them out caused the rise of a fourth party

Doc

2167: Groupies

The unclued lights are of a kind and are listed together in Chambers 2011. Solvers should highlight two normally clued solutions which together form another theme-word.   Across   1    Ties series of games with instrumentalists (11, two words) 7    Small county’s struggle (3) 11    Clog has lost its tip – repaired clog (6) 16    Young lad from Nantwich, rising (5) 17    Number one difficulty in the Big Apple (6) 18    Old count makes school on time (5) 20    Dazed state from formal protest? Not half (6) 21    Salesman’s patter at station 13 (5) 22    Publishing what the petitioner is doing

Doc

to 2164: Blank crossword

The unclued lights are types of CROSS. Solver were required to indicate clearly the FYLFOT at the centre of the grid.   First prize M. Purdie, Ceres, Fife Runners-up Gerry Fairweather, Layer Marney, Essex; Hugh Thomas, Ixworth, Suffolk

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Jeanette Winterson is not the only artist to have enjoyed killing animals

It seems as if the author Jeanette Winterson might have a bit of a pest control problem. ‘Rabbit ate my parsley’, she tweeted, ‘I am eating the rabbit.’ Accompanied, of course, by step-by-step photos of said rabbit, from skinning to Aga. Fair enough, many might say. At least she was sensible enough to eat the rabbit that she killed (and she even gave the cat the innards. So in the process, she saved on one supermarket chicken, and one tin of Whiskas. Pretty good going, I’d say.) But she’s far from the only artist who has demonstrated a fondness for either killing animals, or for using them as artistic props. Hemingway

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Generation Y: A jilted generation, or just a bunch of whingers?

Generation Y – are they really a jilted generation, or do they have absolutely no reason to be complaining about their lot? This was the question posed at Tuesday night’s Spectator debate, with the motion: ‘Stop whining young people, you’ve never had it so good’, and chaired by Toby Young. It all kicked off with an introduction from Alan Warner, the investment director at Duncan Lawrie, who expressed his gratitude to Tony Blair for putting Islington – where Warner owned his first London home – on the map. It’s not just this generation who feels hard done by when it comes to property, he said. Every generation feels like it

Constance Watson

Spectator Event report: Will artificial intelligence put my job at risk?

Will computers make humans redundant? It might be the biggest question of our time. Last night Spectator Events, in partnership with Microsoft, hosted a panel discussion to answer the question ‘Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk?’ A fascinating and wide-ranging conversation about the technological revolution ensued. The Spectator’s chairman Andrew Neil was joined by Microsoft’s Laboratory Director Professor Andrew Blake, journalist Bryan Appleyard, the TUC’s Nicola Smith and Jamie Bartlett, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos. Professor Andrew Blake, up first, sounded an evangelical note, emphasising the positives of technological change. A distinguished scientist himself, Blake argued that artificial intelligence is already transforming our lives — at

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

We need to know much more about ISIS’s ‘British’ jihadists

The social media exchanges of British jihadis in Syria and Iraq, as just revealed, are perfectly riveting, don’t you think? Fancy worrying about things like where to leave your luggage and internet connections when you’re a jihadi. There’s scope here for TripAdviser. But when it comes to jihadists from Britain, I’d rather like a bit more pertinent information about them than their currency exchange problems. I rather get the impression it’s BBC policy to describe the Brits fighting for ISIS and similar just as British citizens, or Britons, presumably on the basis that to describe them as being something like ‘of Pakistani/Nigerian/Syrian origin’ would invidiously distinguish between one citizen and

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Jeremy Paxman’s last Newsnight made me want to be sick

Did you threaten to overrule him, Paxman? Did you threaten to overrule your editor when he told you that he was going to let you finish your career in such an embarrassing fashion? Did you? Answer the question. Did you threaten to overrule him? Did you? DID YOU? You should have. A friend of mine admitted that he wept – wept! – as the credits rolled last night. I was split on the matter; weep or vomit, weep or vomit. If this had been a regular episode of Newsnight, Paxman would surely have been fired. The problem with last night is that it presumed that someone who is a genius

Kayte Lawton

Why the left needs to back families and commitment

The last Labour government oversaw a major expansion of support for families, with new investment in childcare, tax credits, maternity leave and children’s centres. Despite this investment, the left still struggles to demonstrate its ‘pro-family’ credentials and to affirm its backing for parents and committed family relationships. Too often, this leaves us conceding important political territory, allowing the right to claim it understands families best. In a major new report, The Condition of Britain, IPPR argues that we need to show we back parents who are working hard to raise their children – including unequivocally supporting committed relationships. For most of us, family is what we care about most, the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

World Cup diary – Thank God the reign of Spain is over!

It is a wicked thing to revel in someone else’s misery. Trouble is, occasionally it can’t be helped. So – bye, bye Spain! I think I would have traded England winning tonight (and therefore prolonging the agony) for Spain’s magnificently rapid exit from this world cup. Oh, Chile – you brave sons of Pinochet and Allende! Whichever you prefer – who cares? It is the more civilised parts of Latin America which have shone in this world cup – Chile themselves and Costa Rica. Brazil struggled and have been, uh, “fortunate”, Argentina looked distrait, Uruguay simply incompetent (though that opinion may need to be revised later); Mexico, the world’s great