Society

It’s curious that the story about the National Council for Civil Liberties and its links with the Paedophile Information Exchange is big news now, since it’s been common knowledge for many years, and written about in the Catholic press on a number of occasions. I researched the story back in 2006 or 2007, along with another journalist, and this was already then well-trampled territory, but the papers weren’t interested, despite my friend’s huge amount of work. He even went to Hull, I seem to remember. And back. I only got as far as Cockfosters, which was then the improbable home of the Gay and Lesbian Newspaper Archives, which was where

What’s the problem with that Balance of Competences report on Freedom of Movement that still hasn’t been published? Nick Clegg gave his monthly press conference today, and was asked whether he had a problem with the report, which is believed to have been delayed because it painted too positive a picture of immigration. Clegg said: ‘They by and large depict a situation where we get a lot more from this pooling of decision-making in the EU than we somehow lose. My simple rule of thumb is that the exercise has got to be depoliticised, it’s got to be objective, it’s got to be based on facts, and not just on

The Sun’s report that pensioner benefits will be included in the overall cap on welfare spending highlights an interesting shift that this policy will cause. George Osborne will set out the detail of the cap on Annually Managed Expenditure in the budget in a few weeks’ time. It will put pressure on all Work and Pensions Secretaries to keep future welfare spending under the limit, meaning there will be internal pressure within the department for cuts, rather than the battle for savings between the DWP and the Treasury that we’ve grown used to. Instead of the Chancellor bearing down on DWP with a package of cuts, the DWP will be

You know how it is. You’re finishing off Friday prayers, wondering what to do with your evening. You notice some women in a cattle truck and decide to engage in a spot of ritual humiliation, bunging the women into burkas and forcing them to distribute petals in front of your feet. Critiques of Islam don’t get much more savage than the one delivered by a new French production of Rameau’s 18th century opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes. The third act assault on Iran’s patriarchy drew gasps from the audience – and even a protest at the Toulouse premiere. The idea of casting Islam as an oppressor is a concept almost completely unknown to the art

When it involves metropolitan left-wingers, says the Daily Mail. For a week, it has been exposing how Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt – or “Hat and Pat” as the London left of the early 1980s knew them – committed the National Council for Civil Liberties to the cause of helping the Paedophile Information Exchange. The Mail showed that while at the NCCL (now Liberty) * Hewitt described PIE in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’; * The NCCL lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten – if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’. * It

Would you buy a used car from the disc jockey Chris Moyles? I’m fairly gullible but even I’d have second thoughts if the gobby lardmountain approached me with a 2004 Nissan Micra, one careful owner mate, sound as a pound. This is what Moyles told the Inland Revenue he did for a living so that he could save one million quid in tax. What he was actually doing was presenting various unspeakably awful radio programmes for obscene amounts of money. He has been told by a tribunal – which his legal team tried to have held in camera, so as to protect the oaf’s foundering career – to pay the

What will happen to the much-maligned contractor that carries out the government’s work capability assessments which determine whether a sick or disabled person is fit for work or needs long-term disability benefit? Atos Healthcare is reported to be seeking an early end to its contract with the Work and Pensions department, which certainly won’t dismay ministers who have been privately unhappy with the company’s performance for a while. Although DWP isn’t commenting beyond the statement below, it now looks as though it won’t be difficult to end the contract mutually. ‘Atos were appointed the sole provider for delivering Work Capability Assessments by the previous government in 2008. In July last

I wrote a piece about the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals uproar in the magazine this week, and it has prompted some angry responses by email and over social media. I’m told that I didn’t treat problem gambling with sufficient seriousness. I’m not sorry about that, I’m afraid: I think it’s silly to be too serious about the vices of others. My point was that the political and the media classes are having something of a moral panic about FOBTs  — and as always with moral panics, the political and media classes don’t really know what they are talking about. I doubt Ed Miliband or Tom Watson, who both seem dead against FOBTs, have ever spent more than

Spectator literary competition No. 2838 The latest competition asked for profiles for an online dating website for well-known politicians, living or dead. Gallic ladykiller François Hollande loomed large in the entry, as did Gorgeous George Galloway, Ann Widdecombe and Adolf Hitler. And while John Samson’s somewhat unlikely lothario Oliver Cromwell might appeal to those who like the masterful type — ‘That ye should seek matrimonial harmony by reading such vainglorious publications doth render thee unworthy of espousing this Puritan. Speak thus of me to thy more God-fearing sisters…’ — those seeking cosy nights in need look no further than Bill Greenwell’s Eric Pickles: ‘I do like to go out a