Society

Monday

David Shipley

Why are violent prisoners continuing to offend in jail?

Even for our broken prison service it’s been a terrible few days. On Saturday the jihadi terrorist Hashem Abedi used boiling oil and ‘homemade weapons’ in an assault at HMP Frankland which hospitalised three prison officers, the Prison Officers’ Association has said. Given the severity of the injuries, with one man suffering a severed artery in his neck and the other being stabbed at least five times in the chest, it’s only thanks to luck that no staff were killed. Then, this morning, it emerged that John Mansfield, a convicted murderer serving his sentence at HMP Whitemoor, was killed by another inmate on Sunday. While few will shed tears for

Jawad Iqbal

Blue Origin’s all-female space flight was a step backwards for feminism

Ray Bradbury, the great science fiction author, had this to say about space exploration: ‘Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.’ I’d hazard a guess that Bradbury might want to think again if he’d lived to witness what must surely go down in history – if at all – as the most self-indulgent and pointless trip into space. Ever. Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-31 mission has attracted huge attention because it featured an all-female crew, including Lauren Sanchez (the soon-to-be wife of Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos). The others on board were pop star Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, film-maker Kerianne Flynn,

Eliot Wilson

Why is the army fixing Birmingham’s bin crisis?

‘Join the Army and see the world’ used to be the War Office’s boast. In those inter-war years it meant Egypt, Malta, Jamaica and Hong Kong, but for a lucky few recipients of the King’s shilling their next deployment will be to organise rubbish collections in Birmingham. The government has announced that a ‘small number of office-based military personnel with operational planning expertise’ will assist Birmingham City Council in dealing with the effects of a month-long strike by refuse workers. At the end of March the council declared a major incident, with up to 20,000 tonnes of rubbish lying in the city’s streets and reports of rats the size of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Good riddance to Cambridge’s May balls

I’m not usually one to hold back from damning the woke and progressive forces which lie within my alma mater, the University of Cambridge. An initiative by the geography department to decolonise the study of icebergs in the Canadian north was the final straw. But there is one conservative cause that I won’t be putting my name to: saving the May Ball. Several colleges are reported to have cancelled their balls this year in reaction to poor ticket sales and students complaining that the events are ‘extortionate, overpriced and exclusive’. Trinity college, one of the few whose balls survive, is charging £280 for a ticket. At Cambridge’s lower-rent end, Robinson

Patrick Kidd

How Rory McIlroy banished his Masters demons

Eighteen years ago, half his lifetime away, Rory McIlroy made his debut as a professional golfer at the British Masters at The Belfry, Sutton Coldfield. The Northern Irish teenager began with a respectable round of 69 and finished 42nd to earn a shade over £10,000. He said he would spend his first pay cheque on taking his then girlfriend to the cinema and put the rest towards buying a house near his mum, ‘so she can still do my washing’. Late last night, McIlroy won £3.2 million at another Masters, the American major in Augusta, Georgia, taking his career winnings to about £120 million. But the money was the least

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How the kebab mafia took over the French high street

Last week, the police in Britain launched a three-week operation codenamed ‘Machinize’. It began with nearly 300 raids on nail salons, vape shops and barbershops, which in recent years have become a common sight on British high streets Thirty-five arrests were made and 97 people suspected of being victims of modern slavery were placed under police protection. More than £1 million was frozen, money the police believe is ‘dirty’, generated by Albanian and Kurdish gangs that control much of Britan’s organised crime such as drugs and prostitution. They also are heavily involved in the people smuggling business, a fact noted in 2022 by Dan O’Mahoney, then the Clandestine Channel Threat

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Schools should butt out of parent WhatsApp groups

As if schools didn’t already have their work cut out for them controlling the behaviour of their students, they’re now trying to discipline parents too. The head of Mishcon de Reya’s education department says his firm is being asked by headteachers in both the private and state sectors to help draw up codes of conduct for parents’ WhatsApp groups. As he says, ‘Schools are very concerned about the impact on staff, and being held liable, for what’s been said in class WhatsApp groups.’ Operative phrase there: being held liable. Demanding parents subscribe to a ‘code of conduct’ is, apparently, the best way to make sure you’re not held responsible for

Fabian Carstairs

Why I don’t worry about bad hygiene at Michelin restaurants

There would have been some long and pale faces recently at the excellent Sportsman pub in Seasalter after Canterbury City Council gave it a damning two-star hygiene rating. This much-loved Michelin star pub recently wowed some friends of mine with skate wings and caviar-rimmed oysters. It’s hard to square their delicious meal with the descriptions of mouldy surfaces in the refrigerators, stained food storage containers, and chefs wearing leather bracelets while cooking.  I’ve never visited the restaurant myself, but it’s still firmly on my bucket list. Probably even more so now that it’ll likely be easier to get a booking. I spent most of my twenties cooking in restaurants like

Ian O’Doherty

Why does Ireland want hairdressers to lecture you about climate change?

In their seemingly relentless drive to spend other people’s money on initiatives they don’t want and didn’t ask for, the latest genius project from the Irish government is all about climate change. Of course it is. This is a government, after all, which has been accused of wanting to cull Ireland’s cows in an effort to reduce emissions. But even by the rather eccentric standards of Official Ireland’s incessant attempts to socially engineer the population, the ‘A Brush With Climate’ scheme is truly a classic of its kind. The project is funded by the Department of Education, supported by the Research Ireland Discover Programme and overseen by University College Cork’s

Sunday

Tom Bower

Labour is destroying London’s nightlife

As a teenager back in the early 1960s, on Friday afternoon I would head down to Soho after school with friends. Our sanctuary was Les Enfants Terrible in Dean Street, a heaving bar and dark basement dance floor. With luck, we found girls who came along later that evening to any of the dozen other Soho music clubs, not least Le Kilt or the 100 Club in Wardour Street. That was the beginning of the unforgettable Swinging Sixties. Fifty years later, Soho’s wonderful nightlife has been destroyed by Westminster Council, the Mayor of London and the Labour government. Welcome to the Twilight Twenties. Proof of Labour’s deliberate destruction of London’s

Sean Thomas

What’s wrong with eating horse?

There’s not much to do in Almaty, Kazakhstan. You can take a peek at the pretty wooden Orthodox cathedral, which is possibly the world’s third tallest wooden building, and erected without nails around 1904. You could visit the site of Leon Trotsky’s house, where he lived in internal Soviet exile from 1928 to 1929. However the house itself has vanished, replaced by the Luckee Yu Chinese restaurant, a chic European ‘cheeseria’, and the Caspian University branch of Starbucks. On the other hand, Almaty is a genuinely agreeable, hedonistic young city. The Tien Shan mountains loom right behind, like a row of Ku Klux Klansmen sprinkled with party glitter: a spectacular

Saturday

Patrick West

Have we got worse at dealing with stress?

Barely a month seems to pass without a public exhortation to ‘raise awareness’ about the plight of some marginal section of society, or for some worthy cause on behalf of the vulnerable. If you find this trend tiresome, irritating or indeed stressful, then help is at hand: April has seen the arrival of Stress Awareness Month. Bearing in mind that we are said to be undergoing a mental health crisis, with one in five 16-25 year-olds now citing poor mental health as a reason for not seeking work, the timing couldn’t be better. As a nation, we clearly aren’t coping, so some reflection and introspection is surely in order. Stress

Friday

Alexander Horne

Will Hamas’s human rights challenge succeed?

Yesterday, it was reported by the Daily Telegraph that British lawyers, acting on behalf of Hamas, were threatening to bring a legal challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to end the group’s proscription under terrorism legislation. They claim that the ban on supporting or assisting Hamas breaches human rights to freedom of speech, as well as the right of Hamas supporters to protest. At first glance this seems remarkable. The military wing of Hamas was proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000 in March 2001. The entire movement was subsequently banned by then Home Secretary, Priti Patel, in 2021. The Home Office states that Hamas is a militant

Petroc Trelawny

Petroc Trelawny, Gareth Roberts, Tom Lee, Leyla Sanai and Iram Ramzan

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Petroc Trelawny reads his diary for the week (1:14); Gareth Roberts wants us to make book jackets nasty again (6:22); Tom Lee writes in defence of benzodiazepines (13:44); Leyla Sanai reflects on unethical practices within psychiatry, as she reviews Jon Stock’s The Sleep Room (19:41); and, Iram Ramzan provides her notes on cousin marriages (24:30).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Robin Ashenden

How Turin made Primo Levi

My first night in Turin, I thought of all the things I could be doing in this north Italian city, if I was there strictly for tourism. I could have gone to the Cathedral and seen a digital display of the Turin Shroud (the real thing is hidden away from prying eyes), or visited the National Museum of Cinema, housed at the Mole Antonelliana, that magnificent, spired tower – a failed synagogue – in the city centre. I could have drunk Barolo wine or Vermouth (another Turinese product), striking up conversations with the local Piedmontese to find out if they really are as cold, correct and altogether un-Italian as other

Thursday

Chas Newkey-Burden

Is Britain really a nation of dog lovers?

Britain prides itself on being a nation of dog lovers – but is this true? Animal rights campaigners have targeted a leading dog show, accusing the event of promoting ‘deformed’ breeds such as pugs and bulldogs. Peta wants the Scottish Kennel Club to disqualify brachycephalic dogs, which have shortened noses and flat faces. These dogs ‘can barely breathe — let alone go for a walk or chase a ball — without gasping for air due to their shortened airways,’ said the group. This isn’t the first time campaigners have targeted dog shows: last month, Peta supporters were removed from Crufts in Birmingham after they complained that it’s cruel to breed

Nigel Jones

The BBC is right to restore this paedophile’s sculpture

The BBC is once again at the centre of criticism – this time for spending more than £500,000 in restoring the vandalised sculpture of Ariel and Prospero from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, that adorns the entrance to its London headquarters Broadcasting House. The statue was sculpted in 1931 by Eric Gill, rightly described today by both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian as ‘a paedophile’ who not only sexually abused his two daughters and his sister – but had illicit relations with the family dog as well. But along with his sexual deviance, Gill was arguably the greatest British sculptor of the 20th century, whose name lives on in the Gill Sans

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Lily Phillips isn’t an authority on sex

I wasn’t intending to write about Lily Phillips again. Her story would ideally be ignored. But if it does appear in the media, we must be vigilant about how it is represented, especially if the BBC is doing the representing. On some issues, neutrality is a bogus aspiration. It means allowing a very dubious narrative to stand, because contesting it would be awkward. I am talking about Newsnight’s interview with Phillips this week, and the studio debate that followed it. Victoria Derbyshire, whom I generally rate highly, failed to challenge Lily Phillips in any serious way. Instead she allowed her to present herself as an authority on sex. She asked

The Spectator

Letters: The case for ‘raves in the nave’

Reality check Sir: While I share Mr Gove’s diagnosis of lodestar-less Starmerism (‘Cruel Labour’, 5 April), I cannot share the accompanying pearl-clutching. For decades, politicians and voters have engaged in a mutually reinforcing entitlement spiral that took it as given that the civil service and welfare bill could expand ad infinitum, that working for a living was optional, and that our geopolitical enemies didn’t really mean what they said. This fantastical worldview was predicated on an equally fantastical delusion that cheap energy, low inflation and low interest rates were locked in rather than temporary historical blips. You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. Lee

Douglas Murray

The secret to great friendships

A few years back, a friend from Newcastle was down in London and I was giving him a tour of the town. At various points I stopped and pointed out where various friends had lived. ‘That’s where my late friend X used to live.’ ‘That’s where my much-missed friend Y had his shop.’ Eventually my delightfully straight-talking friend stopped me and said: ‘Are any of your friends fucking alive?’ I’m happy to report that the answer was ‘yes’, but it did make me think about something I’ve unwittingly done all my life – which is to have a disproportionate number of friends who are much older than me. One of