Society

Wednesday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do we stop our friends springing a formal dinner party on us?

Q. We have some friends whom we have casual suppers with on a fairly regular basis, just the four of us. Recently they sent a text inviting us ‘for supper’ and we turned up on the appointed evening to walk into a room filled with 20 other guests and formal tables set up. Not only were we mentally unprepared for such an evening, we were also under-dressed. Although my husband ended up loving the party, he works a 12-hour day and would definitely have said no had he known the scale of it. Our host knows this and so I feel he slightly ambushed us. How can we stop this

Toby Young Toby Young

Big Brother is watching me

About six months ago I was contacted by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, and asked if I wanted to help with an investigation into the surveillance of critics of the government’s pandemic response by state agencies. Would I submit subject access requests to different Whitehall departments to see if I was among the critics of the government’s pandemic response who’d been monitored by the Counter Disinformation Unit, the Rapid Response Unit, the Intelligence and Communications Unit and the 77th Brigade? I thought it unlikely, but decided to play along and on Monday night Big Brother Watch published its report revealing that I was one of the dozens

Zoe Strimpel

It’s no surprise dog attacks are on the rise

Love of dogs is hardly new in Britain. There is a growing strand of research exploring the shared history we have with our canine pets. There is some lovely work on Victorian pet cemeteries and dog breeding, while an excellent little series by Kathleen Walker-Meikle includes the indispensable Dogs in Medieval Manuscripts, which chronicles the prominent if exotic space in the imagination held by our furry friends a millennium ago.   But if domestic animals had an obvious role in the private lives of our ancestors beyond being cute and fond furry friends – cats as mousers, dogs to scare baddies off, chase after sheep and keep other rogue animals in line – today

James Walton

Has Salman Rushdie become his own pastiche?

If there were ever a Spectator competition for the best pastiche of the opening words of a Salman Rushdie novel, a pretty good entry might be: ‘On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga.’ By coincidence, these are also the opening words of Victory City, a book Rushdie finished not long before last summer’s stabbing. And, as it turns out, that first sentence sets the scene for much of what follows – because the novel takes its place alongside the likes of John Updike’s Villages (about

Matthew Lynn

The UK is right to keep faith in crypto

It will be a charter for fraudsters. It will usher in an open-season mindset for money launderers and criminals. And it will drag down the reputation of the City. There will be plenty of critics of today’s government decision to push forward with a regulated cryptocurrency market in London. In the wake of the FTX scandal, one of the largest in corporate history, many would rather see it banned completely. But crypto is more resilient than that – and the UK, if moves quickly, it can carve out a lucrative space as its leading hub.  No one could accuse Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt of taking any risks with the

Peter Jones

What the Tories can learn from Cato the Elder

One MP pays a tax fine, one borrows money from a relation and one is accused of bullying staff. More ‘corruption and sleaze’? Romans might have seen it as a matter of basic values. In 443 bc, Rome established the prestigious office of censor, to be held by two men, usually ex-consuls. As well as maintaining an official list of Roman citizens and their property (the census), they were also responsible for the oversight of public morals (regimen morum). Anyone who fell below what the censors regarded as the high standards of a Roman citizen was removed from his tribe, was not allowed to vote and had a mark made

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

I know where the Met police are going wrong

I have a puzzle for the Metropolitan police – a mystery that only they can solve. Why, if the Met is so short-staffed, do they hang around in groups? Why do officers clump? Why are some crimes completely ignored, but at other minor incidents the Met appear en masse? In London side streets I come across police vans, bumper to bumper, full of officers just sitting, doing nothing, like large unhappy children on a school trip. It’s demoralising for me. I can’t imagine how depressing it must be for them. If you’re in the business of finding decent, non-rapey officers, it’s clearly a good idea to look them in the eye

Douglas Murray

America’s colour blindness

How many black cops does it take to commit a racist hate crime? The latest correct answer is ‘five’. That’s the number of policemen in Memphis who have been fired and charged with second-degree murder for the killing of Tyre Nichols. Last month Nichols, who was himself black, was pulled over by the officers. They proceeded to kick him, pepper-spray him, hit him and repeatedly baton him. He died in hospital three days later. Of course, if the Memphis officers had been white, American cities would be being burned and smashed to the ground again, as they were three years ago after the death of George Floyd. On that occasion

Matthew Parris and Nigel Biggar

The truth about the British Empire: Nigel Biggar and Matthew Parris in conversation

Nigel Biggar is a theologian, ethicist and author of Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. He speaks to The Spectator’s columnist Matthew Parris about the legacy of the British Empire. MATTHEW PARRIS: Nigel, you’ve been in the news recently over your view on colonialism, which is, I think, basically that British colonialism is not all bad. Is that right?   NIGEL BIGGAR: Yes, I’ve become a bit more assertive in my view, since I first got into trouble five years ago. I published an article in the Times saying that we British can find cause for pride and shame in our past. I thought, who on earth can disagree with that? I actually

The Spectator

Letters: In defence of Steve Baker (by Steve Baker)

It’s not cynicism Sir: I was amazed to have suffered the projection of so much cynicism in return for my plea that no one should suffer hate for their identity (‘The cynicism of Steve Baker’, Toby Young, 21 January).  The simple truth is that one of my staff is out as a trans man. Another is a proud gay man with a non-binary partner. I like and admire them, and I have heard what they put up with. I am glad to be their ally. My staff still suffer abuse because of their sexual and gender identities, and I wish for them to live their lives without that abuse. This

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Is corporate ‘purpose’ falling out of fashion?

Does a change of chief executive at Unilever, the British-based shampoo-to-Marmite multinational, signal the demise of the fashion for corporate ‘purpose’? Alan Jope, who steps down in July, drew scorn when he declared that every brand in his portfolio should ‘stand for something more important than just making your hair shiny… or your food tastier’. His reputation was also dented by the failure of a £50 billion bid for the consumer arm of the pharma giant GSK – but it was his preaching about sustainability and purpose while Unilever’s performance continued to flag that ultimately cheesed off his shareholders. Jope’s departure after four years in post is not as dramatic

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 4 February 2023

If time and money were no object, I’d be jetting off to Vienna in a couple of weeks, then flying to Biarritz, then spending a week in New Orleans, back in time to catch a flight to Warsaw… and that would only take me up to April. Most people probably aren’t aware how many international bridge tournaments take place throughout the year, all of them packed with serious competitors and famous names. In fact, the life of a top professional is one of non-stop travel – they barely spend a month at home before they have to fly off again. I wish I could get away more often, but, like

Melissa Kite

The war against semantics

‘My pronouns are xe and xem’ said the name badge on the supermarket checkout person’s uniform. And I thought, good for xem, because that wasn’t ruining grammar. How to explain that the transgender community are doing my head in because they are stealing words? (I don’t mind them inventing new ones.) I want to explore my anguish about this in a way that enables me to go on a journey of self-discovery, identifying the way I feel. However, I also desperately want not to offend the trans community, because if I do that I’m done for, because they are the most powerful people on the planet. When I say they,

Jeremy Clarke

The medicinal qualities of the perfect joint

Feeling lucky always, I assumed that chemotherapy would be the piece of cake that some had predicted for me. They said they knew people who were treated with chemotherapy for years and years and meanwhile managed to live a relatively normal life. But by only the fourth cycle of my second round of it, I realised that this wasn’t going to happen in my case. I felt so rotten that it seemed to me that death would have been easier to bear and was probably preferable. Of course I told myself to get a grip, to put on my metaphorical tin hat and sit it out. No doubt the feeling

Taki

My lunch with Fergie’s body double

Gstaad There is nothing much I can add to what Daniel Johnson and Charles Moore wrote about the great Paul Johnson, except that I shall miss his annual summer visits to Gstaad, where we walked for hours on mountain trails and I had the opportunity to take in some of his best bon mots. He knew everything and could tell a story like no one else. On the occasions when Lady Carla was with us – she is Italian and never draws a breath – Paul would not slow down for her to catch up but every five minutes or so he’d bellow ‘Is that so?’ and then bash on.

Om Malik

The era of endless prosperity in tech is over

‘I don’t think you want a management structure that’s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said at a company all-hands. He might not have been talking about his company, but you could apply his words to the entire technology ecosystem, which after nearly a decade of unprecedented boom is afflicted by the disease of wealth. It’s grown fat, rich and bloated. During the pandemic, the total headcount for Silicon Valley was on the way up. Yet the economic downturn, slowing growth, the end of cheap money and an increasingly bellicose investment community are making Silicon Valley now

Cristina Odone

Steven Spielberg and the truth about divorce

Steven Spielberg has suggested that The Fabelmans, his latest film, is a $40 million therapy project. The Fabelmans focuses on divorce and in doing so holds a mirror to the director’s own parents’ split. In its unblinking depiction of what has for so many become a rite of passage – almost one in two marriages end in divorce — the film makes for uncomfortable viewing. Spielberg refuses to indulge those parents who depict marital breakdown as just another milestone in a child’s life. He portrays it as a tragedy that casts a long shadow. ‘Everything in his career is marked by his parents’ divorce,’ one critic concluded. This is true of many of us who have experienced divorce. I was 13 when my parents divorced. Their lawyers marvelled at how

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Will the strikes prove terminal for Britain’s railways?

Today is being dubbed ‘Walkout Wednesday’: thousands of schools are shut as teachers go on strike – and civil servants and lecturers are also on the picket line. Railway staff continue their strike today too and there is little sign of the strike deadlock being broken. We’re losing more working days to industrial action than at any point since the 1980s. A large chunk of industrial action is made up by rail strikes, and the government fears ‘a generation’ of passengers will be put off train travel for good. Might the strikes prove terminal for Britain’s railways? The RMT, which is responsible for the latest walkout, is at the forefront

Tuesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Three years on, is Brexit worth celebrating?

Today, if you feel so inclined to celebrate it, is Brexit Day: the date on which, three years ago, Britain formally left the EU – although the transitional arrangements kept us effectively within the bloc for a further 11 months. But does anyone feel like celebrating? Only really in the Lincolnshire Wash, going by an opinion poll commissioned by the website unHerd. That is the only part of the country, it seems, where most residents still think that Britain was right to bid adieu to its European neighbours. Nationally, 45 per cent of people think Brexit is going worse than expected, according to polling by Ipsos Mori. This figure is a rise