Society

Monday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

How will attacking the Mona Lisa save the planet?

Now the environmentalists are going after the Mona Lisa. Because of course they are. Just when you thought you couldn’t dislike these apocalyptic irritants anymore, now they’ve gone and pelted soup at another priceless artwork, the most famous artwork in the world no less, because they think their fever dreams about climate change are more important than ordinary people getting to marvel at da Vinci’s masterpiece. Two activists from Riposte Alimentaire – France’s answer to Just Stop Oil, only with a particular interest in food policy – took their chance at the Louvre yesterday. After emptying a bottle of orange gloop on to the Mona Lisa, one of the women was captured

Kristina Murkett

Can we blame universities for cashing in on foreign students?

As an English teacher and sixth form tutor, I spend a lot of my time at the moment celebrating and comforting students as they hear about their UCAS offers. I try to reassure them when they are disappointed – which many of them were last week in particular, when Cambridge offers came out – that the system is flawed and far from always fair. Many of them this weekend will have realised just how unfair it can be, as a Sunday Times investigation revealed that British universities are paying tens of millions of pounds a year to recruit lucrative overseas students with far lower grades than those required of UK applicants. Up

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The shame of Britain’s ‘cash for courses’ universities

‘If you can take the lift, why go through the hardest route?’ a recruitment officer representing four Russell Group universities asked an undercover reporter for the Sunday Times. He boasted that ‘foundation’ course pathways onto undergraduate courses at Russell Group universities are much easier than the entry requirements for British applicants: overseas applicants ‘pay more money […] so they give leeway for international students […] It’s not something they want to tell you, but it’s the truth.’  And how. The paper reports that ‘overseas students wishing to study an economics degree using one of the pathways needed grades of CCC at Bristol; CCD at Durham; DDE at Exeter; DDE at Newcastle; and just

Sunday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Not everyone will miss Jurgen Klopp

So, farewell then Jurgen Klopp. What memories you will leave us. You were exuberant, passionate and unorthodox. You ran up and down the touchline, gesticulating manically. You had a nice, albeit cosmetically enhanced, smile. You could be charming and witty. You won. seven trophies in nine years for Liverpool, most significantly the Premier League title that ended an excruciating generation long wait and a sixth Champion’s League. Your place in the Pantheon is assured and things will be duller without you. But is your leaving really a ‘disaster’? From the press reaction it would appear that your tenure at Anfield was an unbroken period of glory and joy the imminent

Stuart Waiton

Scotland’s juryless rape trials are based on a myth

Scotland currently faces a huge threat to the criminal justice system, in the form of juryless trials in rape cases.   In the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, currently making its way through Holyrood, there is a proposal to carry out a pilot scheme where rape cases are adjudicated by a judge without a jury. A key reason given is that there is ‘overwhelming evidence’ that the public are prejudiced and believe in what are called ‘rape myths’ – with people blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator of a rape. Essentially, the argument is that the public cannot be trusted because they are backward and sexist and cannot

Zoe Strimpel

A (partial) defence of the ‘Jewface’ Oscars

How could I be Jewish, my friend wondered out loud, when I didn’t have the… She paused as she mimed a big old nose, coming far out from the face in a grotesque outward bulge. I was shocked. My friend was a sophisticated Cambridge graduate, yet still she had imbibed the anti-Semitic cartoons that have caricatured and justified violence against Jews for time immemorial. That was in 2004, long before most people knew what critical race theory and BAME groupings were. It was also a time in which one of the most popular shows on TV, Little Britain, featured actors in blackface: characters played by Matt Lucas and David Walliams

Jawad Iqbal

The ludicrous saga of India’s butter chicken war

Butter chicken, one of India’s best-known dishes and a favourite all over the world, is at the centre of an extraordinary curry war in India. Two rival restaurant chains have asked the courts to rule over who invented the recipe for  the signature dish, made with tender pieces of chicken in a tandoor oven, mixed in a rich tomato, cream and butter sauce. It’s a dispute that has captured the attention of the nation, with television stations covering the story and widespread debate across social media. It amounts to a somewhat bizarre legal battle that’s piqued the interest of millions of ordinary Indians The 2,572-page lawsuit was brought by the Gujral family

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Should foreign governments own UK newspapers?

The Emirati / RedBird IMI bid for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator is opening up a wider conversation: how much of our national infrastructure should autocracies be allowed to buy? The Emiratis have been on a bit of a spree in recent years. They have 10 per cent of Heathrow airport, 15 per cent of Vodafone, 49 per cent of the Dogger Bank wind farm, Man City FC and now they want the Telegraph and Spectator. It would be the first time that a dictatorship would own a newspaper in a democracy, thereby setting a precedent. Much is riding in whether the UK government approves the deal. LBC radio

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray and Cindy Yu

31 min listen

On this episode, Richard Dawkins explains how to convert an atheist like him to a Christian (00:37), Lisa Haseldine says the German army is in a dire state (05:53), Douglas Murray looks at the return of the Trump show (12:44), Cindy Yu reviews a Chinese intelligence officers account of life under the CCP (20:14), and Mary Wakefield wonders if it’s wrong to track her child (25:14).

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Will we ever learn the lessons of the Holocaust?

As a child, I had to wash my hands before I was shown books of photographs depicting the ghettos and death camps so that I didn’t leave fingerprints on the pages. This wasn’t a Jewish custom, just the way things were done in our house. Looking back, however, it felt part of the rituals of memorial designed to prevent the atrocities of previous generations from slipping into the sands of time. The Jews – the only people to have been persecuted in every single century of their existence – hold a culture rich in traditions of remembrance, all freighted with duty. Never mind books of photographs. On Passover we stayed

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Brighton shows why you shouldn’t vote Labour

I surely wasn’t the only citizen of Brighton and Hove who breathed a sigh of relief when the Green council was turfed out by Labour last May after years of misrule. To be fair, it had been a bit of a semi-farcical pass-the-parcel situation for quite some time. Labour caved to the Greens in the summer of 2020 after the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Nancy Platts, wrote to her team to tell them they were handing over power ‘in the interests of democracy and the city’. Regrettably, there was also the taint of allegations of anti-Semitism that had come to surround the Labour council, though she obviously

Andrew Tettenborn

Why is the UN sticking up for Just Stop Oil protestors?

Do you remember when you couldn’t get your child to school on time because of a Just Stop Oil slow march? Or when you got gridlocked on the M25 because someone had draped themselves over one of the gantries? There’s a man from the United Nations who, it seems, rather likes the idea of us going back to those times. Michel Forst, a French UN functionary with the grand title of ‘special rapporteur on environmental defenders (Aarhus convention)’, published a two-page report this week following a brief visit to London. In it, he referred to ‘extremely worrying information’ about Britain’s ‘increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders’, by which he meant

David Abulafia

The danger of returning the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’

I put the case in last week’s Spectator that museums in this country have been gripped by a sort of infectious madness. Since I wrote that article the number of cases of museumitis has piled up further, and there are worrying signs that the infection is spreading into Europe. It has been announced that 32 of the Ghanaian ‘Crown Jewels’ are to be sent from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the current king of the Asante, to be exhibited in the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi. The idea is to put them on exhibition there for three years, after which

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Does Trump have evangelical Christians to thank for his second coming?

23 min listen

Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s US presidential elections. That’s a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we’re seeing a resurgence of the so-called ‘religious right’. Does he have born-again Christians to thank for his astonishing progress so far? In this episode of Holy Smoke my guest is Ryan Burge, the American political scientist whose Graphs on Religion substack is an authoritative guide to religious allegiance and voting patterns. You may be surprised by what he has to

Jawad Iqbal

Jurgen Klopp’s departure is a disaster for Liverpool

The news that the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is to quit his job at the end of the season is a bombshell. No one expected it, not right now, nor anytime soon. The questions will come thick and fast, with all kinds of daft conspiracy theories about what is really behind his departure not too far behind. Football is like that.  Klopp’s decision to go comes shortly after Liverpool qualified for the final of the Carabao Cup. It is all the more unexpected because he completed a major rebuild of the playing squad last summer (usually something that suggests the coach has the long-term in mind), and Liverpool are currently

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Israel shows why conscription works

Take a step back and it’s a no-brainer: If you want a healthy society, you need a spirit of unity. As we saw in London during the Blitz – often romanticised for its fabled ability to ‘pull together’ – if citizens feel they are part of a national family, they can maintain their morale even in the face of great adversity. The same is true in modern times. It must surely be the case that, the more people feel a meaningful part of a nation, the less alienation, disenfranchisement, discrimination and resentment there will be. Deaths of despair from drug abuse or suicide will reduce, as will poverty, depression and

Steerpike Steerpike

Andrew Neil: it would be absurd for the UAE to own The Spectator

Last night The Spectator’s chairman, Andrew Neil, spoke for the first time about the sale of this magazine and the Telegraph newspaper to Redbird IMI, an entity run by the former head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and backed financially by the United Arab Emirates. In November last year, the government issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice, halting the sale process until Ofcom, the media regulator, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigate. They are due to report back to the government today, which could then decide to block the sale entirely. You can watch the full video here – a transcript is below: Speaking on Newsnight ahead of the government’s response, Andrew Neil branded the

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why are doctors being threatened for reporting late-term abortions?

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) this week threatened to use punitive measures against doctors who report late-term abortions to the police.  Normally, medics have to respect patient confidentiality, but they can report individuals if it’s in the public interest. But now the college is saying in its latest guidance that any medic who reports their concerns to police must ‘justify’ the disclosure of patient data or else could face ‘fitness to practise’ investigations. The RCOG’s president Dr Ranee Thakar said it’s ‘never in the public interest’ to investigate or prosecute these cases. Where a foetus is capable of surviving outside the womb, we’re talking about a very unpleasant reality That’s plainly

George Llewelyn

Barbie’s Oscars snub isn’t sexist

Not for the first time, Hillary Clinton is outraged. Reacting to the news that Barbie star, Margot Robbie, and the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, missed out on Oscar nominations, Clinton sent a message to the pair: ‘Greta & Margot, while it can sting to win the box office but not take home the gold, your millions of fans love you. You’re both so much more than Kenough.’ But the truth is that sexism isn’t to blame for the decision to snub Barbie. The reason Barbie won’t be picking up many gongs at the Oscars is that it just isn’t a very good film. The way Barbie deals with its central feminist conceit is

Arash Azizi

Airstrikes won’t stop the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks

It was less than two weeks ago that the US and UK introduced a new element to the multi-faceted conflict in the Middle East. On 12 January they carried out joint strikes against the Houthis, a militia that controls Yemen’s capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemeni territory and is recognised as the country’s government by its main backer, Iran. The UK and US strikes came in response to weeks of Houthi attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea. The militia claimed its attacks were in response to Israel’s assault on Gaza but in practice it was targeting any and all shipping in the area as well as US