Society

Thursday

Aidan Hartley

The only people thriving in post-revolution Egypt — tomb raiders

 Cairo Hook nose, blue chin, Arab headdress: the tomb robber resembled a villain from a Tintin comic. His friend was packing a big pistol and behind them it was sunset over the pyramids at Dahshur, south of Cairo. Looting’s been rife in Egypt since antiquity — but there has been an alarming acceleration since the 2011 revolution, and Hook Nose and Big Pistol are in up to their respective necks. I met them as they were about to set off for a night’s work: excavating holes in tombs right up to the foot of the famous Black Pyramid outside Cairo, built around 2,000 bc by a Pharaoh called Amenemhat III.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Hugo Rifkind: Yes, I’m apathetic about politics. But isn’t Russell Brand?

Since I was a child, pretty much everybody I have ever met has asked me if I want to be a politician. The answer has always been no. Once, at university, I dimly remember giving this answer with so much vigour and conviction that I was escorted from the room, and the guy I’d given it to — an almost perfect stranger — came back to find me the next day, to apologise for asking in the first place. Even these days, the phrase ‘follow in your father’s footsteps’ drifting across the table at a dinner party can cause my wife to shoot me a warning look. My point here

James Delingpole James Delingpole

James Delingpole: I’m in love with Shakespeare — and with David Tennant’s Richard II

‘Dad, it’s three hours long,’ says Boy, worriedly. ‘Yeah. And whose bloody fault is it we’re going?’ I want to reply but don’t because I know, as a dad, you’re not supposed to say discouraging things when your child has asked you to take him to see his first ever Shakespeare play at the RSC. Still, I can’t pretend I’m happy with the arrangement. Partly it’s the cost of the tickets: £50-plus each, with no student discount for Boy because the show has long since sold out and you don’t get special deals on last-minute returns. Partly it’s just that, well, it’s the theatre and I’m not that keen on

James Tooley

Malala for free schools

That Malala Yousafzai, the girl the Taleban tried to murder, is a brave and resolute young woman is not in doubt. The youngest person ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, she has won many awards, including the Sakharov Prize and an honorary degree from Edinburgh University, in her campaign for ‘the right to -education’. But something curious is going on. Something crucial to her experience is always omitted when her life and mission are described by international agencies and the media. Education International, the global teachers’ union umbrella group, is typical. Malala is campaigning, they say, so that all can benefit from ‘equitable public education’; that is, government education.

Giannandrea Poesio

Is there or isn’t there a hanged man in ‘Sun’?

Sun is one of those performances that confront reviewers with the eternal dilemma of whether or not it is appropriate to give things away. Yet a reference to what is a powerful coup de théâtre — namely a life-sized hanged hooded man falling from the rigs at the end — has to be made to appreciate what it is all about. The problem is that, according to some reports, that same coup de théâtre disappeared the night after Sun opened, thus turning the dance into something completely different from what had been previously seen. Hofesh Shechter, one of today’s most provocative and innovative dance- and performance-makers, likes to surprise, often

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Now the economy is recovering, is it a good idea to buy Poundland shares?

‘Satan seizes control of saintly bank’ would be a fair summary of much of the coverage of the deal that has rescued the crippled Co-operative Bank from oblivion, or ‘resolution’ as it is technically called. In order to avoid that fate, the parent Co-op Group has had to inject £462 million into the bank while accepting a reduction in its own equity stake to 30 per cent. Dominant among the holders of the other 70 per cent will be a group of hedge funds from New York and Los Angeles who may or may not represent the prince of darkness but are certainly looking for what Co-op Group chief Euan

Allan Massie

Roman baths didn’t make you clean — and other gems from Peter Jones’s Veni, Vedi, Vici

Spectator readers need no introduction to Peter Jones. His Ancient and Modern column has instructed and delighted us for many years. Now he has written an equally delightful and instructive book with the alluring subtitle ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about the Romans but were afraid to ask.’ Well, it may not be quite everything, but it is a near as dammit. He captures you from the start: ‘Romans came up with two stories about how they were founded. One (bewilderingly, we might think) was pure Greek.’ Well, all nations are uncertain and sometimes confused about their origins. So it’s no surprise to be told that ‘any account of

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Cameron’s NHS lines didn’t quite work at PMQs today

Though the NHS made a welcome change from endless bickering about energy bills at today’s PMQs, the exchanges were just as unedifying. There is very little gain in the sort of fact war that David Cameron and Ed Miliband tried to indulge in, as there is no killer fact that can silence an opponent on the NHS. Instead, the exchanges descended very quickly into ‘let me give the right honourable gentleman the facts about the NHS under this government’, ‘we have a Prime Minister too clueless to know the facts’ and ‘once again, the right honourable gentleman is just wrong on the facts’. Each man used his own ‘simple facts’

Hans Rosling

Don’t panic! There’s no population bomb

Our planet is now home to seven billion people, with ravenous appetites for fuel and food — and the number keeps growing. Do you panic when you think about the expansion of the human race? Yes, the world faces great challenges but it is possible to solve them, and some are in fact already being solved. I’m a statistician — but don’t stop reading. Because the latest demographic data show that the future may not be that gloomy, and that mankind is already doing better than many of us think. In 1800, the world’s population stood at barely one billion. But with the industrial revolution everything changed, and in little

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The Catholic bishops of England need Damian McBride’s help

Most Coffeehousers are probably profoundly and justifiably cynical about anything masquerading as a consultation exercise in politics, so it might spread a little cheer to see how the Catholic Church goes about it. There’s been a surprising fuss – BBC news coverage; leader in The Times – about Catholic bishops consulting the laity about matters relating to the family. But although it is indeed quite something for the laity to be asked about anything (their views, mind you, aren’t conclusive, so nothing new there) the manner in which the bishops are doing it is fabulously anachronistic, gloriously uncompromising. To put it in context, the bishops are having what’s known as

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 podcast special: why is it so hard to visit the UK?

In association with Harrods. Does Britain need to do more to encourage tourists and students to visit our country? In this special View from 22 podcast, chairman of Press Holdings Media Group Andrew Neil discusses whether George Osborne’s recent changes to our visa system — including a VIP service and only needing to apply once to visit the whole of the EU — go far enough, the policy on Chinese visas in particular, whether the UK spending enough on its borders and what more could be done to improve our system. Joining the panel are the legendary broadcaster and author Melvyn Bragg, managing director of Harrods Michael Ward and Ben

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Another rotten culture, another political risk on the NHS

The allegations of a cover-up at Colchester General Hospital suggest something rotten in a culture, once again. The police have been called in by the Care Quality Commission to investigate claims that documents about patients’ care were falsified and that managers bullied staff into doing this so that cancer care at CGH could meet its targets. Bernard Jenkin, the local MP, placed great emphasis in his interview on Today on the problems with culture in the NHS, which Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is trying to resolve with a series of reforms to NHS leadership. But there will inevitably be a row about the role of targets in this scandal as

Tuesday

Monday

Sebastian Payne

The next Spectator Debate: Addiction is not a disease

Does addiction actually exist? It’s an issue we’ve examined before at The Spectator and I’m delighted to announce it will be the topic of our next debate. On the 21 November at the Royal Institution in London, we’ll be looking at whether addiction is really a disease or simply a form of behaviour we need to find a way of controlling. We’ve gathered an expert panel who will be tackling this question, all of whom have strong personal experiences to back up their positions. Arguing for the motion will be regular Spectator contributor, Daily Telegraph columnist and recovering alcoholic Damian Thompson. His book The Fix examines how addiction is taking over our lives.

Steerpike Steerpike

Sebastian Shakespeare leaves Londoner’s Diary

All change over at High Street Ken this afternoon with the departure of Sebastian Shakespeare, who had edited the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary for the better part of 20 years. Famed for his long-running feuds with Lord Archer, Ian McEwan and the Candy Brothers, Shakespeare once had manure dumped on his head as he sat in his soft-top BMW by a happy reader. Standard editor Sarah Sands thanked Shakespeare for serving the paper ‘brilliantly for many years’, and then announced the new line up: ‘I am delighted to announced that Joy Lodico is to become the new editor of Londoner’s Diary. Joy is a talented journalist of notable intelligence and wit

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Richard Dawkins is right: Osama bin Laden has made air travel insufferable

It’s not that often I feel a real bond with Richard Dawkins but no sooner did I read his diatribe about Osama bin Laden having won the global war on terror because he, Prof Dawkins, had had a jar of honey confiscated at the airport, than I realised that here was a kindred soul. The prof declared on Twitter over the weekend: Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 3, 2013   Ah yes, I’ve been there. Except the jar of forest honey – raw, lovely,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Introducing the Coffee House Lunchtime Espresso email

For some time now, we at  Coffee House have been running an Evening Blend email which sums up the day’s goings-on in Westminster. It has proven so popular that we’re launching a lunchtime version today. Every day at 1pm, the Lunchtime Espresso briefing will bring you you up to date with what’s been happening in and around SW1. If you prefer the latest delivered to your inbox, then do sign up below. Like the Blend, the Espresso is free to sign up for and will run every day when Parliament is sitting. Tomorrow’s news, by lunchtime today. Sign up for the emails here.

Saturday

Kate Maltby Kate Maltby

The National Theatre – 50 years (and more) in The Spectator

Today the National Theatre hosts a gala performance, screened on BBC2 at 9pm, to celebrate fifty years since its launch as a company in 1963. You can view the full programme here – I’d wanted to be cynical about a Greatest Hits parade, but reading the cast list, it simply looks astounding. But it’s not the fiftieth birthday of Denys Lasdun’s building on the South Bank – that robotic monstrosity, suggestive of an early design for Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, if Bay’s anthropomorphic tanks could ever rear onto hind legs while made of concrete. When the building was finally complete in 1977, Auberon Waugh told The Spectator’s readers that the

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition: compose a sporting clerihew

Spectator literary competition No. 2824 You are invited to submit a double clerihew about a well-known sporting figure, past or present. The rules governing a clerihew are well set out in its Wikipedia entry but here are some additional pointers from the poet James Michie, a master of the form, who regularly contributed clerihews to The Spectator: ‘Clerihews, in my view, must be concise (no elephantine last line), written in straightforward English without inversions; and they are all the better for having some connection, however tenuous, with the real life or character of their subject.’ Please email entries (up to four each) to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 13 November. Here are

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The next bitter battle over the NHS is looming

It’s been a while since we had a nice big fat NHS row, but those who enjoy watching Andy Burnham and Jeremy Hunt fight over the ‘party of the NHS’ crown can rest assured that there’s a really bitter one coming up this autumn. NHS England has spent the past few months consulting on a change to the way clinical commissioning groups are funded that could end the current arrangement where more money per capita is spent on patients in deprived areas. The formula currently being considered would make the number of elderly people in an area a more important factor in the size of the grant that each CCG