Society

Sam Leith

The ‘naive cynicism’ of Russell Brand’s hasty defenders 

I can’t imagine that Channel 4’s investigative slot Dispatches has had such an audience in living memory. On Saturday evening, many thousands of people who seldom if ever watch terrestrial television – I was one of them – will have tuned in at 9pm, just like the old days, to watch a conventional broadcast. Most of these people will already have known the substance of what was in the programme, because it was a joint investigation with a good-old-fashioned newspaper – whose version of the story was published a few hours earlier and was eagerly and widely read online. Quite a moment for the so-called ‘legacy media’. The gist of the

A driver’s case for 20mph limits

Speeding kills, we’re told. But in the right circumstances, exceeding the limit is no bad thing. Take motorways: few drivers seem to stick to 70mph, yet most journeys are perfectly safe. Indeed, when I’m behind the wheel, I like putting my foot down as much as the next driver. Fortunately in the 30 years since I passed my test I’ve been pretty lucky; I’ve clocked up two or three speed awareness courses, but somehow I’ve managed to keep hold of my licence. Yet despite my run ins with the DVLA, I firmly believe there’s a case for 20mph limits in certain areas. This new speed limit has been rolled out on

The decline of the West: America’s Pacific cities face a bleak future

As recently as the early Nineties, when the great cities of the Midwest and East Coast were careening toward what seemed like an inevitable downturn, the urban agglomerations along the Pacific coast offered a demonstrably brighter urban future. From San Diego to the Puget Sound, urban centres along America’s western edge continued to thrive and expand as migrants from other parts of the country, and the world, crowded in. In the process, the Pacific cities seized the economic initiative. The West Coast became home to the country’s premier trade entrepôt and its dominant entertainment and technology centres, and home to five of the world’s six most valuable companies. Yet now

Damian Reilly

Does tennis have a doping problem?

Is it more remarkable that Romanian two-time Grand Slam tennis champion Simona Halep took performance enhancing drugs, or that she was caught? I ask only because the sport’s authorities seem to catch vanishingly few dopers, which surely means either they’re very bad at it, or elite players rarely cheat to win enormous sums of money.   Certainly, it’s easy to be cynical about tennis. When in 2017 I interviewed legendary doping chemist Angel ‘Memo’ Hernandez – who during the nineties and 2000s was the world’s leading illicit sports chemist, providing undetectable super-stimulants to a wide range of household name athletes – he burst out laughing when I asked about doping in tennis.   ‘Tennis was paradise for a long time. No testing

Nimbys and Greens are teaming up to block German wind farms

Germany’s Robert Habeck might well be an excellent children’s book author but he is proving to be a dismal economy and climate minister. Habeck, who also serves as the Greens vice-chancellor in the country’s coalition government, rode to power in 2021 promising to speed up the transition to renewables. At the heart of his pledge: more windmills, bigger windmills and, above all, built much, much faster. But these promises are proving to be little more than hot air, as my own fruitless struggle to build windmills attests. Wind energy is crucial if Germany is to meet its goal of renewables producing 80 per cent of electricity by 2030, up from

Confessions of a dog hater

Rishi Sunak’s plan to ban American Bully XLs is welcome news for us dog haters. It’s long been said that pooches are man’s best friend. But this is a problem if, like me, you love men, but are less than enamoured with his mate. If what the Spice Girls said about needing to get along with the friends of your paramour is true, then us cynophobes face solitude amidst the wilderness of dog-loving Englishmen on the dating scene.  Over the years, I have mastered the art of gracefully skipping over the topic of dogs. But the prevalence of these animals is such that, sooner or later, the topic must be

The toxic prison attitude that can cost inmates their lives

David Morgan, a 35 year-old man, told staff he’d taken an overdose. A nurse decided the man seemed drunk and needed to ‘sober up’. No proper medical assessment was conducted, and staff locked him in a holding cell. Over the next two and a half hours David became ‘increasingly distressed and unwell’, ‘incapable of coherent speech’ and ‘was unable to prevent himself from repeatedly falling on the floor’. Meanwhile the nurse, and prison staff looked on. As a result of these multiple falls, David broke his nose, fractured both legs and sustained significant bruising to his head and face. Eventually he lost consciousness, was taken to hospital and died eight

How museums lost their way

What’s the point of museums? According to researchers at the University of Leicester, museums should help children explore their gender identity. Academics have issued 44-pages of detailed guidance on how museum directors can tackle ‘growing uncertainty and anxiety surrounding trans-inclusive practice’ while stimulating ‘positive explorations of gender’ for children. The University of Leicester has got this all wrong. Whether it is school sex education classes, TikTok videos, libraries hosting drag queen story hours, picture books about grandad attending Pride, or television programmes about boys who want to become girls, children are bombarded with opportunities to explore their gender identity. Yet despite almost every area of life having already been colonised

Ross Clark

The dangerous dog crackdown shouldn’t stop with banning Bully XLs

There isn’t much you can do in modern Britain without encountering some licensing scheme, but one area of life which really does need regulating remains free of any kind of bureaucratic control. You can, for now, go out and buy an American Bully XL puppy with no need for any kind of training – for you or the dog – before letting it loose on the High Street where it might take a fancy to shins of a passer-by and, quite possibly go onto kill them. Should that happen, you may well find yourself in the magistrates’ court, but why not some kind of pre-emptive system to keep violent dogs off the

Theo Hobson

In praise of Justin Welby’s ‘less bossy’ Church of England

Justin Welby is not my sort of Anglican. Or maybe he is, in a way. I’m not really sure who he is. And I don’t mean that entirely negatively. When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church seemed to be opting for cheesy banality after the intellectual roller-coaster of his predecessor, Rowan Williams. It was a slightly dangerous roller-coaster, to be sure, with some alarming rusty bits, and stomach-plunging drops, but always interesting.  Welby looked like a beta male from the Alpha course, the slick evangelical outfit led by public school officer-class types. I had my gripes about Williams, but he seemed a Hyperion to this satyr. I have

Gavin Mortimer

Why rugby fans love to hate Macron

Emmanuel Macron was in Lille on Thursday evening to watch France defeat Uruguay as the Bleus made it two wins from two in the Rugby World Cup. The president was photographed swigging from a bottle of beer, just your normal rugby fan enjoying the game.  Rugby fans and their president have little in common. He is the strutting epitome of the aloof Parisian elite Macron was also present last week in Paris when France beat New Zealand in the tournament opener, which suggests that either he hasn’t a busy agenda this month or there is a political purpose to his rugby supporting.   The president has long been the self-appointed

Jake Wallis Simons

The police can’t be trusted to track our e-bikes

In more innocent times, I’d have responded to the news that police wished to fit tracking devices to electric bicycles with a grunt of approval. Finally, I’d have thought. Plod has come up with a practical, apparently technologically literate yet relatively inexpensive method to fight low-level crime. Makes a change from the rainbow helmets. Why stop at e-bikes? Track all the cars, too. These days, however, I cannot help but view such measures with cynicism. But let me first explain. Sarah Kennedy, the chief constable of Merseyside police, has said that policing risked being ‘behind the curve’ because muggers are using e-bikes to carry out their assaults. Scousers were stealing

Patrick O'Flynn

Starmer’s migrant plan is even worse than the Tories’

Labour’s long-awaited approach to stopping the Channel boats is so pusillanimous that it ought to be a political gamechanger for the Conservatives. But it probably won’t be. As Sir Keir Starmer outlines in various newspapers today, an administration led by him will abandon the Rwanda removals plan and get rid of the Illegal Migration Act which puts in place a bar against people who have arrived illegally claiming asylum. Instead, he will enter talks with the EU about the UK taking a percentage of the ever-increasing flow of irregular migrants over its southern and eastern borders. As a quid pro quo, he hopes that EU nations, especially France – whose

Olivia Potts

My two tips for perfect aubergine parmigiana

In the middle of an unpredictable Indian summer, here is a recipe from sultry southern Italy which is suitable for the changing seasons. While aubergine parmigiana (or parmigiana di melanzane) was born of hot Italian summers, it is also perfect for autumn, as the days shorten and darken. There is inherent comfort in the hot, almost-melting aubergine, covered in a rich sauce and blankets of cheese. Aubergines, tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan, all layered until they meld and transform The name is possibly a red herring, possibly not. Aubergine parmigiana is most associated with Naples, and is also beloved in Sicily and Calabria. Many have found it hard to reconcile

Tanya Gold

As gaudy as Versailles: The Duchess of Cornwall in Poundbury reviewed

Poundbury is the King’s idealised town in Dorchester, built on his land to his specifications: the town that sprung out of his head. (‘My dream,’ says Harry Enfield in The Windsors, ‘was always to build a mixed-used residential suburb on the outskirts of Dorchester.’) It is so fascinating that I dream, briefly, of moving in for the completeness of the vision – who doesn’t want to live inside art? – and the portrait of the British class system in housing. Here it is, at last, laid out like a textbook: journey’s end. We order via app and pay in advance: there is a shortage of what tabloids call flunkeys It

Roger Alton

Novak Djokovic, the man who won’t go away

‘What are you still doing here?’ joked Daniil Medvedev to Novak Djokovic after their US Open tennis final – a lung-busting baseline slugfest featuring jaw-dropping athleticism and brilliant shot-making – had ended in a straight sets win for the Serb. It was his 24th Grand Slam victory. There’s no sign that Djokovic wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36 The Russian’s good-humoured question is one that many elite tennis players will be asking. But there’s no sign that Djoko wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36. His coach Goran Ivanisevic said that Sunday’s win was one of the greatest feats in all sport – adding: ‘If

Brendan O’Neill

Róisín Murphy and the limits of the new authoritarianism

Has cancel culture finally met its match? Have the new blacklisters who hasten to erase anyone who gives voice to a view that displeases them finally had their comeuppance? The roaring success of Róisín Murphy’s new album, Hit Parade, suggests it’s possible. The digital inquisitors tried to silence the queen of new disco over her sinful utterances on puberty blockers, and yet she’s soaring up the charts. Meet Róisín the Uncancellable. It is wonderful to see elitist intolerance of wrongthink crash against the shores of decency and liberty All sorts of mud and insults were hurled at Murphy when it was revealed she is sceptical of puberty blockers. Pumping gender-confused

Portrait of the week: A parliamentary arrest, a Morocco earthquake and a yoga ‘mass killing’ 

Home Average wages (including bonuses) in the three months to July were 8.5 per cent higher than a year earlier. This should mean that state pensions rise by 8.5 per cent from April 2024, if the government does not claw back anything; the predicted rise would bring into the tax-paying bracket 650,000 more pensioners, a total of 9.15 million. GDP fell by 0.5 per cent in July. Wilko shops began closing as attempts to rescue the chain failed; Poundland offered to take on the leases of up to 71 shops. The cost of a first-class stamp is to rise from £1.10 to £1.25; before April this year it was only

What’s the truth about the Peckham shop scuffle?

Rye Lane in south London’s Peckham is a lively place day and night, but yesterday evening the atmosphere was distinctly ugly. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a store to protest about a shopkeeper’s treatment of a customer, who was accused of theft. A viral video, filmed inside Peckham Hair and Cosmetics on Monday, shows why they are angry: a black woman is seen being manhandled by an Asian employee. The circumstances of what unfolded are unclear; some reports suggest the woman was trying to return some items but was told she couldn’t and attempted to leave. Her path was blocked by the shopkeeper and a fight between the two broke