Society

Julie Burchill

The sad truth about Phillip Schofield

You hear a lot about Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over professions in the near future – and I think television presenters should be particularly worried. Think about it. Robots wouldn’t expect salaries of hundreds of thousands of pounds. They wouldn’t jump queues. They wouldn’t have lurid headlines about paedophile brothers casting a pall over their shiny facade. And they wouldn’t show a cheery Doctor Jekyll-bot to the public and a nasty Mr Snide-bot to those they considered their inferiors. I’m thinking, of course, about Phillip Schofield. Amusingly, when you go to his Wikipedia page you find a line at the top saying: ‘This article is about the television presenter. For

Fentanyl is being laced to become even more deadly

In February on a snowy Wednesday, I met a homeless man named David standing outside a Safeway panhandling for money. He was wearing a white hoodie with the words ‘Portland State University’ printed on it and holding two empty beer cans and a remote control. I asked him what it’s like to be homeless in Portland. ‘I know how not to be homeless, but there’s a reason I am out here and something’s not right,’ he replied. He told me that when he gets housed, he often gets kicked out quickly and doesn’t want to have to go through the effort again. Something bad happened to him when he was

Patrick O'Flynn

Will Starmer let Sunak off the hook again over immigration?

Despite the Conservatives having broken all their promises to bring down immigration volumes for 13 years in a row, conventional wisdom has it that migration is Labour’s Achilles’ heel. However high the Tories have allowed immigration to go, the public has generally suspected that Labour would push it still higher. Brits have long memories about the party ‘sending out the search parties’ for immigrants under Tony Blair – nor have they forgotten Gordon Brown’s dumbfounded reaction to the migration scepticism of the redoubtable Gillian Duffy on the campaign trail in 2010. This week is likely to see the collapse of that popular prejudice – not because of anything active that Labour

Will India ever get back the Koh-i-Noor diamond?

India has not yet got its hands on the Koh-i-Noor, despite the county’s many efforts to retrieve the diamond from Britain’s crown jewels. But the ongoing controversy over the jewel has obscured the success of the country’s wider efforts to repatriate cultural and historical artefacts. Since 2014 India’s leader Narendra Modi has made it his personal mission to secure the return of priceless treasures, including thousands of manuscripts taken during or after the colonial era. The strategy has been an ingenious way of winning the moral argument for the return of the world’s most famous diamond, by securing the return of much less controversial treasures from Britain and other nations. Modi

The myth of New World genocide

Shortly before the coronation of Charles III, a group of indigenous leaders from around the commonwealth released a statement. They called on the King ‘to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples,’ including ‘the oppression of our peoples, plundering of our resources, (and) denigration of our culture.’ Charles was told to ‘redistribute the wealth that underpins the crown back to the peoples from whom it was stolen.’ Yet the argument that Britain should pony up for its historical sins is based on a number of rickety assumptions. One of these is that a substantial portion of the wealth of the UK,

Mark Galeotti

Russia’s fake news machine has a fresh target

There is a certain perverse cachet in one’s words being wilfully distorted by someone who thinks it gives their argument weight. Increasingly, the Russians are adopting this as a tactic. But the target of their disinformation appears not to be foreign audiences, but Russians themselves. I’ve never really subscribed to the view that being banned from Russia on the charge that I was ‘involved in the deliberate dissemination of false and one-sided information about Russia and events in Ukraine,’ and ‘contributing to fueling Russophobia in British society’ was a badge of honour. It would be tempting to run with it and market myself as ‘the man Putin fears’ or some

Sam Leith

Martin Amis: 1949-2023

Over the next few days, people will be reaching for certain set phrases about Martin Amis. That he was ‘era-defining’ (though he defined more than one era); that he was ‘genre-defying’ (he defied more than one genre); that he was an ‘enfant terrible’ (it will be wryly noted that he remained an enfant terrible, somehow, into his eighth decade). It’s poignant, I think, that a writer who vigilantly waged the career-long battle he called ‘the war against cliché’ will go to his grave heaped with the garlands of the old enemy.  Still, he deserves the content of those tributes if not their form. And it’s not much of a surprise that nobody can write as well

There’s one way to avoid repeating the horrors of Hiroshima

This weekend the leaders of the G7 countries meet in Hiroshima to discuss the most urgent issues facing the world today. The Russian aggression against Ukraine and the ban on the use of the nuclear weapons are among the key items on the summit’s agenda. When I visited Hiroshima last month the war in Ukraine and the nuclear issues were also at the top of my personal list of concerns. At the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also known as the Atomic Dome, a visitor can hardly avoid being taken aback or evenshocked by the contrast between the stark skeleton of a magnificent building destroyed by the nuclear explosion

Confessions of a royal paparazzo

I can still remember the shock of watching the news on Sunday, 31 August 1997 and learning that Lady Diana had been in a car crash in Paris. The Beeb’s royal reporter, Nicholas Witchell, had just confirmed that she’d died, and that five French photographers who’d been chasing her had been arrested. My own feelings that day, though, weren’t so much for the Queen of Hearts, or the two young princes she left behind. Instead, I was preoccupied with a nagging guilt – having been part of a Fleet Street army that had hounded her round London that very summer. Or, as Prince Harry later put it, the ‘pack of dogs’

Ross Clark

Britain’s rivers are filthy

The name Chris Whitty will forever be associated in people’s minds with Covid-19. But in a recent cri de coeur he reminded us not only that he continues to exist following the end of his daily appearances on our TV screens, but that there are many other ways in which pathogens are out to get us. In a newspaper piece written with the chairs of Ofwat and the Environment Agency, the Chief Medical Officer raised the subject of Britain’s filthy rivers. While Britain’s environment has improved in many ways, with cleaner air, more trees and some species returning after centuries’ absence, our rivers have defied the trend, being more afflicted with sewage

Gareth Roberts

The shameful decline of BBC Radio 4

Radio 4 is in trouble. Listening figures for the station have dipped to their lowest level since 2007. The Today programme, Radio 4’s flagship morning show, is doing particularly badly: its audience fell 12 per cent year on year, from 6.5 million to 5.7 million, according to Rajar. For anyone who has tuned in to Radio 4 recently, this decline won’t come as a surprise. ‘I’ll just stick Radio 4 on’ was the default habit of my life when bored, from about the age of ten in 1978 to fifty in 2018. It felt like the still, reliable centre of the nation. It was also handy as a blood pressure reducing

How Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse gamble backfired

Less than two years ago, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg bet the house on the metaverse. Zuckerberg believed that his virtual reality world was the future. Now, with the rapid progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI), he appears to have made a calamitous mistake. The metaverse isn’t yet dead – but it’s future looks far from rosy. Having recently taken a trip to the metaverse, I can’t say I’m surprised that Zuckerberg’s pet project has failed to catch on. At Meta’s shiny new offices in London’s King’s Cross, large black headsets were strapped over our eyes. Before long, by the wonders of Meta’s technology, we were transported from our real meeting room

What’s the truth about Harry and Meghan’s car chase story?

Recollections may vary when it comes to Meghan and Harry’s car chase. The Sussexes’ statement this week supplied fodder for the front pages, and, more importantly, my group chats. ‘Near fatal is such a great phrase,’ one friend said, ‘anything can be near fatal if you squint hard enough.’ She’s referring to the press release put out by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on Wednesday, which claimed that they were ‘involved in a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi.’ ‘This relentless pursuit,’ they said, ‘lasting over two hours, resulted in multiple near collisions involving other drivers on the road, pedestrians and

Lara Prendergast

Migration nation: Brexit has meant more immigration than ever

45 min listen

This week: Spectator editor Fraser Nelson writes in this week’s cover story about how Brexit has led to Britain having more, not less, immigration – Rishi Sunak’s government is masking dysfunction in the welfare system by bringing in people to fill vacant jobs. To make his case, Fraser joins us alongside our economics editor Kate Andrews. (01:04) Also this week: Novelist Elif Shafak writes about the Turkish elections in the diary for this week’s magazine. Ultranationalism and religious fundamentalism were the real winners in last Sunday’s poll. To tell us all about it. Elif joins us alongside Spectator contributor Owen Matthews. (23:18) And finally: Is reality television ruining sport? The Spectator’s online editor Tom

Britain should get out of the electric vehicle business

A frantic round of last-minute lobbying is already underway. Officials are trying to stitch together a deal. And the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pushing hard to find a compromise that works for both sides. There are lots of negotiations over ‘rules of origin’ for electric vehicles that will allow Vauxhall to keep its plants open. But hold on. Although we should expect a deal to be done, as it usually is between the UK and the European Union, that should not obscure the bigger point. We are not going to be big players in EVs, and there is no point in trying to become one now.  We are not

Ross Clark

BT replacing jobs with AI is nothing to be scared of

BT has announced that it will cut up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade. The company currently employs 130,000 staff, and it could cut up to 42 per cent of its workforce. BT has struggled in recent years as the one-time nationalised giant has had to keep up with a rapidly-evolving communications business. The fact remains that no technology yet invented has prevented employment reaching new highs But the greatest comment will be caused by the 10,000 jobs that BT says it will replace with artificial intelligence. AI can indeed help perform some functions that were previously performed by humans, making staff redundant. In BT’s case, the

Brendan O’Neill

Does Harry and Meghan’s car chase story add up?

Anyone who has ever visited New York City will be scratching their heads over Harry and Meghan’s claims about a car chase. The Duke and Duchess of Montecito have said paparazzi subjected them to a ‘relentless pursuit’ and ‘near catastrophic’ chase that lasted for ‘two hours’. In NYC? Where you famously can’t drive so much as a couple of blocks without getting stuck in traffic or held up by lights?  I’ve caught cabs in Manhattan many times. It’s an infuriating experience. You stop constantly, sometimes on every block, to let armies of pedestrians cross the street. Very often it makes more sense to get out and walk – you’ll get to