Society

Sunday

Annabel Denham

The BMA shouldn’t look down on cleaners

During the lockdown, there was a cohort of workers who toiled through the night in what was described as a ‘fairly thankless job that is taken for granted day to day.’ Those workers were cleaners, who decontaminated buses and trains so that commuters could remain safe. We didn’t clap for them on our doorsteps, nor did they even receive the inadequate praise we gave to supermarket shelf stackers or lorry drivers.  It is telling that these workers were the subject of Professor Phil Banfield’s disdain earlier this week. The Head of the British Medical Association’s council appeared outraged that junior doctors – whose takeaway salaries average around £37,000 (not including a pension) – could in theory

Robin Ashenden

How the Unbearable Lightness of Being enthralled a generation

If during the 80s and 90s you were any kind of book lover, Milan Kundera – who died this week aged 94 – was one of that small clutch of modern novelists you absolutely had to read. In the late stages of the Cold War, the Czech-born Kundera not only gave us news about what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain – how those brought up under communism joked, suffered, survived and made love – but his irony and playfulness, oddly hard-nosed, caught the spirit of the times. To read him as a teenager was in many ways to be wrenched into adulthood and realise there were

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

We don’t need riding vigilantes – cyclists already own the roads

Last week, Jeremy Vine shared a video of a motorist being abusive to a cyclist. Nothing new there, I hear you say. After all, the light-footed BBC presenter is famous for cruising around London with a sophisticated camera rig on his head. But on this occasion, it was very much the cyclist who was at fault. The cyclist in question, Michael van Erp – who likewise records his journeys on a body camera and uploads them regularly to his CyclingMikey YouTube channel – had spotted a driver using his phone while stuck in traffic. London is the cyclist’s playground What’s the big deal, you might ask? The cars weren’t going

Ed West Ed West

The rise of the French Intifada

Seven years ago on Friday, a 31-year-old man got behind the wheel of a 19-tonne lorry and purposefully drove it down Nice’s Promenade des Anglais at speed as crowds celebrated France’s Bastille Day. Eighty-six people were killed, including 14 children, the image of an infant’s corpse wrapped in foil beside a toy shocking a country that had grown wearily used to violence. The previous November, 130 people had been murdered across Paris in a series of attacks which reached their most intense savagery at the Bataclan. This followed earlier atrocities that year at the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish supermarket in the French capital. In all cases the attackers

Saturday

Igho Onakpoya and Carl Heneghan

Are the potentially dangerous side-effects of Ozempic being explored?

In his new career as a Daily Mail columnist Boris Johnson has a fraction of the responsibility placed upon his shoulders as prime minister during the Covid pandemic. Nevertheless, in his very first column for the paper he managed to recommend a ‘wonder drug’ appetite suppressant without warning his readers that it is being investigated by the European Union and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for association with suicidal thoughts. Johnson’s column, published on 17 June, recalled how Boris had been surprised by sudden weight loss in three of his former cabinet colleagues. The answer, he discovered from one of them, was a drug called semaglutide, marketed under

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Jordan Henderson’s Saudi move would be good for football

Jordan Henderson is set to become the latest high-profile veteran to join the rapidly burgeoning Saudi Arabian Professional league. The 33-year-old Liverpool and England player is reportedly close to inking a deal to join Al-Ettifaq, where he would rejoin his one-time teammate Steven Gerrard, who is coaching the club. The wages are mind boggling, even by the standards of professional football: a reported £700,000 a week, quadruple his current salary. Hopefully, Henderson’s move would hasten the return of football to some sort of sanity Henderson is still a top player, if not in then surely not far off his prime and he would be one the most significant catches yet

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Ex-BBC presenters close ranks around Huw Edwards 

In the days since the Huw Edwards scandal broke, the television broadcaster’s wife has been praised for a dignified statement citing her husband’s mental health struggle – with the presenter currently in hospital. Meanwhile, the police finding of no evidence of criminal behaviour means that the BBC is allowed to resume its original investigation. Some staff are taking matters into their own hands – with reports that some journalists at the corporation were looking into the alleged behaviour of Edwards before the Sun story broke.  There is one group particularly unimpressed at the news: former BBC staff. Mr S has been curious to note that the ex-BBC presenters and correspondents that feature on Global’s ‘News

Danny Shaw

The BBC still has questions to answer over Huw Edwards

Huw Edwards is in hospital. That shocking news, in a statement from his wife, Vicky Flind, delivered an icy blast of reality to a news story that had bubbled out of control for six days, dangerously so for the BBC. Although reporters in its News division, where I worked for 31 years, had covered the events rigorously and sensitively, breaking new lines and analysing developments with care, the same surefootedness cannot be said for the BBC’s corporate arm. Their handling of the affair raises serious questions about complaints procedures, staff welfare and privacy. The BBC’s rationale for not naming Edwards (until his wife did so) remains unclear When the initial

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: BMA tells striking doctors to focus on ‘rest and relaxation’

Junior doctors are once again back on strike today, as they kick-off the longest industrial action in NHS history in pursuit of a 35 per cent pay rise. Up to 46,000 medics in England will spend the next five days away from the hospital, in yet another blow to the kneecaps of the already hobbling NHS. If you didn’t need reminding of the impossibility of accessing the health service at the moment, waiting lists in England are still at over seven million, while around 600,000 NHS appointments have been postponed or cancelled by previous strikes. Still, it seems like some people have other concerns when it comes to the impacts

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The cruelty of a trans beauty queen

BeKind is one of the Great Icks – to use the vivid word so beloved of Love Islanders – of our age. It’s a form of brainwashing which is particularly insidious as it’s generally applied to females, starting out in childhood when numerous items of BE KIND clothing can be found in the girls’ section of shops but not in the boys’. (Note to clothing manufacturers and retailers; it’s not girls who need reminding to be kind, judging from the violent crime stats.) As well as a conditioning process for female children, it’s a shaming mechanism for adult human females regularly used by the trans lobby to reward women who

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Will anyone be held accountable for the Zephaniah McLeod attack?

A report, just published by the NHS, is a stark 171-page indictment of our protective services. The investigation details the shocking failures of every agency either side of the prison walls to safely manage Zephaniah McLeod, a plainly very dangerous and mentally unwell man with a long criminal history, who was released from prison without any restrictions or supervision.   In September 2020, less than six months after being let out, McLeod went on a late-night killing spree with a knife in Birmingham city centre. He murdered one young man and maimed eight others, before being arrested by armed police. As with the recent eerily familiar atrocity in Nottingham, his victims

Bruce Anderson

Where to drink Tuscany’s finest summer tipples

Some subjects invite an eternal recurrence. One such is Tuscany. The other day, I wrote about that glorious region: its mastery of la dolce vita, its almost effortless command of civilisation. Indeed, Tuscan civilisation is a tautology. Since then, I have paid a brief visit. There was only one shadow. How can one find the words to equal the subject matter? Wine was produced here long before we Brits had even discovered woad My host was Grahame McGirr, a successful banker who has always been fascinated by wine, which led him to buy a vineyard near Monte-pulciano. I commented on some of his wines after a tasting in London. They

Robin Oakley

Paddington emerged victorious but Eclipse was an enthralling duel

I should have listened to George Duffield. Sandown Park’s Eclipse Stakes, the first time the Classic generation of three-year-olds take on their elders, is one of my favourite races and the then 53-year-old rider’s triumph on Giant’s Causeway in 2000, beating Kalanisi by a head after Pat Eddery had driven him into the lead 200 yards from the finish, was the duel I will never forget. Duffield was Sir Mark Prescott’s stable jockey and soon after that race the Newmarket maestro took a call from Aidan O’Brien, Giant’s Causeway’s trainer. ‘Whatever you do Sir Mark,’ said the quiet Irish voice, ‘make sure you breed from him before you let him

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Light bulb moment: the flaw in the petrol car ban

This week, writing in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley produced a devastating takedown of the government’s 2030 ban on the sale of new conventionally powered cars. He plans to pre-empt the ban himself by buying a brand-new petrol car in 2029. Innovation happens gradually and delivers its benefits unevenly – therefore it is stupid to impose it on everyone all at once  I thought he was right about almost everything, except perhaps that final prediction. He’s right to be sceptical about the environmental benefits of electric cars – especially in countries such as China (and, to a lesser extent, Germany) where electricity is largely generated from the filthier forms of

Wednesday

Louise Perry

Barbie’s world: the normalisation of cosmetic surgery

If Barbie were a real woman, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Her enormous head would loll forward on her spindly neck, her tiny ankles would buckle under her elongated legs, and she would be forced to move about on all fours. In the upcoming Barbie film, Margot Robbie nails her character’s toothy smile and blonde bouffant, but even she cannot come close to imitating Barbie’s monstrous proportions. More adventurous imitators have tried. It’s rumoured that the so-called ‘Eastern Bloc Barbie’ – a 37-year-old Moldovan by the name of Valeria Lukyanova, one of several plastic surgery addicts dubbed ‘human Barbies’ – had ribs removed and her eyelids trimmed in her

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The BBC and a 21st-century media madness

The story of the famous BBC television presenter who, at the time of writing, has still not been named, has all the elements of 21st-century-media madness – something allegedly sexual which may or not involve a person too young for such things; a desperate hue and cry to see who will dare to name the accused first; anonymous accusers; a clash between strong legal rules about the accused’s anonymity and the strong social media custom of ignoring them; a confusion as to whether the ‘victim’ is a victim or whether he/she even believes he/she is a victim; gabby lawyers; the Sun; an angry mum; a stepfather; ‘fresh allegations’; a ‘concerned’ government

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The BBC is self-destructing

There are still 27 people left in the British Isles – at the time of writing – who are unaware of the name of the BBC presenter who allegedly paid a teenager lots of money to look at pictures of their bottom and so on. Some of them are on the remote windswept island of Foula, I believe. The rest are members of the chap’s family. Its complaints procedure is not designed to discover the truth and adjudicate appropriately I quite envy those who have not yet been told via that conduit for concentrated human misery, social media. There was a rather wonderful couple of days when the name was

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: BBC presenter scandal, EasyJet cancellations and a baby boy for Boris

Home The government pondered whether to accept pay-review bodies’ recommendations on rises in public sector salaries. ‘Delivering sound money is our number one focus,’ Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in his Mansion House speech. ‘That means taking responsible decisions on public finances, including public sector pay.’ Regular pay in the March to May period was 7.3 per cent higher than a year earlier, although it rose less than inflation. Unemployment rose from 3.8 per cent to 4 per cent; vacancies fell by 85,000 to 1,034,000. The average two-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.7 per cent. Jeremy Hunt confirmed that he was refused a bank account with Monzo last year on the

The Spectator

Rishi Sunak is right about illegal migration

The Illegal Migration Bill is having a distorting effect on the Tory party. It has put Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith together on the side of liberal opinion – and Ken Clarke on the side of the Prime Minister. This week, May and Duncan Smith sought to stop the government from overturning a Lords amendment which would prevent the deportation of those claiming to be victims of people-trafficking. Rishi Sunak thinks that loopholes in the law have been exploited by people-traffickers. May and Duncan Smith disagree. It fell to Clarke, a fierce critic of the government since Brexit, to challenge the plan’s opponents to come up with a better