Society

It’s not often you can blame Samantha Cameron, Sandra Howard and Cheryl Cole for a social trend that blights the job prospects of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women, but it’s out there. I’m talking about tattoos, which have travelled like inky climbing roses up the bare legs of countless Brits, from the bottom of society right to the top. Or from the top to the bottom, depending on your starting point. At one end of the social spectrum you have Cheryl Cole with that rose tattoo on her bottom, which she claims cost the price of a small car; at the other, you have SamCam’s little dolphin on

It is the now familiar nightmare image. A kneeling prisoner, and behind him a black-hooded man speaking to camera. The standing man denounces the West and claims that his form of Islam is under attack. He then saws off the head of the hostage. listen to ‘Terror’s London accent’ on Audioboo

From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: IT is gratifying to find that the public is rapidly waking up to the fact that other prospects than those of universal unemployment arise out of the present war. The daily papers of this week, instead of talking of the necessity for relief funds, have begun to talk of the tremendous commercial possibilities revealed for Great Britain by the collapse of Germany’s oversea commerce. The main cause of that collapse everybody now understands. It is due to England’s possession of superior sea-power. In addition, it must be noted that many German manufacturing concerns have been obliged to shut down because their work-people have gone

It has been a bad fortnight. Not only am I off the sauce for a few weeks to help my liver grow back, last weekend saw me preparing for a children’s birthday party. This was one I had to attend, seeing as the children are my godchildren (or whatever the secular version is). This meant shopping for children’s presents. Now I could have done as I do for adult friends and relatives on birthdays, which is arrange to take them out for a brace of Martinis followed by a Jo Allen burger. I rejected this for the kids, however, as Jo Allen is not that suitable for the under 5s.

It seems barely a day goes by without another crack appearing in the glass ceiling. This week, I found it particularly fitting that at the same time as record numbers of young women collected A-Level results in science subjects traditionally the preserve of men, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the highest accolade in maths, the Fields Medal. Just days later, in front of a record audience, the England Women’s Rugby team lifted the World Cup for the first time in twenty years. From the lecture theatre and the board room to the sports field, women are continuing to break new ground, and the government is on their

From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: SIR,—The article on this subject in your last issue has prompted me to write down some of the things said to me about the war by the women in my district. Our rector wished me to ask at each house whether any one from it was serving with the forces. The usual answer was: “No one from here, I’m glad to say. I shouldn’t like any of mine to go.” One mother said: “There’s no one here could go but Eddie, and I’ve told him he needn’t offer. If they want him they’ll take him.” This idea is general. One woman had heard that

The Prime Minister has returned from his holidays, and yesterday wrote an intriguing piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Syria. ‘True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world’ he wrote, and this morning Defence Secretary Michael Fallon sounded distinctly hawkish about British involvement in Iraq. But what does any of this actually mean? Fraser Nelson tries to get to the bottom of things in our look at the week ahead, while Isabel Hardman wonders whether anyone – including Cameron – knows what our policy is anymore. Meanwhile Douglas Murray argues that an

On the face of it, it’s a simple equation. In the north-London borough of Islington, there are almost 9,000 people on the housing waiting list. The area needs more homes. A Conservative-led Government cuts red-tape, making it possible to convert empty and redundant office space into new homes without planning permission. Local council chiefs ought to welcome this – recognising this will help address their local housing shortage. But not so in Labour-run Islington, where the Council is instead threatening legal action against the Government for freeing up much-needed homes in this way. For the second time since the legislation was introduced in May 2013, the council is intent on

The Spectator, 22 August 1914: Recruiting for Lord Kitchener’s first hundred thousand men appears to have brought in seventy thousand. That is good, though, we confess, not so rapid as we should like to see it. This comparative slowness is, no doubt, very largely ‘due to the fact that even now there are not enough recruiting centres open. Here, however, the military authorities must not be blamed, for the public must remember that almost the whole of the recruiting staff was swept off into the Expeditionary Force, and that the General Officers responsible for recruiting in the various districts have literally had to improvise a recruiting staff out of men