Society

Thursday

Jim De Zoete

The Catholic missionary and the Masai running champion

In 2012, David Rudisha, a Masai warrior from Kenya, ran what many say was the greatest race in the history of the Olympics. He led the 800m final from the front and smashed his own world record, becoming the first man ever to run under 1.41. In the words of Seb Coe, ‘Bolt was good, Rudisha was magnificent.’ In interviews after the race he thanked one man above all others for his success: an Irish Catholic missionary named Brother Colm O’Connell — a man with no official athletics training who had nonetheless been David’s coach since he first began to run. And if David wins another gold at the Commonwealth

Liz Anderson

Farewell, Speccie

So we are all going to have to pay for fatties to have stomach bands and bypasses, are we? It may be ‘cost-effective’ to treat the obese before they go on to develop diabetes and other medical problems, but I’m not sure how much sympathy they will get when we already hear about cancer patients having operations delayed and drugs withheld because of stretched NHS budgets. According to the OECD, Hungarians are the most obese people in the EU, followed by Brits. Rather surprisingly, Romanians are the least fat. Surprising, because on a recent holiday to the island of Lefkada, there were a huge number of Bulgarians, Serbs and Romanians.

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why we’ll never go back to smoking indoors

What would happen, I wonder, were we to rescind the smoking ban as Nigel Farage wants? My guess is not much. Most restaurants would keep the existing rules. Some pubs might set aside a room for smokers. Casinos, comedy clubs and jazz clubs might revert to the status quo ante. But would we return to a time where people routinely smoked everywhere? Unlikely. People have had the chance to experience a new version of normal, and in large part they prefer it. You wouldn’t expect me to say this, but I think the legislation has to be considered good precisely because, even if it were abolished, much of the behaviour

Lucy Vickery

Soccer lesson

In Competition No. 2856 you were invited to recruit a well-known author of your choice to give Phil Neville a masterclass in the art of football commentary. After his commentary debut, unkind comparisons were drawn between Neville’s style and a speak-your-weight machine, and when the England physio was stretchered off injured, a Twitter user speculated that it was because he’d ‘slipped into a coma when a live feed of Phil Neville’s commentary was played into his earpiece’. There was lively and stimulating punditry on offer in the entry, serving as a shining example to Mr Neville. Commendations go to Adrian Fry, Hugh King and Nick Booth. The bonus fiver is

Wednesday

Liz Anderson

How to beat Alzheimer’s

British scientists have identified a set of proteins in the blood which can predict, with 87 per cent accuracy, the start of dementia. Symptoms, apparently, take about ten years to appear after the actual start of Alzheimer’s. Having lived with someone with this horrendous condition, I am certain that I wouldn’t want to take a blood test that would show that in a decade I would develop dementia unless, obviously, I could have it reversed. Ignorance is bliss… But research can’t move forward without volunteers. Between 2002 and 2012, 99.6 per cent of trials aimed at preventing or reversing the disease flopped because, doctors believe, patients were treated too late, when the disease was well under way. So perhaps we should all volunteer if we want to

John O'Neill

Audio: What Harriet Harman said about tax

At PMQs David Cameron attacked Ed Miliband for his deputy Harriet Harman’s comments, made on an LBC phone-in show on Monday, that she wanted to see higher taxes on middle-income earners. listen to ‘Cameron: Labour will squeeze the middle more’ on Audioboo

Steerpike Steerpike

Mrs Gove goes on the warpath, as Michael plots his media career

Well, Michael Gove’s wife, Sarah Vine, has made her views clear: tweeting that the reshuffle was ‘a shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret’. Crikey. Talk about ‘stand by your man’: A shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret http://t.co/M9SN100PE1 via @MailOnline — Sarah Vine (@SarahVine) July 16, 2014 Should Vine be turning her ire on Lynton Crosby? It was Crosby, so the story goes, who forced Gove out after concluding that his polling numbers were irredeemable. The move has created the greatest conundrum of the generally pretty perplexing reshuffle. If the new Chief Whip polls so terribly, why has he been asked to prosecute the election

Douglas Murray

The West has drifted away from Israel — and itself

Is Israel drifting away from the West? That was Hugo Rifkind’s claim in his column in the magazine last week. Hugo wrote: ‘Israel drifting away. Never mind whose fault it is; that’s a whole other point. But it’s happening. It’s off. No longer does it exist in the popular imagination as our sort of place. Once, I suppose, foes and friends alike regarded it as a North Atlantic nation, but elsewhere. Then a western European one, then, briefly, a southern European one. When was it, do you think, that Israel stopped being regarded as fundamentally a bit like Spain? Early 1990s? Then they shot Yitzhak Rabin, and Oslo didn’t happen, and

Tim Ecott

Never mind women bishops — why is the C of E now pretending the Devil doesn’t exist?

Once again, a feeble desire to be democratic and appeal to potential church-goers has led the C of E into muddy waters. No, I’m not talking about women bishops, but the Church of England’s much more significant — and damaging – decision, rubber stamped last Sunday, to remove the Devil from the liturgy of Baptism. Instead of being asked to reject ‘the devil and all rebellion against God’, parents at a Christening will now blandly be asked to ‘turn away from sin’. The change of language means the liturgy is now so removed from the original Book of Common Prayer as to be unrecognisable, but members of the Synod were

Tuesday

The Spectator

View from 22 podcast special: reshuffle review

In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman round up some of the key stories from the reshuffle, including Gove’s shock demotion, the increased number of women in the Cabinet and whether the government has become more Eurosceptic and less green. listen to ‘Reshuffle special – with Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth’ on Audioboo

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

The Tories have little to fear from this latest luvvie attack on its policies

Zero-hours contracts: refuse to work with one, and you might lose your benefits. To the Left, it’s preeminent proof of the Coalition’s malevolence, a brightly blazoned slave contract clutched in a cold Tory fist. So it’s no wonder that the lefty press has seized upon Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin’s new play about the invisible working poor, as one big ‘fuck this Government, basically‘. The Guardian starts its puff-preview with a reminder that ‘16 per cent don’t get the hours they need to make ends meet and one-in-four would like more work‘ (we hear little about the other 84 per cent). The original report from which the Guardian selectively quotes in fact concluded that ‘zero-hours

Steven Vates

Why lobbying against sugar misses the point

Everybody knows that obesity is a massive problem. According to the World Health Organisation, it is now linked to more deaths than malnutrition and starvation. And thanks to a remarkable lobbying effort in recent years, we all know the culprit – sugar. The science against sugar stacks up pretty well. The American endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig has written and lectured extensively on how fructose (one half of table sugar) contributes to obesity and poor metabolic health, likening it to an addictive drug which should be restricted for sale. His YouTube lecture has been viewed over 4.8 million times. The UK lobby group Action on Sugar have been working hard to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

6am Spectator podcast special: Cameron’s reshuffle – the hiring begins

Good morning. We’ve just had the night of the long knives – for middle-aged Tory ministers at least. Now for the promotions, and you can expect a disproportionate number of them to be younger and female. Will Britain join the list of countries with female defence secretaries? Will Esther McVey, Liz Truss and Priti Patel become the new faces of David Cameron’s government? And will any of them much welcome the idea that this is a mission to bring on the women? I discuss this with Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth in this special edition of The View from 22, The Spectator’s podcast. listen to ‘Cameron’s reshuffle: now for the hiring.

Monday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Women bishops: the game’s up for Anglo-Catholics

From the moment the General Synod voted for women priests in 1992, it was inevitable that it would also vote for women bishops. Conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics engineered a delay of 21 years, but I doubt they’ll be shocked by today’s decision. Some traditionalists have even been arguing that, although they were still opposed to the measure on principle, another ‘no’ vote would be a disaster for the Church of England. That strikes me as hopelessly muddled thinking, but remember that these are the people who brought you the Alice-in-Wonderland notion of ‘flying bishops’. How will Pope Francis react? Some Anglicans suspect that he’s secretly pleased: they see him as

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lady Butler-Sloss steps down from child abuse enquiry

It is not a surprise that Lady Butler-Sloss has stepped down as chair of the independent inquiry panel into child abuse: a critical mass of stories had built up against her which meant it was impossible for her to continue leading an inquiry that is partly about conspiracy theories without herself becoming the target of conspiracy theories which would eventually weaken her findings. A resignation before the inquiry has even kicked off is a serious blow to the government, which had been trying so hard to play conspiracy whack-a-mole, to stay ahead of the critics by acting fast and appointing big names to lead big investigations into historic allegations. But

The Spectator

Podcast: 2014 Cabinet reshuffle

In our latest View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the possible outcomes when Cameron reshuffles his Cabinet. listen to ‘James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson discuss the Cabinet reshuffle’ on Audioboo

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

World Cup diary — in defence of ‘pervy’ camera crews

The best team won, and the best two teams reached the final. This is a comparatively rare event at a world cup. And it was a fine world cup in general, with plenty of things to gladden the heart – the hammering of Spain by the Netherlands, the hammering of Brazil by Germany, the eviction at stage one of teams who think too highly of themselves, the emergence of doughty underdogs (Iran, Ghana, Chile, Costa Rica). The Netherlands remain an enigma; they are either wonderfully fluent or suddenly turn into England. But their record, for a country with a fifth of our population, is excellent. The most distressing thing about

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Mental health and benefits: ministers get the wrong end of the stick

Every so often when ministers are considering a policy, they send a little kite up to see how it’s received. Sometimes it gets hit by a lightning bolt of fury from a party’s target voters, and is never heard of again. Sometimes it flutters about and no-one plays a blind bit of notice. And sometimes the kite gets rapturous applause. There seems to be a mixed response to the kite flown today that people with anxiety and depression could be forced to have a talking therapy such as cognitive behavioural therapy or risk losing their benefits. On the one hand, it’s welcome that ministers want to help people with mental

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

There aren’t enough normal people in Cabinet – male or female

Well, it’s looking good for Esther, Liz and Priti, isn’t it? The one handle most of us have by now got on the reshuffle is that it’s one for the girls, an opportunity for the PM to remedy his woman deficit. Out with fatty Pickles, grand Sir George and genial Ken Clarke; in with go-ahead Liz Truss and the photogenic Esther McVey and the feisty Priti Patel. I suppose this swings and roundabouts business is fair enough, though as the Daily Mail rather wearily put it in its editorial yesterday, ‘ministers should be chosen for their talent, not their gender.’ Boring but obvious but true. So let’s pause now to

Douglas Murray

Video: Rules of engagement, according to Hamas

CNN recently came across a video of Hamas officials calling on civilians in Gaza to volunteer to become ‘human shields’ so that Palestinian civilian casualties can be maximised. Fascinatingly a CNN news anchor has put this fact to a Palestinian ‘spokeswoman’ in a live interview. And what was the response of this ‘spokeswoman’ to the Hamas video?  Well, among other things she said that the idea that Hamas promote a culture of death is ‘offensive’. And best of all she said that ‘the idea that Palestinians use children as human shields is racist’.