Society

Monday

Sasha Lensky

How Russia is weathering the storm of Western sanctions

After war broke out in Ukraine a year ago, amidst a slew of shop closures, sanctioned products and predictions about the ruble falling to rock bottom, there was a wave of panic buying in Russia. Many expected supply chains to fully collapse by the end of 2022 as internal stocks of this and that ran out. Meanwhile pro-war Russians, or at least economic optimists, repeated the mantra that the world needed Russian oil and gas, and that Western companies could barely do without the vast Russian marketplace to sell their products in. Everything, they said, would return to normal. As of February 2023, we’re caught somewhere halfway between these two

Julie Bindel

How did the Tavistock gender scandal unfold?

Another week, another blast of evidence as to why putting kids on hormone blockers is an abomination. Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by BBC journalist Hannah Barnes, which is released on 16 February, is dynamite. The revelations it contains are horrifying: former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, detail how some children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having mental health or family issues. More than a third of young people referred to the service had moderate to severe autistic traits, compared with

Robert Dingwall

Do face masks work?

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, international agencies, national governments, and local public health departments claimed that their policies followed ‘the science’. The imposition of face masks in public areas was a prominent example.  ‘Hands, face, space,’ we were told; the belief was that wearing a mask would prevent the transmission of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Critics who called into question the evidence for that claim were accused of peddling ‘misinformation’. Yet the latest review of mask wearing studies suggests they were right – and that masks made little to no difference in curtailing the spread of Covid. When the virus first arrived in the UK in 2020, the official view, based on the science of the

Sunday

Rakib Ehsan

The Knowsley disruption shows the UK’s incompetence on asylum

This week’s public disorder outside a hotel accommodating asylum seekers in the town of Knowsley in Merseyside was in some ways inevitable. A total of 45,756 people entered the UK on small boats via the English Channel last year – which, according to the 2021 Census, is a number larger than the entire population of English towns such as Dover in Kent, Boston in Lincolnshire and Kirkby in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley. Britain’s asylum regime should be prioritising the world’s most persecuted peoples, especially women and girls at major risk of sex-based violence in their conflict-ridden homelands. Instead, it has been reduced to a survival-of-the-fittest system which has been

Melanie Phillips

The Westminster Holocaust memorial ignores Jewish suffering

It’s groundhog day all over again for the long-planned Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Westminster’s Victoria Tower Gardens. This huge, Brutalist construction would destroy a quiet green oasis valued by local residents. Last July, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that the structure was prohibited by a 1900 Act of Parliament, passed to protect the park from such developments. Yet now the government – which previously overrode Westminster council’s objections – has declared it will legislate to cancel out that 1900 law. It will thus ride roughshod over a historic legal protection for the local community. Is this really a desirable context for a project supposedly devoted to

Nigel Jones

Ukraine shouldn’t cancel Russian culture

It is entirely understandable that the barbaric attack on Ukraine launched a year ago by Vladimir Putin has sparked enraged reactions among Ukrainians as they endure Russian missile strikes and await Putin’s much anticipated spring offensive. Attacking the culture of an enemy nation has a long and ignoble history, and it rarely ends well But in spurning and destroying Russia’s incomparable musical and literary culture the long-suffering Ukrainians are hitting out at the wrong enemy. The Times reports that Kyiv Opera House is deleting the music of the Russian composers Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev from a ballet, The Snow Queen, that is currently in rehearsal. The work’s director Serhii Skuz calls

Brian Latham

How African gold pays for Russia’s war in Ukraine

African wars are paying for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at least indirectly. When Vladimir Putin was running low on manpower and money in October last year, he turned to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group for more of both. Wagner have had troops in the Donbas region as far back as 2014, though in limited numbers. Now the Wagner group is providing thousands of troops throughout occupied Ukraine and funding the Russian army with its spoils from Africa. That though is creating a cashflow crisis for Prigozhin whose income is primarily from African gold and diamonds.   Wagner’s problem, and thus Putin’s, is that a conventional land war in Ukraine costs more

Edward Howell

Is Kim Jong Un’s daughter being lined up to lead?

The photograph shows a happy family. After a 35-day public absence, the corpulent Kim Jong Un has been pictured this week with his wife Ri Sol Ju, and sitting between them their daughter, Kim Ju Ae, as they dine in the presence of North Korean military officers weighed down with medals.  Is Kim Jong Un’s daughter being lined up to take over North Korea? The photograph has only heightened speculation that the stage is now being set for her to be leader, as the fourth generation of Kim to rule the country. This week North Korean state media gave Kim Ju Ae the honorific of ‘respected’ when writing about the event, an adjective

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

We are living through a golden age of misogyny

I hope I’ll be forgiven for not dropping my dog-eared copy of The Female Eunuch in sheer molten awe upon reading in the Times that ‘Courses for teachers on how to tackle Andrew Tate’s views are selling out as schools try to persuade teenage boys to shun so-called toxic masculinity.’ One teacher said, ‘Andrew Tate is just a personification of this rampant masculinity that’s existed in schools and been tolerated for years – boys harass and abuse peers and teachers and male teachers haven’t done enough to combat this. Schools have racism and homophobia policies but hardly any have sexism policies; it’s become naturalised.’   Better late than never, but it’s no good schoolteachers getting their

Gabriel Gavin Gabriel Gavin

Turkey’s earthquake and the growing anger towards Erdogan

Istanbul, Turkey It’s Monday morning and Sam is late to work. The cafe he owns in a quiet residential area of Istanbul is already busy with émigré Russian IT workers tapping away at their laptops and small groups of locals scrolling through the news on their phones in silence. ‘This earthquake,’ he says, walking around the counter and burying his face in his hands. ‘My best friend from back home is trapped under the rubble.’ Sam is from a city near Gaziantep in the south of the country where, just hours earlier, a colossal 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck, destroying around 6,000 buildings across ten separate regions and leaving tens of

Saturday

Kara Kennedy

We need to talk about Madonna’s face

You’ll forgive Madonna for taking a few days to respond to the concern over her latest facelift. After all, the singer was transmitting the message all the way from Mars with the rest of the shiny-faced extra-terrestrials. While presenting the best pop duo award to Sam Smith and Kim Petras for their hit ‘Unholy’, Madonna took to the Grammys stage in what can only be described as Jigsaw cosplay, with alarmingly puffy, stretched-out skin that looked as if it could fling off at any moment. When people online showed concern and sadness for what is clearly the 64-year-old’s desperate attempt to cling to her youth, she claimed that she was

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Napoleon III’s remains will not be returned to France

Do not take too seriously the demand of Roger Karoutchi, a Républicain who rejoices in the title of deputy speaker of the French Senate, that the mortal remains of Napoleon III, the last Emperor of France, be repatriated from Farnborough, in Hampshire, where they have lain in an immense sarcophagus since 1879, to Metropolitan France itself. ‘He is the only reigning sovereign who is buried abroad,’ Karoutchi complains. This business of moving Napoleon comes up from time to time, but there is no chance of it happening. The body, which is guarded by fierce Benedictine monks who have never forgotten or forgiven the murder of the Carmelite nuns beheaded by French

Ed West Ed West

Where is the moral outrage about Britain’s grooming gangs?

Tabloid journalism begins with W.T. Stead, who as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1880s brought news and scandal to the newly literate masses, transforming public culture and politics with it. The son of a Congregationalist preacher, Stead grew up in a strict religious household in Northumberland, in a home where theatre was ‘the Devil’s chapel’ and novels ‘the Devil’s Bible’. Taught to read by his father, the newsman’s nonconformism would inform his campaigns after he moved from the Northern Echo to the Gazette in London. The case of Rotherham remains the most shocking, not just for the scale of the abuse but the institutional response Stead was most of all famous for the

Daniel Thorpe

Thousands may still be trapped under the rubble in Turkey

Five days after Monday’s massive earthquakes, the combined death toll in Turkey and Syria has passed 20,000. Local aid workers say around one-third of the casualties are in the Hatay province. The regional capital, Antakya, built on the ancient city of Antioch, is a popular tourist destination famous for its cuisine and cosmopolitan multi-ethnic atmosphere. Many of the mosques, churches, and synagogues in the city’s picturesque old town were also destroyed. On the third morning after the earthquake, a thick layer of smoke settled in the valley where Antakya lies – a residue from the fires the survivors built to keep warm during the freezing night. On the fourth day, many

Robert Tombs

Did the Suffragettes really win women the vote?

I suppose most people regard the Suffragettes as the exemplary vindication of the right to carry out illegal direct action in a righteous cause. Speaking in support of Extinction Rebellion, Helen Pankhurst, a descendant of the Suffragette leader, said that both movements were equally ‘socially marginalised, made fun of, considered to be extremists, and legally silenced, and yet they stand up for justice in the way the Suffragettes did.’ Rather than pushing on a slowly opening door, they preferred to throw a brick through the window The Suffragette campaign was the first deliberately violent English political campaign since the 1840s, and this is part of its myth. Thankfully no one

Ian Williams Ian Williams

The vast scale of Beijing’s high-tech balloon programme

There will no doubt be some tense moments in the boardrooms of western technology companies over the coming days after the revelation that the Chinese spy balloon shot down after traversing the United States had western-made components with English-language writing on them. The finding was reportedly contained in intelligence briefings to US lawmakers and will almost certainly lead to still greater scrutiny of the sale to China of advanced ‘dual-use’ technology. China’s continuing claims that the balloon was an innocent weather balloon blown off-course are looking increasingly absurd Investigators are continuing their efforts to recover the wreckage of the balloon and its payload of surveillance kit from shallow waters off

Friday

Charles Lister

Who cares about Syria’s earthquake victims?

At 4 a.m. on Monday, when the earthquake hit, most of the 4.5 million people living in northwestern Syria were asleep. Thousands of buildings collapsed, burying their residents alive. The majority of those living in this small corner of Syria had already been displaced from their homes in other parts of the country by the civil war. The northwest is the final stronghold of Syria’s opposition and is the main target of president Bashar al-Assad’s grim campaign to retake full control of the country. Before the earthquake, some two thirds of the area’s basic infrastructure ­– public housing, water and sanitation, hospitals and medical clinics, roadways and power generation –

Damian O'Brien

The terror of Turkey’s earthquake: a survivor’s account

Before Monday’s earthquake, the old town of Antakya, known historically as Antioch, had been a wonderfully preserved labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets on a gentle hill rising from the river. Beautiful houses with peaceful courtyards had been turned into restaurants and hotels, where people sipped tea and smoked under the shade of trees. I had spent a couple of days in Idleb, northwest Syria, where I oversee operations as the country director for the HALO Trust, the landmine clearance organisation, and had decided to spend the weekend in Antakya before leaving for Gaziantep on the Turkish/Syrian border. That whimsical decision to stay in Antakya, and the choice to get up in the middle of the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Britain ever learn the lessons from the Prevent debacle?

The reaction in some quarters to William Shawcross’s review of Prevent, the UK’s counter-extremism programme, has been predictable. The Muslim Council of Britain, Amnesty International, the Guardian and Cage have all criticised the report and the author, with Amnesty launching a particularly unpleasant ad hominem attack on Shawcross, describing him as ‘bigoted’.  None of the above consider that Shawcross was the right man to lead the report because of a remark he made a decade ago stating that Europe’s relationship with Islam ‘is among the greatest, most terrifying problems of our time’.  Shawcross was speaking after the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 and 2005 that claimed 245 lives, and

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Suella Braverman rows back on the ‘stop the Channel boats’ pledge

The whole point about making five key pledges, as Rishi Sunak did at the start of the year, is to give the average voter a consistent message. The idea is that such pledges, which should have been judiciously drawn-up based upon extensive opinion research, are hammered home again and again until the typical person far away from the Westminster Village has digested them. What is Sunak’s administration for? Surely everyone knows that: to halve inflation this year, grow the economy, make sure our national debt is falling, cut NHS waiting and stop the boats. Braverman declined to confirm that the PM’s pledge means the boats will be stopped in their