Society

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why do MPs send nude pictures of themselves?

Adam Dyster has gone to work for the shadow Defra secretary Steve Reed. I admit this is not an appointment which would normally trouble the political scorers, but it is a straw in the wind. Mr Dyster was, until recently, the adviser to both the chairman and the director-general of the National Trust. As Zewditu Gebreyohanes points out in her new pamphlet, ‘National Distrust: the end of democracy in the National Trust’, it was against the interest of the Trust that Mr Dyster advised both, since it blurred the necessary governance difference between the trustees and the management. Mr Dyster was previously, in the Jeremy Corbyn era, the national organiser

The Spectator

Common sense prevails in the gender debate

The publication this week of the Cass Review into gender-identity services for young people marks a welcome return to reason in an area of medicine which for the past few years has been driven by identity politics. No one is denying that there are those who deserve psychological – and in some cases physical – help to cope with their condition. But the explosion in the number of children treated on the NHS for gender-identity issues (and in many cases being given powerful drugs with severe side effects) should have set alarm bells ringing long before it did. The NHS first set up its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Tory phishing, tension over Rafah and Cameron in America

Home The review by Dr Hilary Cass of gender-identity services for people under 18 called for an end to prescribing powerful hormone drugs; warned that children who change gender may regret it; and found that many had experienced trauma, neglect and abuse. More than 150,000 patients had to wait more than 24 hours in A&E before getting a hospital bed last year, a tenfold increase on 2019. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, suggested that Labour could plug the gap in its spending commitments by getting more taxes sooner from non-doms. Five Bulgarians admitted in court to stealing more than £50 million in fraudulent claims for Universal Credit. Britain held talks

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A new survey that may be of interest

My favourite opinion polls are those which elicit enormous shock in the population for stating something everybody knew for ages, or could have guessed. Such as those headlined ‘People in Torquay are happier than people in Rotherham’ – goodness me, etc. Surely we are reaching the time when bland, deceitful shibboleths should be replaced by reality The polls that always occasion the gravest shock, however – despite the fact they come out every year or so – are those dealing with the views of the British Muslim community. In the lacunae between these reports their findings are completely ignored in favour of the approved set of lies with which the

Wednesday

Kristina Murkett

Britain is being too slow to ban smartphones

A few years ago, calling for a ban on smartphones for under-16s would have seemed alarmist – a minority viewpoint from pessimistic Luddites and sceptical old fogeys. Now, the idea is not so much a moral panic but a moral consensus: 83 per cent of parents with at least one child between ages 4 and 18 believe that smartphones are harmful to children. Around 58 per cent back a smartphone ban for under-16s, while for primary school parents, support is at 77 per cent. The MP Miriam Cates has called for a total ban on young people having smartphones and social media to help combat a rise in ‘children addicted to pornography.’ Esther Ghey,

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

It’s time for Ronaldo to retire

All good things must come to an end, and that surely now ought to include the footballing career of Cristiano Ronaldo, who disgraced himself again on Monday after being sent off for appearing to stamp on and elbow an opponent in his team Al-Nassr’s Saudi Super Cup defeat by Al-Hilal. He then seemed to come close to hitting the referee. This debacle comes hard on the heels of him making an obscene gesture to fans after a game in February. Yes, he’s still scoring goals, at a low level of football, but as a global sporting icon, he’s in danger of becoming an embarrassment. If Ronaldo were 19 his recent behaviour

Debbie Hayton

The Cass report and the unforgivable puberty blockers scandal

Children who identify as transgender have been let down badly by an NHS that succumbed to an activist lobby. That is the obvious conclusion to make after Dr Hilary Cass published her final report this morning as part of the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People. In her report, Cass suggests that there is a serious lack of evidence about the long-term impact puberty blockers and other cross-sex hormones are having on children. While the original rationale for puberty blockers was to give children ‘time to think’ about transitioning, the report dismantles this argument, pointing out that the ‘vast majority’ of children move from puberty blockers

Tuesday

Andrew Tettenborn

Is climate change really a human rights matter?

The media and the middle class may love net zero. Unfortunately, it is increasingly clear that voters are less keen. Predictably then, activists have been trying to take as much power as possible away from elected representatives, transferring it instead to international courts and judges. This morning, this programme of lawfare scored a major success in the European Court of Human Rights. Every yard gained by a well-meaning extension of the ECHR is a yard lost to the democratic process Some months ago, three high-profile cases reached the Court where the claimants suggested that climate change was a European human rights matter. A concerned Frenchman, a number of Swiss activists and an

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why the public doesn’t support decriminalising abortion

Curious, isn’t it, how sentiment changes on a critical issue all of a sudden? Not so long ago, the prospect of turning a blind eye to someone who carried out an abortion in the last trimester of pregnancy – that is, on a foetus of six to nine months’ gestation – would have seemed unthinkable. Is this trend towards liberalising abortion really a sign of progress?  At present, the only circumstances in which you can abort a foetus after 24 weeks is if the mother’s life is at risk or the child would be born with a ‘severe’ disability (which has included cleft palate and hare lips, remediable conditions) – which

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Will the Seine be safe for the summer Olympics?

Emmanuel Macron’s promise to strip off to his Speedos and swim in the Seine to prove it is safe for athletes has yet to be delivered. The Olympic Games commence in July and the river remains essentially a sewer. Although the water quality is supposedly getting better as the rains are relenting, Macron is wise not to hurry. Diarrhoea in the Olympic Village may be the least of the problems, even if the athletes complain In addition to fears that the Paris games will attract terrorist attacks, there is the now the unpleasant prospect of athletes being infected with norovirus and other unfortunate ailments of the intestinal tract. Not that

Monday

Niall Gooch

Ian Hislop’s elite blindspot

A common argument against populist politicians such as Nigel Farage or Donald Trump is that their attacks on elites are in some sense inauthentic because they themselves are members of those same elites. Trump is, after all, a billionaire who has been prominent in New York corporate circles for almost half a century. His social milieu has included Wall Street titans, very senior politicians, and key figures in the world of entertainment. Fundamentally, Hislop is far more entangled with, and sympathetic to, our true elites than Nigel Farage Our Nige, meanwhile, may not be a billionaire, but he attended Dulwich College, a prominent public school, and made a good living

Sam Leith Sam Leith

There’s no Roald Dahl without his cruelty

Roald Dahl Goes Woke: Part Two in what promises to be a very long and funny and ignominious series. Not three days after Puffin Books announced that they were to publish a series of specially commissioned new stories set in Roald Dahl’s fictional universes, a lead author of the continuation editions has had to issue a grovelling public apology. The spirit of Roald Dahl has, like Elvis, left the building. In a video message accompanying the announcement, the Radio One DJ Greg James, co-author of a Twits sequel to be called The Twits Next Door, had said that giving Mrs Twit a glass eye was a good way to help make the

Sunday

Romina Frohar

Scotland’s hate crime act is stifling academic freedom

For the past few days, I’ve been hoping to receive an email from the two universities in Scotland where I’m enrolled in a joint PhD programme. So far, though, I’ve not heard from either of them. It seems obvious that all of this is creating a climate of fear and stifling academic discourse Since the war in Gaza broke out, students have received weekly, and sometimes even daily, updates about the conflict. But when it comes to Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act, which came into force this week, there has been virtual radio silence. This is despite there being deep concerns about the impact the Act will have on free

Saturday

John Wyatt

Euthanasia is too cruel to doctors

It seems like every day there is a new push to legalise euthanasia in the UK. This week, Prue Leith has called on parliament to debate euthanasia before the next general election. Keir Starmer has said that he is committed to allowing a vote on assisted dying if Labour gain power. And in Holyrood, the Liberal Democrats have put forward a Bill which would decriminalise euthanasia in Scotland if passed. It is physicians who will have to be at the heart of the legally sanctioned killing process Often when euthanasia is debated, the focus is on the terminally ill and the impacts on wider society – which would certainly be profound.

Friday

Eliot Wilson

The recklessness of William Wragg

Everyone makes mistakes, but they are seldom as monumental as William Wragg’s. The Tory MP has admitted handing over the phone numbers of colleagues to a man he met on Grindr, a gay dating app. The vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee said he offered up the details after sending intimate pictures of himself. Wragg deserves some credit for coming clean. ‘I was scared. I’m mortified,’ he has said. But there’s something troubling about the speed with which Wragg’s colleagues are defending him – and the insistence that he shouldn’t lose the Tory party whip. Wragg must face up to the consequences Anyone who has worked in Westminster will feel a

Andrew Tettenborn

Civil servants can’t down tools if they don’t like Israel

Britain in the nineteenth century pioneered the idea of the professional, impartial civil service independent of politics. In the twenty-first, that same civil service is unfortunately pioneering the notion of a body increasingly independent of the state that employs it, and apt at times to follow its own remarkably political agenda without much control from anyone. Following your conscience is a good deal less impressive when you are doing it on someone else’s dime British companies export a good deal of military equipment to Israel. To do so, they require export licences from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). Yesterday, it emerged that a group of civil servants in

Thursday

Nicholas Farrell

Under the Italian sun, the insects are stirring

The sun was setting on the first day of spring and I felt unusually happy as I fed the donkey. Winter, along with the fog and all the rest of it, had gone at last. But then from somewhere near my right ear I heard a small whining sound that for a moment I did not recognise. It was the first mosquito of the year. And I remembered how biblical it all gets round here under the Italian sun, insect-wise. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed up in the Apennines where there were no mosquitoes, just giant wasps There are a whole host of insects and other things, real, imagined, and

Melissa Kite

Are conspiracy theories just conspiracy therapy?

At the Centre for Rare Diseases, the car park was full and lots of people were milling about. I pulled into a private space I wasn’t meant to be in so that I could let my mother out of the car by the front door. I then sat in the car waiting, watching the rare people come and go. On further inspection of the website, it turns out that a rare disease is not necessarily something that happens rarely. A rare disease is a condition affecting less than one in 2,000 people. However, ‘with more than 7,000 individual rare diseases, their collective prevalence is about one in 17 of the

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 6 April 2024

Easter always zips by if you’re a bridge player and enter the EBU’s Easter Festival. There are four events to choose from and I chose them all. My favourite is the Swiss Teams and we normally do rather well. Not this year unfortunately. In the final match we played Simon Gillis’s team and I rather smugly thought we’d done well. Not so smug when we scored up. They murdered us. Simon was partnered by Norwegian world champion Erik Saelensminde – Silla to his friends – who defended this hand: Erik was West and started with the ♠Jack. Simon gave count with the ♠7 and I won the King. With 14

Luke McShane

Menchik Memorial

Vera Menchik was 38 when she was killed by a German V1 flying bomb that landed on her home in Clapham. Born in Moscow in 1906 to a Czech father and an English mother, she was in her teens when her family settled in England. Aged 21, she won the first women’s world championship, and defended the title six times in the 1930s; she had two wins against Max Euwe a few years before he became world champion in 1935. Her sister Olga was another accomplished player; both sisters, along with their mother, were killed by the bomb. The Menchik Memorial was held last week at the Mindsports Centre in