Society

Thursday

William Cook

The loveliness of Lucerne

When Queen Victoria came here for her summer holidays, Lucerne was already a bustling tourist destination. Today it’s just as popular. It’s easy to see why. When you emerge from the busy train station (Lucerne is far too civilised to have an airport), Switzerland’s loveliest lake lies before you, framed by a ring of mountains. The forecourt doubles as a quay. If you like looking at the Alps but can’t be bothered to trek up them, Lucerne will suit you perfectly. You can sit in a quayside café and gaze at them all day. Lucerne’s biggest draw is its summer music festival (15 August to 14 September this year) which

Bruce Anderson

Sanctions won’t tame Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Talking might

The civilised world felt as if its heart had been touched by an icicle. Photographs of murdered children. Biogs of people like us; we could have been on that plane. We will be on similar ones, now reminded of our vulnerability to frivolous barbarians in possession of terrifying weapons. Grief and fear lead rapidly to anger: to the demand that something must be done to punish the evildoers and rescue us from insecurity. That might seem a comforting thought. It is also false comfort, for there is a basic problem. What can we do? When in doubt, think hard, in a long historical perspective. Paradoxically, that apparently arid discipline may

Mark Mason

What’s wrong with sunglasses

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_24_July_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Mark Mason and Ed Cumming discuss whether wearing sunglasses 24/7 should be the preserve of the mafia” startat=1392] Listen [/audioplayer]A question to ask yourself on sunny days: are you, as you conduct your conversations with people, trying to convince them that you are Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix? You’re not? Then will you please take off your sunglasses? Hardly anyone does these days. For whatever reason, it seems to have become acceptable over the past couple of years to engage in social intercourse with the upper half of your face entirely concealed behind several hundred quid’s worth of metal and glass. No matter that the poor person you’re

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Want a fun job? You just have to pick the right parents

Recently one morning, as I was weeping over Caitlin Moran’s (daughter of Mr and Mrs Moran of Wolverhampton) brilliant book How to Build a Girl — specifically, the heartbreaking way she writes about coming from an impoverished family — a report came on to the radio with the glad tidings that working-class white children are now doing worse in schools than any other ethnic group. Said one Graham Stuart, the Conservative chairman of the education select committee, ‘They do less homework and are more likely to miss school than other groups. We don’t know how much of the underperformance is due to poor attitudes to school, a lack of work

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Why I’m against posthumous pardons, even for Alan Turing

Ross Clark is a columnist I try to read because he is never trite. So I was sorry to miss performances of his musical play staged earlier this month. Shot at Dawn is about a sister’s quest for a recognition (after his death) of her brother, Harry Briggs, a soldier in the Great War who was executed for desertion. The play is sympathetic to the idea of posthumous pardon; coupled with this, it’s a lament that society punishes people without trying to understand why they do what they did. A second theme emerges: homosexuality, and the difficulty (then) of living with this in a world that does not understand. I

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Ukip shuffle: Can the party become more than a one man band?

Nigel Farage has started his long awaited reshuffle of the Ukip top team tonight. Patrick O’Flynn, the former Daily Express journalist, becomes the party’s economics spokesman. Given O’Flynn’s writings, we can be pretty sure that he’ll make taking the middle class out of the 40p tax band one of Ukip’s defining policies. Steven Woolfe becomes migration spokesman. His tweets tonight indicate that his main emphasis will be how EU membership skews Britain’s immigration policy in favour of low skilled EU citizens and against high skilled people from the rest of the world. There’s no word yet on the other front bench roles. There’ll be particular interest in what role Diane

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Why is The Daily Dot, smooth and sassy website of ‘the internet community’, publishing racist nonsense?

The Daily Dot, founded less than two years ago, is best read while sipping the flattest of flat white coffees. I love it, even though it’s not pitched at me: most of its 11 million monthly unique visitors are ‘millennials’. No UK site integrates tech news into the broader culture so expertly. This is what you can find on the Daily Dot home page right now: ‘A guide to Silicon Valley’s top political donors’; ‘How the paleo diet developed into a cult of nonsense’; ‘Anonymous goes to war with Israel’; ‘Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler freaked out by giant reporter’. Those headlines were brewed by some of the world’s best

Steerpike Steerpike

The law’s an ass, obviously

‘The award of Queen’s Counsel is for excellence in advocacy in the higher courts,’ says the QC appointments page. ‘It is made to advocates who have rights of audience in the higher courts of England and Wales and have demonstrated the competencies in the Competency Framework to a standard of excellence.’ Given that, earlier today, the relatively unknown MP Jeremy Wright, who was recently appointed Attorney General, was sworn in as QC, Mr S suggests adding a few more lines to that description. Perhaps: ‘The award of Queen’s Counsel is also for those who have shown willingness to express whatever opinion their masters decree; even if that opinion is wholly at odds with those of every other

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Don’t jump to conclusions over the positive drugs test on the Queen’s filly ‘Estimate’

The news that one of the Queen’s horses, Estimate, tested positive for morphine, a banned substance, hit the headlines yesterday evening and unsurprisingly caused a bit of a stir. If the drugs test is confirmed by the British Horseracing Authority then the five year old filly would be disqualified from the 2014 Gold Cup at Ascot in which she came second (and which she won in 2013). She was last night still expected to be racing at Glorious Goodwood on 31st July. Morphine is a painkiller (or a sedative), rather than a performance-enhancing drug, and one that is permitted for use in training, but not in competition. The thing is,

James Cracknell

Stopping the obesity juggernaut will be a real legacy for our children

Rather ironically, the best analogy I can summon to describe my appointment and role with Policy Exchange as senior research fellow on Obesity and Physical Activity is an enormous buffet made up of your favourite food. The problem would be deciding where to start and then knowing when to stop. Sadly, the obesity and inactivity pandemic heading our way is larger and more intimidating than the dream buffet. It was while reading the October 2007 Foresight report, ‘Tackling Obesities: future choices‘, that I became acutely aware of the juggernaut heading in our direction. The paper predicted that by 2050 three in five adult men, half of all adult women and a

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

No wonder Philip Clarke was axed – Tesco has lost its way

I really wouldn’t want to be chief executive of Tesco, I wrote in January, because the ‘too big, too dull, too dominant’ supermarket giant, besieged by discounters, has become ‘a business-school case study of a brand that has lost all positive emotional connection to its customers’; the incumbent Philip Clarke, a Tesco lifer with scant hope of measuring up to his predecessor Sir Terry Leahy, had ‘everything to lose’. Well, now he’s lost it — to be replaced by Dave Lewis, a Unilever executive who knows how to turn dull products into sexy brands, Dove soap and Lynx deodorant being two of his triumphs. If Clarke’s departure, after only three years in post, looked as inevitable as that of David Moyes from Manchester United

Charlotte Leslie

Jeremy Hunt opens the attack on the Working Time Directive

For years, Secretaries of State for Health have studiously ignored one of the most corrosive regulations to the NHS: the European Working Time Directive. Although the EU is not supposed to have any remit over health, this ‘health and safety’ directive limits junior doctors’ hours to an average of 48 hours per week, with added ECJ judgements imposing compulsory immediate compensatory rest time should hours be breached – and ‘on-call’ time classed as work, even if the doctor is fast asleep. This rigid imposition is neither healthy, nor safe; with junior doctors complaining that it has led them to do illicit work to get sufficient hours of training in, unpaid,

Tuesday

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The incredible, inspiring story of the man who ran ‘the greatest race of all time’

In the middle of a troubled and brawling world: some hope and inspiration. In last week’s edition of The Spectator we ran a piece by Jim de Zoete about the incredible story of David Rudisha, the Masai warrior and 800 metres world champion who ran what Sebastian Coe has described as ‘the greatest race of all time’ at the London 2012 Olympics. Rudisha has spent the last few years recovering from injury, but he’ll be running again in the Commonwealth games next week. Watch him then, but tonight, watch Jim de Zoete’s documentary about Rudisha and his coach, an Irish missionary called Brother Colm. 10pm BBC4. It’ll give you faith

Steerpike Steerpike

More big changes expected at the BBC

Mr S hears that the race to succeed Paxo came down to two candidates: the PM programme’s Eddie Mair and Today’s Evan Davis. Davis’s move frees up the morning slot — with the berth potentially pencilled in for Nick Robinson after next year’s general election. That, in turn, would trigger a race for one of the most coveted jobs in journalism: Political Editor of the BBC. Rest now; but Aunty’s game of musical chairs is far from over.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Celebrating diversity means imposing misogyny

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don’t be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my

Douglas Murray

Britain has let Islamists run riot – as today’s report into the ‘Trojan horse’ plot reveals

Peter Clarke, a former counter-terror chief, has published a report today which reveals that an ‘aggressive Islamist agenda’ was pursued in ‘Trojan horse’ schools in Birmingham. He has found evidence of a coordinated plan to impose strict Islamic teaching on pupils. This piece by Douglas Murray was originally published in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 14 June 2014: Who’s up, who’s down? Who’s in, who’s out? While Westminster spent last week gossiping about which minister’s special adviser said what, in another city, not far away, a very different Britain was unveiled. On Monday, the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, published his damning investigation into the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair. Ever since allegations

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Report claims ‘aggressive Islamist agenda’ pursued in ‘Trojan horse’ schools

The Department of Education has published a damning report today which suggests there was an ‘aggressive Islamist agenda’ pursued in a number of the ‘Trojan horse’ schools in Birmingham. Peter Clarke, a former counter-terror chief, published the report, which found evidence of a coordinated plan to impose strict Islamic teaching on pupils. Michael Gove, the former Education Secretary commissioned the report. His successor, Nicky Morgan has presented the results of the investigation to the House of Commons: listen to ‘Nicky Morgan’s statement on the Trojan Horse scandal report’ on Audioboo

Ruth Porter

A bold plan to make welfare more personalised and responsive

Jobs must surely be one of the great success stories of this government: 1.8 million more people in work, and unemployment at its lowest level since 2008. Increasingly the coalition’s welfare reforms are taking the plaudits for this successful turnaround. This success will only continue as the reforms bed in. The roll out of Universal Credit is important, not just because of how it simplifies the system and improves incentives, but also because once there is proper infrastructure in place it will be possible to move to a new generation of more personalised welfare services. The next critical step is to ensure that the hardest to help – people with

Neil Barnett

Archive interview: Alexander Litvinenko on ice picks, radioactive thallium and Putin’s assassins

In the 25 November 2006 edition of The Spectator, Neil Barnett recalled his encounters with the poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko. Two days before the magazine went to press, Litvinenko died from radiation poisoning. As Theresa May reopens the investigation into his death, we are republishing Barnett’s interview once more: The hotel off a main square in a central European capital was a seedy, low-budget place. When I asked the receptionist for Alexander Litvinenko in room 38, she looked at me blankly, then after some rooting around said, ‘We only have a Mr Jones in room 38.’ It was Litvinenko, of course, employing one of his endless ruses designed to throw off