Society Archives

Wednesday

2 Aug 2023

Letters: why AI may be a force for good

Parris review Sir: Matthew Parris (‘Coutts, Farage and the trouble with choice’, 29 July) omitted to mention the initial, fundamental and obvious matter of the breach of client confidentiality committed by Dame Alison Rose, who he says should not have resigned. This is surely the gravest offence any bank official – let alone the head of NatWest – can commit. Yet he puts her resignation down to a ‘silly media storm’, which was actually started by the BBC, to whom the client information was given. Further, his article relates mostly to the discretion which institutions such as banks have in choosing who to admit. But this issue wasn’t about a client’s

Max Pemberton

The Premier League’s sleeping pill problem

The footballer Dele Alli was applauded recently after he spoke of his sleeping pill abuse. ‘It’s a problem not only I have. It’s going around more than people realise in football,’ he said during a filmed interview with Manchester United’s former captain Gary Neville. It’s not the first time we’ve heard this. Footballers are ‘taking too many sleeping tablets and painkillers’ and addiction is becoming a ‘big issue’, former pro Ryan Cresswell warned last year. (He said his own addiction left him ‘gripping on for dear life’.) He claimed the problem is affecting stars at the very top level: ‘For me, it started with one after every game… to one

Mark Mason

Gloves, tea strainers and a game of Monopoly… how the Great Train Robbery unfolded

We don’t know if the two teenagers who attempted a train robbery in Scotland this week knew that it was the 60th anniversary of the most famous one in British history. Given their failure – nothing was stolen and the charges include ‘malicious mischief’ – it seems unlikely. Either way, the train robbery of August 1963 remains secure in its title of ‘Great’. Why did it fascinate us so much in the first place? Partly it was the zeitgeist timing (that year also saw Profumo, Beatlemania and JFK’s assassination); partly the amount stolen (£2.5 million, worth more than £40 million today); and partly the narrative of ‘plucky underdogs vs the

Mary Wakefield

The dangerous cult of ‘toxic parents’

Complaining about ‘toxic parents’ has been a viral hit on TikTok with videos on the topic racking up several billion views. Only one of those views is mine and there won’t be another because it was like peering through a window into a cross between a padded cell and a charnel house. In video after video, boys and girls across the English-speaking world – aged roughly 15 to 25 – share the trauma of what they’ve had to endure, courtesy of their terrible mothers and fathers. Many children suffer at the hands of the people who should protect them, but in this case what the kids find intolerable would, to

Douglas Murray

Why should Vikings be diverse?

I don’t always watch ‘Strongest Viking’ competitions on cable. But the other day I was channel-hopping and became mesmerised by one. Firstly because I wasn’t previously aware that such banality was possible on television. People really watch men trying to push a stone or pull a rope? This was new data to me. But I also stayed because I was struck by the sheer lack of diversity. The cultural homogeneity of the Strongest Viking competition was appalling When the league tables flashed up, it transpired that the board was led by someone called Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, otherwise known as ‘the Mountain’ in Game of Thrones. Mr Björnsson is from Iceland,

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 8 August 2023

It’s been more than 30 years since Zia Mahmood published his classic memoir, Bridge My Way*, and now – finally! – he brings us up to date with Bridge, A Love Story. It’s published next week, and having just binge-read an early copy, I can assure you that it’s every bit as brilliant. Zia is still at the very top of his game, and the book fizzes with passion and energy. It’s full of funny anecdotes, snapshots of legendary players, hands galore, quizzes, tips and his views on everything from the best players in the world (no spoilers) to which conventions should be dumped (Gerber). At 77, he doesn’t feel

Aidan Hartley

A farewell to alcohol

Laikipia Some are saved by Jesus and they are sober. For others, drunkenness is as natural as love-making, roasted meat and weekend football. In northern Kenya we brew a honey mead called muratina; then there’s a millet beer and strongest of all is a moonshine, changa’a, which you can smell from several huts away and it tastes like battery acid. Our neighbour Gilfrid produced an alcohol so pernicious the hangover hit as soon as it crossed one’s tongue Booze soaks into the corners of life in the village or the slum. I’ve been in places, on paydays for example, where the scenes resemble Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s tableaux of peasants

Melissa Kite

I am escaping Surrey in the nick of time

As I slapped a rude note on a car parked outside my house, I realised that nature was taking its course. My transformation into a Surreyite was in danger of becoming complete. ‘If you have enjoyed using this private access track, then perhaps you might consider making a donation for its maintenance,’ I had snidely scrawled on a scrap of paper which I tucked under the wipers of the same Nissan crossover that always seems to be plonked there by some dog walker or other who can’t be bothered to drive further along the village green to park in the public car park. Ugh, I thought. I have become something

Taki

Greece’s age-old obsession with fire

Patmos While green Rhodes and greener Corfu burn away, arid Patmos remains fireproof because rock and soil do not a bonfire make. The Almighty granted some islands plenty of water, and other ones no H2O whatsoever. Most of the Cycladic isles lug in drinking water from the mainland, and make do with treated unsalted seawater for planting. The Ionian isles have springs and rivers and also fires, some of them started by firebugs who hope to gain – I have never figured this one out – from the blaze. It’s all very confusing, especially as the temperatures are rising and the energy to party diminishes by the hour. Everything was

The Spectator

Rishi Sunak is right to hedge his bets on oil and gas

It is quite right that the Prime Minister has chosen to approve new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, in spite of the bitter reaction from climate activists, the Labour party – and some of his own MPs. Chris Skidmore, who just recently completed a review of net zero policies on behalf of the government, said this week that the decision to award new licences ‘is on the wrong side of the future economy that will be founded on renewable and clean industries and not fossil fuels’. Yet the Prime Minister is not retrenching on investment in renewable energy; he is hedging the government’s bets. While

Tuesday

1 Aug 2023

Benedict Rogers

Burma’s generals aren’t really pardoning Aung San Suu Kyi

The brutal generals ruling Burma – or Myanmar as they officially call it – seem to take us for fools. Today the junta issued a ‘partial pardon’ for the country’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi and reportedly transferred her from prison to ‘a more comfortable state-owned residence’. By doing this, they hope to score a propaganda win, creating the impression of leniency. It is vital though that the international community does not fall for this nonsense and sees through the regime’s lies. Aung San Suu Kyi should never have been arrested and jailed in the first place. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) – which is

Mark Solomons

Why can’t football pundits be more like cricket commentators?

For the armchair sports fan, there is some reassurance as the sun sets on another fabulous Ashes contest: the football Premier League season will soon begin. But while the football is certain to be a match for the breakneck cricket we’ve enjoyed over recent weeks, the commentary that runs alongside it won’t be. Cricket fans enjoy analysis from the erudite, intelligent and calmly explained voices of test match commentators. Football supporters must put up with the frenetic, confrontational and frankly banal screeching of the sport’s equivalent. The change from Bazball to football on our screens is most noticeable not for what goes on pitchside but how it is described in

Terry Barnes

Sydney’s cocaine wars are spiralling out of control

The illicit moment of surreal euphoria from snorting a line of cocaine comes at a heavy price of misery and death for so many others – a dreadful toll that is plain to see on the streets of Sydney. The competition between criminal gangs for the city’s drug users has become deadly on a scale not seen in Australia for years. The latest victim, David Stemler, died in a hail of bullets in the early hours of Thursday. Stemler was the 23rd person to lose his life in Sydney’s drug wars over the last two years. Just why demand for cocaine has skyrocketed in Australia isn’t clear. It’s not as

Gavin Mortimer

Is France’s loss Russia’s gain in Niger?

France is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Niger following the coup d’état in the west African country on 26 July. The French embassy in Niamey – the capital of Niger – said in a statement that the air evacuation ‘will take place very soon and over a very short period of time’. Last week’s coup, in which general Abdourahamane Tchiani of the elite presidential guard seized power from president Mohamed Bazoum, is the latest turmoil in a region that has become dangerously destabilised in the last three years. There have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso which, like Niger, were former French colonies but have turned against their

Steerpike

Coutts gives Nigel Farage his account back

Is Nigel Farage’s war with Coutts finally over? The former Brexit party leader has claimed that the bank – which closed his account over concerns about his political views – has now offered to reinstate his account. The interim chief executive of Coutts, Mohammad Kamal Syed, wrote to Farage to give him the good news. Speaking on his GB News programme, Farage said: ‘He has written to me to say I can keep both my personal and my business accounts. And that’s good and I thank him for it.’ But it seems that might not be the end of the row. Farage said the fallout has caused him ‘enormous harm’

Ed West

Blame the breed, not the owner: the truth about American Bully XLs

My dog is great with children, I will give her that. The family pet and I don’t really get on, and since I last wrote on the subject of ‘Twiggy’ I’m afraid there has been no great budding human–canine love story; I won’t be played by Owen Wilson in the biopic of her life any time soon. She is warm and affectionate around people but has a relentless desire to hunt – rats, pigeons, squirrels and mice have all on occasion fallen prey, much to the distress of some members of the public. This ends up causing great inconvenience because Twiggy regularly gets trapped or lost while out hunting, and

Ross Clark

The collateral damage of lockdowns on children is still emerging

There has been plenty of evidence published over the past three years of the severe effects on children’s education and wellbeing of closing schools during Covid lockdowns, but a new study by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) and University College London (UCL) has a slightly different emphasis – linking children’s social and emotional development with the employment situation of their parents. Overall, it found that 47 per cent of parents reported that their children’s social and emotional skills had declined during the pandemic – with just a sixth of parents reporting that there had been an improvement. The effect was more severe along younger children – 52 per cent of

Olivia Potts

With Ebru Baybara Demir

23 min listen

Ebru Baybara Demir is a Turkish chef with a big dream; to introduce tourism to Mardin, a municipality in the Kurdish region of Turkey. It was a brave decision as Mardin is a city beset by terror-related security issues, boasting very little local agriculture and dealing with huge border problems due to the war in neighbouring Syria. On the podcast they discuss the challenges of creating a restaurant from scratch, preparing and serving local delicacies and pulling together as women in a patriarchal society to make culinary dreams come true.

Monday

31 Jul 2023

Ian Williams

Will Italy leave China’s ‘atrocious’ Belt and Road Initiative?

For some time now the world has being growing increasingly wary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but rarely has any member of the scheme launched a broadside quite like that of Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, who described his country’s decision to join as ‘improvised and atrocious’. In an interview at the weekend, he said that the BRI had brought little benefit to Italy and one of the most pressing question his government now faced was how best to escape its clutches. The BRI is often described as an international infrastructure project, through which the world will be blessed with Chinese-built roads, railways, ports and power stations. In

Sam Leith

Ancient worms and the problem with climate politics

The poet Elizabeth Bishop, when she was feeling blue (which she often was), used to find comfort in thinking in geological rather than human time. If the vast aeons amid which we wink in and out of existence render our lives insignificant, so too do they render our suffering. As someone else said: nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all. These little worms, I think, can give us a welcome sense of perspective. A worm’s-eye view, if you will I’m sure these thoughts, or something very like them, will have been the first to have gone through the small brains of the nematode worms which woke up the other day having been asleep for 46,000 years. Along with