Society

Rod Liddle

My plan for Prevent

In the autumn of 1940, British cities were being bombed every night by large aeroplanes whose provenance was apparently of some considerable doubt. While the public almost unanimously believed the conflagrations to have been caused by the Luftwaffe, the authorities – right up to the government – refused to speculate. Indeed, when certain members of the public raised their voices and said ‘This is all down to Hitler and Goering and the bloody Germans!’, they received visits from the police who either prosecuted them for disturbing the peace or put their names on a list of possible extremists. The nights grew darker. The number of towns and cities subjected to

Why OnlyFans has young British women in its grip

The porn star Bonnie Blue offers a straightforward explanation for her decision to join OnlyFans. She was in her early twenties, married to her teenage sweetheart, pursuing a career in recruitment and living in Derbyshire, the county of her birth. As she told an interviewer last year: ‘I used to work an office job, nine to five, sit in rush hour, get given 20 days’ annual leave. And for a while I’d accepted that. I was like “OK, this is what life is. This is as good as it can get.”’ But Blue (whose real name is Tia Billinger) wondered if life might not have more to offer her. So

Michael Simmons

OnlyFans is giving the taxman what he wants

Fenix International occupies the ninth floor of an innocuous office block on London’s Cheapside. The street’s name comes from the Old English for marketplace, and once upon a time Cheapside was just that: London’s biggest meat market with butcher shops lining either side of the road. Today, the street houses financial institutions and corporate HQs. But Fenix still runs a marketplace. Some may even call it a meat market, albeit one that operates on the phones of hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its name: OnlyFans. OnlyFans is best understood not just as a porn site, but as a social media platform with a paywall. Creators – mostly women –

A lament for the lads’ mags

Do you remember the lads’ mags? I do because I worked on them for years. FHM, Maxim, all those gloriously disreputable titles. I helped dream up the captions, the gags, the gonzo reportage, the phwoar-heavy covers. I also remember how they were reviled. Condemned by broadsheets, feminists, academics. Accused of objectifying girls, toxifying masculinity and encouraging men to enjoy cold lager, bare breasts and football gossip. Yet here’s the thing. When I contrast the world of lads’ mags with today’s bleak digital landscape, of AI smut and OnlyFans subscriptions, of performers mechanically coupling with a thousand men, cheered on by Insta-bots, the old magazines, even if sometimes crude or clumsy,

Britain needs reform

This week’s spending review confirms that where there should be conviction, there is only confusion; where there should be vision, only a vacuum. The country is on the road to higher taxes, poorer services and a decaying public realm, with the bandits of the bond market lying in wait to extract their growing take from our declining share of global wealth. When every warning light is flashing red, the government is driving further and faster towards danger The Chancellor approached this spending review with her credibility already undermined. Promises not to raise taxes on working people translated into a tax on work itself which has driven up unemployment. A pledge

Portrait of the week: Spending review, LA protests and Greta Thunberg deported

Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, was the last minister to agree funding in the government spending review. Once the NHS and defence were settled there wasn’t enough to go round. The police wanted more. Everyone over the state pension age in England and Wales with an income of £35,000 or less will receive the winter fuel payment after all, at a cost of £1.25 billion, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced. Capital spending included £39 billion on social housing over the next ten years. The government also committed £14.2 billion for the new Sizewell C nuclear power station, but did not say where the money was coming

What caused the Ballymena riots?

The County Antrim town of Ballymena endured a second night of rioting on Tuesday, as protestors aimed fireworks and missiles at the police. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) responded with water cannon and baton rounds. Thirty-two officers have been injured in the violence in Ballymena so far, and homes and businesses have been set alight. The PSNI described the attacks on properties as ‘racially motivated’, and the Police Federation claimed its members had ‘prevented a pogrom’. The North Antrim MP, Jim Allister, criticised ‘successive authorities’ for failing to ‘manage integration or address local concerns in the town. The violence broke out after protestors rallied peacefully at first in

Gavin Mortimer

Will the L.A. immigration riots reach Europe?

The pro-immigration protests that erupted last week in Los Angeles have now spread across the United States. On Tuesday there were confrontations between police and demonstrators in Atlanta, Chicago and Denver, where tear gas was used to disperse a crowd. Police in New York City arrested 45 people as they came under attack from a variety of projectiles thrown by a mob that numbered several hundred. Demonstrators shouted ‘shame, shame’; one local councillor, Shahana Hanif, accused the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of ‘attacking our communities’. The anti-ICE protestors are in the minority The protests began in L.A. last Friday when ICE officers began rounding up suspected illegal immigrants in

Mark Galeotti

No, Nato: Brits had not ‘better learn to speak Russian’

It seems conventional wisdom by now that the public can only be convinced by hyperbole. As Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte implies that Britain faces a choice between the NHS and Russian conquest, it is worth asking how much this actually damages democracy – and helps Vladimir Putin? The real threat Russia poses is less of direct military action but through its ‘hybrid war’ instruments of subversion and division Rutte is on tour in a bid to sell the new orthodoxy that Nato member states – many of whom barely, if at all, hit the previous target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence – must commit to spending

Rod Liddle

England’s defeat to Senegal might be their worst ever performance

“England, the lions of Autumn are but lambs come the Spring”. That quote is often attributed to Michel Platini, but I remember hearing it still earlier from the wily manager of Yugoslavia, Miljan Miljanic. Either way, it’s always been true. I don’t think I have ever seen a worse performance from an England team than in that 1-3 capitulation to Senegal I have witnessed some astonishingly dire performances from England during countless Springs. We may technically now be in Summer but the key is the players can’t be arsed until they are back from their hols. And I don’t think I have ever seen a worse performance from an England

Damian Thompson

A Jewish guide to arguing 

52 min listen

Daniel Taub, former Israeli Ambassador to the UK, joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish art of constructive disagreement. In a fast-moving interview, Daniel explains how the art of arguing has shaped Jewish humour and scholarship, and Damian asks him about keeping kosher, life after death – and the influence of the Talmud on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Stephen Daisley

How has the media wronged Nadiya Hussain?

Nadiya Hussain’s recipes have become staples in households across the country and acquired for the TV presenter and cookery writer the status of national treasure. However, her reaction to the BBC’s decision not to commission a new series from her leaves a bitter taste and prompts the thought that her secret ingredient all along might have been celebrity entitlement.  Over the weekend, the Great British Bake Off winner posted a video update on Instagram for her 950,000 followers. After explaining her social media absence (events in Gaza were making it ‘hard to post about food in a positive way’) and letting us know about changes in her professional dealings (‘I’m way more mindful of

Farewell to the Frederick Forsyth I knew

We writers generally live dull and boring lives, tied to our desks painfully wresting words out of mundane experiences: not so Frederick Forsyth, who has died aged 86. Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of his bestselling thrillers Freddie’s life was almost as exciting as the plots of one of his bestselling thrillers, embracing as it did the triple careers of novelist, foreign correspondent, and spy. The other unusual thing about him compared to most other modern writers is that he was a convinced and outspoken small c conservative. Forsyth had a fully justified scorn for the inanities and dangers of the contemporary Left. I

Gareth Roberts

Dawn French’s Gaza video is unforgivable

Like all of you, I’m sure, I’ve got accustomed to celebrities – particularly actors and comedians, but also pop stars and sporting luminaries – sharing their unsought opinions with the public. My eyes have gone grey from it, to the extent that the brows above them no longer so much as twitch when a celeb ‘drops’ some ‘content’ of this kind, unless it’s one of those very rare occasions when they don’t take the approved line. So I thought I was immune to such rubbish. French has form for getting carried away Enter Dawn French, who managed to induce in me a flinch response that I thought had atrophied in

Julie Burchill

Reform’s soap opera won’t turn off voters

The last week has been a rare cheery one for the Left; not only did Elon Musk and Donald Trump fall out and part ways with all the vim and venom of two teenage sweethearts, but Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf also split briefly – at least until the Reform chairman had second thoughts and returned in a DOGE incarnation. Friend-shedding applies to most of us, unless we’re very dull or saintlike The girl at the Guardian could barely contain herself, writing about the former; ‘Watching two of the very worst people in the world direct their nastiness at each other is extremely cathartic,’ said Arwa Mahdawi. But, this being

Who’d want to stay in Meghan Markle’s hotel?

Say what you like about the Duchess of Sussex – and I try to  – but she has a knack for coming up with the provocative. While the world is still reeling from the recent video of her twerking (and a thousand thinkpieces solemnly debating exactly whether she has a right to twerk or not), she has returned a few days later with news that is both entirely unexpected and grimly predictable. Meghan is considering parlaying her ‘As Ever’ lifestyle and homeware range into a series of restaurants and – be still my beating heart – hotels.  Although details of this potential hospitality empire are as yet sketchy, it has been reported that the

Tom Slater

Finally, a Harry Potter star has backed JK Rowling

Fair play to Draco Malfoy. (Now there are five words I never thought I’d write.) Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do: he has defended the woman to whom he owes his career. Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s platinum-blond nemesis in the films, has done what so many of his young co-stars have failed to do Ever since JK Rowling dared to say that biological sex exists, the cast of the Potter flicks have routinely been called upon by trans activists and showbiz journalists to throw a match at the ‘transphobic’ witch.

Are vegetarians really hungry for power?

The secret is out: vegetarians are ‘tougher’ and more ‘power-hungry’ than meat eaters, according to a study in the Times this morning. Well, as a vegan I suppose I must be even tougher and more megalomaniacal. I’m surprised, then, to not find myself doing a whole lot of street brawling or holding any subterranean meetings to discuss how I’ll overthrow Keir Starmer with my bare hands. I was actually as surprised as anyone by the findings. Not because I subscribe to the caricature of veggies as gentle, pathetic creatures, but because my experience of vegetarians and vegans is that we are a bit less impressed with clout and power than most people. We’ve seen