Society

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Raymond Arroyo on the joys of a Sinatra-style Christmas

22 min listen

In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we’re taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.  They’ve failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical theatre, has produced an album entitled Christmas Merry and Bright in which he sings well-loved Christmas songs and carols in spectacular big-band arrangements inspired by one of his musical heroes, Frank Sinatra. And in one track, ‘Feliz Navidad’, he’s joined by its composer – his friend the legendary José Feliciano. I hope you enjoy this conversation as

Tuesday

Jay Bhattacharya

Defending science from ‘cancel culture’

27 min listen

Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental tenets of a liberal democracy, and yet threats to freedom of speech today don’t so much come from authoritarians abroad as they do from within. The idea of ‘no-platforming’ those you disagree with, or ‘cancelling’ them, has taken root in all forms of public debate, and increasingly so in science. The word ‘science’ can today often be a shorthand for ‘truth’, which creates an orthodoxy where diversity of opinion is not welcomed. Science is meant to be ongoing process of finding truth, where what each generation takes as given may well be overturned as we discover more. On this podcast, we will

Debbie Hayton

This transgender schools guidance leaves a lot to be desired

The government has finally published its transgender guidance for schools. Teachers have been waiting a long time. We were promised we would have this document ‘for the summer term’. Well, it has arrived just in time for Christmas. But was it worth waiting for?  On the surface, this long awaited document looks like it will please nobody, upset everyone and leave schools still unclear about what they should do when parents get on the phone and explain that their son John is now their daughter Janet. It’s all well and good to advise that schools do not have a duty to let children change their gender identity but, when it

Tim Stanley

The Pope’s pursuit of relevance is embarrassingly outdated

The Pope is old and unwell. In whatever time he has left, he surveys his years as pontiff and counts only failure. What does he leave behind? Collapsing attendance, theological confusion, a few sentimental encyclicals and a positive meeting with Whoopi Goldberg. Francis called a synod and it gave him nothing. So, in a last throw of the dice, he declares that priests can bless gay relationships – sorta, kinda, maybe not. It’s all a muddle. The priest is not blessing the relationship but the partners; it must have no ritual; weddings are ruled out, for the teaching on marriage is unchanged. To effect this fudge, Francis has broken with

Andrew Tettenborn

The CofE’s same sex blessings stance is even more illogical than the Vatican’s

Traditionalists in the Church of England and the Catholic church don’t, of course, always see eye to eye. But on the issue of gay marriage and same-sex relations they may have found some common ground. In a landmark ceremony last week, the Church of England blessed a same-sex couple’s relationship for the first time. Prayers for two women – Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce – were held at St John the Baptist Church, in Felixstowe, Suffolk. As if by chance, this week we also heard about the same issue from the papal Dicastery, the Vatican body tasked with maintaining sound doctrine. Five conservative cardinals had submitted a dubium (i.e. awkward question) about whether

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Bring back schmaltzy songs

Christmas pop song lyrics play by different rules. Children, food and family togetherness are never mentioned in pop songs from January through November. It would be unthinkable for a non-Christmas pop song released in the last 50 years to mention ‘Children playing having fun’ or God forbid, anything religious. But this was not always the case. The pop music of the pre-rock and roll era is, to our ears, often indigestibly schmaltzy and even holy. Let’s have a quick look at some big hits of the 50s. Eddie Calvert sings of his father: No one could be, so gentle and so lovableOh, my papa, he always understood. Frankie Laine tells

Peter Wood

Harvard’s plagiarism hypocrisy

Claudine Gay is the self-declared ‘transformational’ president of Harvard university. She campaigned for the job by promising to retire the old Harvard of privilege and patrimony and to bring into being a new Harvard founded on principles of anti-racism and social justice. How is she doing?  At the moment, she is a bit distracted by allegations of plagiarism in her slim portfolio of publications. But she has a whole sea of troubles to take arms against. Let’s let her rest a moment on the shore and consider a small story from the not-always-illustrious past of America’s greatest university.   In 2007 Harvard admitted as a transfer student a young man, Adam

Monday

Jawad Iqbal

How Britain failed Jimmy Lai

There is something shameful about the government’s reluctance to publicly call for the release of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and democracy campaigner, held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong. Lai, the founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, and one of the most prominent critics of China’s Communist Party, has languished in prison for more than 1,100 days. His trial, on national security charges, finally got underway today. Yet it is only now that a British minister has summoned up the courage to properly condemn Lai’s prosecution for the politically motivated sham it undoubtedly is. Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, said he was ‘gravely concerned’ about the trial, and joined the  United

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Is identity politics to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism?

Anti-Semitism is surging among the young. It is now positively hip to view Jews as ‘problematic’. Consider the recent Harvard/Harris poll which found that 67 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the US view Jews as an ‘oppressor class’. If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, then I humbly suggest you read a few more history books. The poll results have horrified observers, as well they might. ‘Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?’, people were asked. ‘Oppressors’, answered two-thirds of the Gen Z respondents. Welcome to the era of TikTok fascism.

Sunday

Andrew Watts

How serious is Cornish nationalism?

The Office for National Statistics has been publishing interesting insights from the last census – perhaps to counter the bad press that censuses get at this time of year, forcing pregnant Jewish women to travel to municipalities in the West Bank – and its latest release shows that 18.1 per cent of people in Cornwall identify as ‘Cornish’.  Whether as their national identity, ethnic group or, in a tiny fraction of cases, their main language, this is an increase from 13.8 per cent in the last census, in 2011. All of these were write-in responses – despite a campaign by councillors and local MPs in Cornwall, there was no Cornish tick-box – and

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The admirable humility of Japanese sports stars

Who is the best paid sportsperson in the world? Cristiano Ronaldo perhaps? Or Kylian Mbappé? Lionel Messi? Novak Djokovic? LeBron James? Well, no. As of last week, it is someone even reasonably well-informed sports fans may not have heard of – a certain Shohei Ohtani, Japanese slugger and pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ohtani’s ten-year, 700-million-dollar contract is the most lucrative in sporting history. Except technically Ohtani will not be the best paid sportsperson in the world, or at least not until the end of his term, as he has chosen to defer nearly all of his salary so that the bulk of the money can be invested by

Geoff Norcott Geoff Norcott

Are men really that difficult to buy for?

With Christmas rushing at us like a bull in a Westfield, many blokes of a certain age will have already been told ‘you’re difficult to buy for’. On Christmas Day, while everyone else stacks a nice little pile of desirable things, you often end up the proud owner of some new socks and a 600ml bottle of Peroni (which you aren’t even allowed to drink immediately to numb the disappointment). ‘You’re difficult to buy for’ sails dangerously close to what modern progressives might call ‘victim blaming’. The truth is the present buyer could have given it more thought. They might have looked at what you bought for yourself throughout the

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Don’t cry for Shane MacGowan

Shane MacGowan’s death and his star-studded funeral captured the headlines this week. But the fawning and fanfare felt oddly dissonant to me: was I the only person in the media who never cared for him? I’m used to not holding the same opinions as most people in my profession; this is quite understandable, as only 19 per cent of British journalists were educated at comprehensive schools, as I was, and a minuscule number swerved ‘uni’, as I was blessed to. But I’m sceptical that many of those amongst my people of origin, the English working class, shared the media’s adulation for MacGowan. To us, MacGowan was a phoney: an Irish

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Anti-Semitism is a threat to the West

Down the road from where I live in Islington, the Jewish community put up a menorah in a park on the main shopping street. Islington Green seemed an appropriate spot to mark Hanukkah. It’s the home to the London borough’s memorial to the dead of the second world war who gave their lives to prevent the genocide of European Jewry reaching its conclusion. The menorah was itself destroyed a few days ago in what the local council  a ‘hate crime’ and ‘an anti-Semitic attack’. Does its destruction matter? It is easy to diminish the vandalism, just as it is easy to diminish so much of the aggression Jews have experienced since Hamas massacred Israelis on

Saturday

Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens, Lionel Shriver, Mary Wellesley and more

31 min listen

On this week’s episode, Peter Hitchens remembers a Christmas in Bucharest, Lionel Shriver says people don’t care about Ukraine anymore, Ed West wonders if you can ‘meme’ yourself into believing in God, Mary Wellesley reads her ‘Notes On’ St Nicholas, and Melissa Kite says she had to move to Ireland to escape the EU‘s rules.

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The strange appeal of Integralism

28 min listen

You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you’d be right. Even so, a movement known as Integralism – whose 20th-century incarnations were closely related to fascism – has gripped the imaginations of ultra-conservative Catholics in America, and especially on campuses. The Eastern Orthodox political philosopher Kevin Vallier has written a book, All the Kingdoms of the World, about this bizarre development. It’s thoughtful and fair-minded – but Integralists have not taken kindly to his analysis and Vallier has found himself drawn into

James Heale James Heale

Prince Harry awarded £140,000 in phone hacking case

The High Court has this morning awarded Prince Harry £140,600 in damages after ruling that he was the victim of mobile phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). Mr Justice Fancourt said that the Duke of Sussex’s personal phone was targeted to a ‘modest extent’ by the Mirror papers between 2003 and 2009. However there was ‘extensive’ use of the practice more widely from 2006 to 2011 and ‘even to some extent’ during the Leveson Inquiry into media standards. The court also ruled that Piers Morgan, when he was editor of the Daily Mirror, knew about phone hacking, based on evidence given by Omid Scobie. The Duke of Sussex had

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Hamas is trying to go global

For some years, there has been speculation in security circles about what will replace Islamic State. The terror group was smashed by an American-led coalition five or so years ago – a campaign that incurred, by the way, a heavy civilian death toll but provoked no protests in the west. Although it remains active in Africa and the Middle East, it is no longer the threat that it was. Its absence left a vacuum. The question was what would fill it. Now we may have the answer. Welcome to the era of Hamas International, a period which is likely only beginning. Yesterday, it was revealed that a plot by the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why can’t some Londoners tolerate posters of kidnapped Israelis?

What is it about those images of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas that so infuriates certain sections of the public? Since the Hamas pogrom of 7 October, people have been putting up posters of the hostages in cities across the Western world. And almost everywhere they have been torn down, desecrated, destroyed, binned. The faces of the men, women and children seized by the anti-Semites of Hamas seem to elicit an almost reflexive rage in some passers-by. We’ve seen videos of fuming people clawing at the posters to ensure no part of them survives on our streets. Others have daubed vile and racist insults on them. In Finchley Road in London

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Harry and Meghan named ‘biggest Hollywood losers’

At last, official confirmation that Harry and Meghan are the world’s most unpopular couple – by their local newspaper, no less. This month, Hollywood Reporter has ranked Harry and Meghan among its biggest losers of the year. Still, at least the dynamic duo haven’t sunk completely into irrelevance just yet… Launching a scathing attack on the royal renegades, the magazine speaks for much of LA when it writes that: After a whiny Netflix documentary, a whiny biography (Spare – even the title is a pouty grip) and an inert podcast, the Harry and Meghan brand swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped – and South Park was