Society

Wednesday

Taki

The wisdom of Rod Liddle

New York At a chic dinner party for some very beautiful women, your correspondent shocked the attendees by quoting an even greater writer than the greatest Greek writer since Homer – Rod Liddle – and his definition of why royalty matters: because it is ‘anachronistic and undemocratic’. Hear, Hear! A particularly attractive guest, Alissa – on a par with Lily James – took me aside and asked me if I really believed what the greatest writer ever, Rod Liddle, had written and I had just quoted. She also asked whom I had in mind as the greatest Greek writer since Homer, and I answered: ‘Moi.’ I then sat down and

John Armstrong

What the Royal Society of Chemistry gets wrong about free speech

Why has the Royal Society of Chemistry published a 37 page opinion piece entitled ‘Academic free speech or right-wing grievance?’ in their new journal Digital Discovery? Digital Discovery publishes ‘theoretical and experimental research at the intersection of chemistry, materials science and biotechnology’ focusing on ‘the development and application of machine learning’. So it is a little surprising for them to publish a piece that ‘argues that those who wish to have an honest debate about the limits around freedom of speech need to engage that conversation in a manner that avoids resonance with the language of White (heterosexual, cisgender male) supremacy, lest their arguments provide intellectual cover to those who

Tuesday

Robin Ashenden

Should we ignore Putin’s criticism of the West?

Not much happens in Russian families without the say so of the babushka. Russia’s high divorce-rate, and a situation where fathers are often absent and the mother out at work, makes it normal for grandmothers – who often hold the family purse-strings – to raise children themselves. This doesn’t, of course, mean that the younger and older generation see eye to eye: babushka tends not to use the internet or understand modern technology, and might hold conservative opinions radically different from the grandchild’s. Yet there is often a spirit, in the political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann’s words, of ‘hopeless obedience’ to her. Something similar is at play in the way many

Monday

Sean Thomas

Writers will lose to AI

It’s a cliché of publishing that men over the age of 40 only read military history. In my case it’s not entirely true: I still occasionally squeeze in the odd novel, some politics, even poetry if I’ve drunk too much sweet wine. But it’s true enough that my mind is probably over-furnished with historical-military examples, metaphors, and allusions. And for the last week I’ve been trying to find the correct analogy, from the annals of war, to characterise the battle recently joined by the Writers Guild of America. For anyone that has missed this particular strike, amidst our own melancholy roster of industrial actions, here’s the skinny: as of 2 May 2023 all the screenwriters of the USA, from east coast to west, from gag-smiths to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Academic publishing is lazy and unethical

Last week witnessed the first tremors of what could be a welcome revolution: the resignation en masse of the 40-strong editorial board of NeuroImage magazine – regarded as the leading publication for brain-imaging research in the world. The board, whose members include very senior figures in the world of brain science, is protesting what it sees as the publisher Elsevier’s greedy and unethical behaviour.   Objecting to this grotesque situation shouldn’t be an ideological issue. There’s something here to hate for everybody They were reacting to the company’s refusal to reduce the journal’s ‘publication fees’ – that is, the fees scientists must pay to publish their findings on an open-access, free-to-read basis. At issue isn’t, quite, the existence of such fees – if

Patrick West

Let’s stop pretending the culture wars aren’t real

Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real, pressing bread-and-butter concerns of today. As Matthew Syed put it in the Sunday Times yesterday: ‘The culture wars…may be seen not as genuine debates but as a form of Freudian displacement. The woke and anti-woke need each other to engage in piffling spats as a diversion from realities they both find too psychologically threatening to confront.’ We are familiar with this line of thinking, both from left and right. The culture wars about race and gender are irrelevant and ‘piffling’, so some say. It’s all fuss and nonsense. Many on

Sunday

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Britain is stuck in a fertility trap

Pope Francis wants you to have sex. Or at least he wants Italians to have more sex. The country, he says, is facing a ‘Titanic struggle’ against demographic doom. Last year, the population dropped by 179,000 people – and Italy is projected to lose another five million by 2050.  What’s happening in Italy is, to a greater or lesser extent, being repeated across the western world. In the UK in 2020, there were four workers per retiree. By 2041, the ONS projects there will be just three. We’re getting older, there are fewer of us and, all other things being equal, we’ll poorer for it. Either we tax the declining population more to

David Martin-Jones

How a small Welsh village became embroiled in a slave trade controversy

You’ve probably never heard of Abergynolwyn, which sits in the Dysynni valley in Merioneth in Wales. The village, established in the nineteenth century to house workers at the nearby Bryn Eglwys slate quarry, is home to just 400 people. But now Abergynolwyn has found its name besmirched by tenuous links to the slave trade. Abergynolwyn falls within the jurisdiction of Gwynedd council, which manages ‘the slate landscape’ on behalf of Unesco. In April, the council announced that this tiny village must publicly acknowledge its relationship to the slave trade. As part of what Gwynedd council, led by Dyfrig Siencyn (Plaid Cymru), sees as its broader plan to expose the slate landscape’s links to slavery, a

Saturday

Debbie Hayton

The UN is wrong about Britain’s treatment of trans people

Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’ But his statement was stronger on rhetoric than evidence. An unnamed ‘elected officer’ in Belfast told him that ‘I have never seen so much unadulterated hatred as currently directed toward the trans community’. He also claimed in his report, which is to be presented to the

Andrew Tettenborn

British universities are beyond redemption

There’s no doubt that the government has the best of intentions when it comes to clearing up the Augean stables of UK higher education: witness its setting up of the Office for Students to protect students’ interests against ever-more monolithic university management, and more recently this year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act aimed at safeguarding the interests of both students and staff. However, all this leaves a much more awkward issue: what are we actually promoting? True, it’s the done thing for middle-class 18-year-olds to be sent away to university. True too that you still need a degree to obtain certain kinds of well-paid jobs. But these aside, why

Sergey Radchenko

Putin’s acolytes can smell blood

Yevgeny Prigozhin, standing in the darkness next to a row of bloodied dead bodies, was shouting obscenities. With his yellowish, unnaturally hairless face contorted in primordial hatred, there was something about his appearance that seemed decidedly horrific. Prigozhin may well be positioning himself for Putin’s likely downfall and the eventual (and probably very nasty) succession struggle The look goes with his reputation. The head of the notorious Wagner (which cut its teeth as a mercenary force in Africa and the Middle East), Prigozhin is known for his untamed brutality and deep cynicism, and for his ability and willingness to get his hands dirty, or bloody. Perhaps that was why he

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The SNP’s Brexit strategy is bound to backfire – again

The SNP has announced that if the next general election results in a hung parliament it will, as power brokers, ‘undo Brexit as far as possible’. Alyn Smyth, the SNP’s EU accession spokesperson, said his party would demand the UK has a close relationship with Brussels in any negotiations with a minority Labour government. There might be a few titters at this and jokes about signing cheques that can’t be cashed from a scandal-beset party whose relevance and even long-term viability is in serious doubt. But the SNP clearly think this is a winning strategy that can arrest their decline and boost their chances. Whether it truly is, and whether

Leon Mangasarian

Why trophy hunting could be key to saving Africa’s wildlife

The lion or elephant in the photo should be stone-cold dead. The hunter posing with it should be ugly, fat and preferably American. Cue to social media outrage from celebrities, journalists and online nobodies. Few things generate more furious likes and retweets than old, white men killing African mega-fauna. Yet, as Barack Obama once said: ‘This idea of purity and you’re never compromised … you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.’ In order to survive outside the parks, wildlife needs to have a value for rural Africans As counter-intuitive as it sounds, African trophy hunting is

Friday

David Shipley

How prisons teach inmates that crime pays

John Major is wrong when he suggests only violent offenders should be automatically locked up – and as a non-violent ex-offender I should know. But focusing on the number of prisoners in Britain is a distraction from the real issue: reoffending. British prisons churn out prisoners who simply go on to commit more crime. Given what goes on behind bars, it’s little surprise. A functioning, effective prison system should teach inmates to respect rules and behave in a proper manner so that they are more likely to be productive and law-abiding members of society on release. Many prisoners, however, learn a different lesson in jail: that breaking rules pays off.

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry’s phone hacking muddle

Prince Harry is no stranger to demanding that everyone, everywhere should mind their own business and give him privacy – unless they’re reading his autobiography or watching his Netflix show, that is. However, if the Duke of Sussex’s latest awkward run in at the High Court is anything to go by, he might have to work on getting his message straight.  Harry is embroiled in a trial after taking the Daily Mirror to court over allegations the newspaper breached his privacy by hacking his phone. One of the stories the Duke alleges was obtained in this way was a short article the paper ran in 2002, where they reported he had received golf

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Train companies are finally getting their comeuppance

As they call yet more strikes today and tomorrow, rail unions are the leading candidates for the most miserable and destructive institutions in contemporary Britain. Train operating companies, though, are not far behind. Having ripped us off for years by ruthlessly exploiting the local monopolies gifted to them through the franchise system they can’t even run their trains on time on non-strike days. First Group, which was finally relieved of its Transpennine franchise this week, managed to run just 46.5 per cent of its services on time during the last three months of 2022. Avanti West Coast, which for the moment retains its franchise – though God knows why – managed

Steerpike Steerpike

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby hit with speeding fine

Justin Welby is a busy man: the Archbishop of Canterbury took centre stage at the King’s coronation on Saturday. Then, on Wednesday, he was holding forth in the Lords on Suella Braverman’s boats bill. But does Welby’s busy diary mean he sometimes forgets to slow down? Mr Steerpike only asks because the Archbishop is back in the headlines: this time for being caught speeding. Welby was slapped with three points on his licence and ordered to pay £510 for driving in his VW Golf at 25mph in a 20mph zone. The incident took place last October on London’s Albert Embankment. Welby admitted being behind the wheel after he was contacted

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Shrinking GDP shows how stagnant the economy has become

The UK economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in March, as ongoing strike action continued to take its toll. But the fall wasn’t enough to push the UK into recession territory, as the Office for National Statistics announced this morning that the economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the first three months of the year. This was thanks to stronger-than-expected growth in January (which was then followed by zero growth in February). Do today’s updates paint an optimistic or pessimistic picture for the UK economy? While the risk of entering formal recession has been dodged once again, today’s news highlights just how stagnant the UK economy has become. We are years on from

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are the Tories so afraid to tackle housing reform?

If there ever were a couple of policies the government desperately needs to give it a chance of being re-elected next year it is rental reform and leasehold. Both in their own way would make life a good deal less miserable for the younger voters who have drifted away from the party in recent years.  How depressing then that Rishi Sunak seems to have gone cold on them. It nastily exposes the Conservatives’ Achilles’ heel: its tendency to drop good and popular proposals in the face of staunch lobbying by those with vested interested. By failing to fulfil its promise to abolish leasehold, the government is showing itself to be

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Adjoa Andoh and the racialisation of society

Here’s an interesting exercise. Next time you read a diatribe about white people, in your mind change the word ‘white’ to ‘black’. You’ll be horrified by the results, I guarantee it. All those op-eds in the liberal media attacking ‘white women’ for ‘weaponising’ their tears are transformed into flagrantly racist screeds. So a Guardian headline from 2018 would become: ‘How black women use strategic tears to silence other women.’ Imagine if a newspaper actually published something like that? Are sweeping racial generalisations okay when talking about white people? Why? Robin DiAngelo’s life work would become the interrogation of ‘black fragility’. ‘All black people have absorbed hateful ideology’, the alternative-universe Ms