Society

Sunday

Francis Young

England’s forgotten Easter traditions

If you get up early enough on Easter morning, according to old English folklore, you might be lucky enough to see the sun dancing in the sky as it rises, rejoicing at the resurrection of Christ – although tradition also records that the devil usually manages to put a hill in front of the dancing sun to stop people seeing it. Easter is one of the richest periods of the calendar for traditional English folk customs. A few are still well known and even recognised by supermarkets, such as the eating of hot cross buns and simnel cake. But many other customs are either confined to one location or are

Niall Gooch

We can’t eliminate all risk for children

The classic book The Railway Children contains several episodes that must seem almost incomprehensible to modern children. None perhaps are more shocking to the modern mind than the incident where some public schoolboys on a cross country run are directed through a tunnel on a working public railway. Unsurprisingly, this does not end well, with one of the boys – Jim – breaking his leg and almost being hit by a train. We must ask whether more rules are always the right response to these kind of tragedies If I remember correctly, there is little hint in the novel of anybody regarding the decision to let the boys run through

Emma Thompson

Save our parish priests!

Go to your parish church this Easter, because the clock is ticking for small and rural parishes. Even if the beauty of holiness is conspicuously absent, even if numbers are low and you feel a sinking sense of being the last person standing on the burning deck, go. That is, if your church is still open and you still have a vicar.   I do – and he will heroically be taking services in all six (!) of his churches from dawn till dusk on Easter Day. However, many of the Church of England’s (CoE) 42 diocesan administrations are cutting paid clergy jobs. In Bath & Wells, 178 parish clergy will apparently

Andrew McQuillan

Will the ‘Tik Tok Taoiseach’ undo the damage done by Leo Varadkar?

Simon Harris, the anointed successor to the outgoing Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, has quite the in-tray. Harris, who was the only candidate in Fine Gael’s party leadership race, will become Ireland’s youngest prime minister on 9 April when the Irish parliament, the Dáil, resumes after its Easter break. One of the most pressing tasks he faces is trying to rebuild a semi-decent relationship with the unionists of Northern Ireland, such is the noxious legacy of his predecessor.  Harris is identikit to Varadkar in many ways Speaking in Athlone last weekend, where the 37-year-old described his new role as the ‘absolute honour’ of his life, Harris claimed that UK-Irish relations were

James McGrath

The enigma of John the Baptist

You’ve seen him in pictures and maybe also on TV. Dressed in rags, eating bugs, shouting angrily at people. You understood why eventually he was locked up and died in prison. You never looked closely at him. Why would you spend your time on someone like that? For Christians, John remains something of a puzzle, even 2,000 years on The fact that I could equally be talking about a homeless person in your city, or John the Baptist as most people imagine him, might not surprise you – but it should. The New Testament records that John’s followers could be found in places like Ephesus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey)

Saturday

Steven Fielding

How Starmer wants to reverse Thatcher’s legacy

Members of Labour’s frontbench have recently fallen over themselves to acclaim Margaret Thatcher. Hot on the heels of Rachel Reeves feting the Iron Lady’s determination to reverse Britain’s decline, David Lammy lauded the woman who defeated his party three times as a ‘visionary leader’. But like Mark Antony’s attitude to Julius Caesar, Reeves and Lammy come to bury Thatcher rather than to praise her. This appropriation of a Conservative icon like Thatcher is highly mischievous Labour’s shadow ministers invoke the ‘Iron Lady’ because they know a certain kind of voter, one Labour needs to help it win power, still goes all of a quiver at the mere mention of her

Debbie Hayton

We’d be wise to ignore the Council of Europe’s transgender nonsense

The Council of Europe might claim to be focussed on human rights, democracy and the rule of law, but lately the Strasbourg-based human rights organisation has been championing a new cause: the propagation of gender identity ideology. A paper released earlier this month by the Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights should ring alarm bells across the continent. Human Rights and Gender Identity and Expression pulls no punches. The key recommendations are alarming, for example: Recognise the identity of trans school-age children and students in school settings, regardless of their legal gender/sex, including by allowing them to use their own names and pronouns, dress as they wish, and participate in sports

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Japan is no country for young men

Another week, another fun fact about Japan’s declining birthrate and ageing population to startle and amuse us. Japan has now recorded a full decade where sales of adult nappies outstripped those of baby nappies. Thanks to the surfeit of geriatric incontinents, one well-known manufacturer, Oji Holdings, has made headlines by giving up on tots entirely and announcing it will shift its production to nappies for seniors instead. It is a reasonable business decision by the company. There just aren’t enough babies. Indeed, children under the age of 15 made up less than 12 per cent percent of the country’s population in 2022, while those aged 65 and over constituted almost

Friday

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Who will take responsibility for our appalling prisons?

We know our prison system is awash with drugs but just what are they smoking at the Ministry of Justice? A shocking story in the Times yesterday revealed what a desperate state Britain’s jails are in. Paul Morgan-Bentley, an undercover reporter, was hired at breakneck speed to work as a uniformed Operational Support Grade (OSG) escort at beleaguered HMP Bedford. He lifted the lid on a security nightmare. Drugs were being smoked openly in front of officers A catalogue of errors and incompetence emerged. He wasn’t security cleared before starting his sensitive post. He had access to prisoners in this Category B jail after a day’s training where even his

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

There’s nothing conservative about the Tories’ free childcare rollout

On Monday, the UK welfare state will expand to cover 15 hours of free childcare for working parents with two-year-olds. In September, this will be extended to infants of nine months or more. Next year, cover doubles to 30 hours. The total cost: £5.3 billion a year. It’s the ‘largest ever expansion of childcare in England’s history,’ says Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary. This Easter weekend we see the bizarre spectacle of Tories attacking Labour from the left What is conservative about this? Nothing, of course. It pushes up costs and taxes. But the idea, at the time, was to to do this before Labour proposed it. To shoot Labour’s fox.

Paul Burke

Why I used to hate Good Friday

If you’re of a certain age and you were brought up Catholic, you’ll remember ‘Good Friday’ as the most awful misnomer. It was the most miserable day in the Catholic calendar – the day we commemorated the death of Our Saviour. Any display of happiness or cheer was strictly forbidden on Good Friday. A dark pall of gloom would descend every year and engulf Irish Catholic strongholds like Kilburn, Cricklewood, Wealdstone and Wembley. These normally convivial communities that had coalesced around Irish pubs, dancehalls and the Catholic Church were suddenly subject to a blanket ban on all forms of pleasure. Watching TV, playing records in the house or football in the park were all

Robin Ashenden

Where have the West’s liberal values gone?

Russia is ramping up preparations for a ‘large-scale’ war with Nato. That’s the verdict of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which reports several indications that Moscow is preparing for war with Nato ‘not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline’ than many Western analysts believed. Is the West ready for war? Its self-doubt about what it stands for makes it seem worryingly unlikely. Echoing the words of General Sir Patrick Sanders, head of the British armed forces, that to fight in any such war the UK would need a ‘citizen army’, Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins has suggested Britain introduce conscription to prepare for any threat. Meanwhile

Thursday

Debbie Hayton

When the gender debate doesn’t belong in the classroom

Kevin Lister has lost his case at an employment tribunal in Bristol. I am not surprised. The former maths teacher was dismissed by New College Swindon for gross misconduct in September 2022 after he failed to refer to one of his students by their preferred name or pronoun. There was a clash of beliefs. The student identified as the other sex, while Lister believes that human beings cannot change sex, and that – in his words – ‘taking testosterone is likely to cause long-term medical problems and [his student] would be reliant on the NHS, and the services could not be guaranteed for the future’. Let’s be clear, I am also deeply

Michael Cole

When will Prince Harry stop punishing British taxpayers?

Wherever you go in the world, there are always two things that are never cheap: lobsters and lawyers. The British taxpayer has learned this painful reality as it picks up a bill of more than half a million pounds for defending the government’s case against Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex has brought a case against the Home Office over its removal of automatic high-level police protection for him and his family when they are in Britain. So far, £180,000 has been paid in fees to leading barristers to defend the Home Office case. Another £320,000 has gone to the government’s own legal department, comprising the Attorney General, the Solicitor

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain is falling out of love with the NHS

Rishi Sunak doesn’t speak much about his five priorities these days, apart from inflation, which ‘halved’ as promised. On NHS waiting lists, small boats, the economy and the public finances, the news hasn’t been nearly as positive – and people have noticed. Satisfaction with the National Health Service has hit its lowest point since records began, according to this morning’s British Social Attitudes survey, which reveals that fewer than one in four respondents were happy with their experience of accessing and receiving healthcare. The main gripe is those sky-high waitlists that the government promised would be falling by now: 71 per cent cited the struggle to get both GP and

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Why did a judge fall for Abdul Ezedi’s lie that he was a Christian?

Abdul Ezedi is dead and gone. The Clapham acid attacker was laid to rest in a Muslim burial at a cemetery in east London after a funeral at a mosque in the west of the capital. This is what his family and friends wanted for him. Given that we know he was a loyal customer of his local halal butchers in Newcastle right up until the end, we must presume it is what he would have wanted for himself too. Head-in-the-clouds vicars are a longstanding stereotype. But judges are supposed to be different Even the liberal dolts of our establishment – church leaders, immigration judges and the like – appear

Julie Bindel

The justice system is failing domestic abuse victims

Remember the days when our TV screens were full of men cracking jokes about ‘giving the missus a backhander’ if she complained about him coming home drunk? That was back when rank misogyny dominated police forces, and domestic violence was described as a private matter ‘between a man and his wife’.   Then along came those pesky feminists, demanding that domestic violence be treated in the same way as a man beating up another man in the street. These women set up domestic violence helplines and refuges without government funding, staffed by volunteers. This began in the late sixties and early seventies, so it would be fair to assume that things

Jawad Iqbal

The painful truth about Gareth Southgate’s England

Football, so they say, is a results business – except when it comes to Gareth Southgate, the England manager. In his case it is apparently about so many more things than winning. It is about the harmony he brings to the dressing room, his grown-up relationship with the players, the way he conducts his press conferences, and even what he wears (waistcoat, anyone?) as he stands on the touchline during international matches. In Gareth we trust is the unofficial mantra of Southgate’s true believers. It is seen as bad form to question the widespread sense that the national team, under his guidance, is destined to win this summer’s Euros in Germany.  It is a

Tuesday

Stephen Webb

How can we avoid another Batley Grammar blasphemy row?

Dame Sara Khan, the government’s adviser on social cohesion, has produced a powerful and brave report with some stark findings which should make for seriously uncomfortable reading among political and public sector leaders. The report describes how politicians, academics, artists and journalists are self-censoring because of severe levels of harassment and abuse, which Khan calls ‘freedom restricting harassment’, a finding mirroring the survey Policy Exchange commissioned from teachers last year in the report Blasphemy in Schools. The University of Bradford abandoned plans for a School for the Study of Political Islam The case studies are harrowing, in particular the plight of the Batley Grammar School teacher whose life was threatened –

The Spectator

Covid and the politics of panic

During Easter weekend four years ago, the country felt on the verge of catastrophe. The prime minister was in hospital having just come out of intensive care, the Covid-19 death toll was at more than 1,000 deaths a day, and hospitals were trying to cope with a flood of patients. It had been estimated that 90,000 ventilator beds would be needed; we had only 10,000. That weekend, no one went to church and no one visited family: instead we sat inside, preparing ourselves for the horror to come. Science is always evolving, never settled. Our understanding changes as we gain new information No one knew, then, that the virus was