Society

Wednesday

Jeremy Clarke

The joy of French hospital food

I woke up in the wake-up room (salle de réveil). The clock on the wall said half past ten. I’d been out for a couple of hours. What lifted me to the surface was the sound of the wake-up team persuading someone to wake up who was absolutely refusing to do so. The entreaties increased in volume and urgency. Then I heard a male voice say, in English: ‘Wake up please, Mr Clarke.’ I nodded my sleepy head to show him that I was already there. The voice then asked me in French whether I was in pain and I answered in French that I was not. After that I

Taki

My sweet, generous friend Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born on 31 January 1923, and as his 100th birthday approaches there is a major revival of interest among those who can still read. Norman died in 2007, aged 84, and his first-born son Michael, a talented film director who has since become my closest friend, came over to my house in a slightly shocked state. I was his father’s friend and admirer, so we sat down and drank the day and night away. A review of the most recent Mailer biography – a hatchet job by a Brit, Richard Bradford – states that Norman could not walk his dog without getting into a fight. Funny what

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Mental health care is the next big scandal brewing in the NHS

Beth Matthews saved lives with her brutally honest, often shockingly graphic, posts about surviving a suicide attempt. She was an extraordinary young woman, whose blogs and social media threads often reached other unwell people at the darkest moments in their lives. She met the police officer who had held her hand after her own suicide attempt, shared X-rays of her shattered pelvis and told her followers that suicide was not the answer. Yet that was how Beth died in March 2022. An inquest this week concluded that neglect by the Priory Hospital Cheadle Royal contributed to her suicide. Beth had ordered poison from Russia, which she had opened near staff,

Alexander Larman

Why does Princess Eugenie want her son to be an activist?

The furore surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has made it easy to forget about the other younger members of the Royal Family. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, have been relatively peripheral presences on the world stage until now. Damned by association with their disgraced father, the pair have kept a relatively low profile. It’s something of a surprise then to see Eugenie not only appear at the World Economic Form in Davos, but give an interview there in which she offers trenchant views on the climate crisis. Her son August, she declares, ‘is going to be an activist from two years old.’ Some

Steven Heydemann

Erdogan’s plan for war, and peace

There are ‘global issues that we both have on our plates’, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, mysteriously, when he met with his Turkish counterpart last week. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, standing by Blinken’s side, thought the same. ‘We will focus on areas of partnership in bilateral and regional issues.’ Diplomacy as usual, then. Behind the boring platitudes lies a serious rift between Turkey and the United States. In late December, Syrian and Turkish defence ministers met in Moscow in the first proper meeting between the two governments in a decade. There are plans for another meeting between foreign ministers that could lead to a direct meeting between Turkey’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Is it time for Nadhim Zahawi to come clean?

It’s a new day and once again the news is dominated by Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. Rishi Sunak has asked his independent ethics advisor (all politicians need outside advice when it comes to ethics, after all) to launch an investigation into Zahawi after the Tory chairman admitted making a ‘careless and not deliberate’ tax error. That ethics probe doesn’t appear to have stopped the awkward questions, however. Crime minister Chris Philp appeared on the Today programme this morning; after being grilled about Zahawi’s conduct, he told presenter Mishal Husain: ‘I don’t know precisely what form that carelessness took – neither do you’. The Tory chairman has released a rather paltry

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How did this killer asylum seeker hoodwink the authorities?

In 2018, a 16-year-old boy called Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai shot dead two men in Serbia with a burst of eighteen bullets from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. Four years later he murdered again – inflicting a fatal stab wound on 21-year-old Thomas Roberts. Roberts, whose ambition was to join the Royal Marines, was killed because he had tried to break up an argument between Abdulrahimzai and another man on a street in Bournemouth.  Abdulrahimzai was yesterday found guilty of murder. During the trial, consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Gauruv Malhan said the defendant exhibited characteristics consistent with borderline personality disorder. After the verdict, Abdulrahimzai was described by the Crown Prosecution Service as a ‘violent

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

We don’t need a ‘diverse’ coronation

Refugees and the NHS, we are told, will be at the heart of King Charles’s ‘diverse’ coronation in May. You’d think that a thousand-year-old institution tasked with steering clear of controversy might seek to avoid such hot potatoes. But there is nothing unexpected about this royal foray into politics. LGBTQ+ groups will perform at ‘a star-studded concert at Windsor Castle’ as part of the celebrations marking His Majesty’s accession to the throne. A royal source told the Daily Telegraph the coronation ‘needed to be “majestic” but “inclusive” to reflect a diverse modern Britain’.  Unfortunately, this sounds like another example of the utterly banal EDI (equality, diversity, inclusion) events we’ve become

Monday

Winston Marshall

Bjorn Lomborg: climate change alarmism and the true cost of net zero

55 min listen

Winston speaks with sceptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts The Poor, And Fails To Fix The Planet. They discuss climate change and climate change policy. Lomborg explains how net zero and the Paris agreement will do more harm than good and suggests some alternative sustainable development goals which would balance environmental protection with human prosperity.

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Covid’s legacy: how will China remember the pandemic?

48 min listen

Three years ago, as people across China welcomed the Year of the Rat, a new virus was taking hold in Wuhan. In London, the conversation at my family’s New Year dinner was dominated by the latest updates, how many masks and hand sanitisers we’d ordered.  Mercifully, Covid didn’t come up at all as we welcomed the Year of the Rabbit this weekend, though my family in China are still recovering from their recent infections. The zero Covid phase of the pandemic is well and truly over. So what better time to reflect on the rollercoaster of the last three years? In exchange for controlling the virus, China’s borders were shut

Sean Thomas

East Asia’s mask obsession is a catastrophe the West must avoid

In the Red Square Rooftop Vodka Bar of the sleekly towering Novotel Hotel, on soi 4, Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, it feels like the last three harrowing years never really happened.  By day the sunny rooftop poolside is strewn with happy Europeans, Americans, Brazilians, Indians, consuming excellent wagyu burgers and freely flowing margaritas. As the sun sets, it gets even better, because dusk is the best time of day in Bangkok: the city revives from its sunstruck torpor, the girls in their dancing skirts alight from the Skytrain, the hawkers sell mango, durian, papaya, sliced fresh for twenty baht. The lights of the skyscrapers glisten like looted jewels. Gin tinkles in

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is the National Grid’s energy payment offer too good to be true?

Still resisting installing a smart meter in your home? If so, the National Grid might make you think again – by offering you free electricity. With low temperatures boosting demand for power, and output from wind and solar farms looking a little flaky, the grid needs to cut demand to avoid blackouts. This has prompted it to exercise, for the first time, something called the ‘demand flexibility service’, which offers incentives worth up to £10 or so to customers who are prepared to switch off their appliances for a couple of hours this evening. To take advantage of this offer, you need to have a smart meter and buy your electricity from

Alexander Larman

Will Prince Harry and Meghan spoil the King’s coronation?

As the furore caused by the publication of Spare may – or may not – be dying down, there are some signs that the Royal Family are beginning to take back control of the media narrative, while refusing to make any public comment on Prince Harry’s revelations. Firstly, there was the announcement that Prince Charles will be handing back up to £250 million a year from profits that the Crown Estate have harvested from offshore wind farms. Now the first details of the coronation on Saturday 6 May have emerged. Anyone who saw the King’s speech at Christmas will have realised that this is intended to be a different kind

Philip Pilkington

Why Britain will lose from America’s trade wars

Davos this year marked the start of a great economic divorce of the United States and Europe. Katherine Tai, the US trade chief, said that globalised capitalism is not working anymore. It leaves workers behind and gives fuel to populists, she said. Really, the Biden administration wants reassert US dominance in the world, and is using the country’s economic weight to do it. The Europeans, meanwhile, seem happy to become more protectionist too, with France’s Europe minister Laurence Boone calling the new US stance a ‘wake-up call’ and saying that Europe should respond in kind. Europe’s leaders are reacting to the reality that, with high energy prices, their manufacturing cannot remain competitive

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

It’s time to make Boris Johnson special envoy to Ukraine

The videos showed a typical summit: Volodymyr Zelensky next to Ukraine’s flag and Boris Johnson next to the Union Flag. But there’s a difference. Johnson is no longer the prime minister and was visiting Kyiv as a private citizen – yet was greeted and treated like he was still calling the shots. A video of the meeting, with rousingly patriotic music, has been released. ‘I will do whatever I can’ says BoJo: but with what? In what capacity did his summit with Zelensky take place? Some may see this in the context of an attempted Boris Johnson comeback, but in the leading article in this week’s Spectator we make the case

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s protestors are just getting started

There was another protest in Paris on Saturday. According to the organisers, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise, 150,000 turned out on a crisp winter’s afternoon to opposeEmmanuel Macron’s pension reform. The French President wants to lower the retirement age from 64 to 62. But independent analysis put the numer at the protest at 14,045. It was the latter. I was there. I’m now something of a seasoned observer of the French street protest. From Yellow Vests to Covid Passports, and from the far right to the far left, I’ve rubbed shoulder with all manner of disgruntled French citizen. Yesterday’s protest was one of the jollier. I wouldn’t go so far as

John Armstrong

LSE is right to cut ties with Stonewall

The London School of Economics (LSE) shocked their student union this week by informing them that the university is disaffiliating from Stonewall. The union responded with horror, demanding a consultation before reversing ‘the decision to disaffiliate’. The SU has also demanded the establishment of a ‘gender expression fund to pay for items necessary to support transition’ (the equivalent fund at UCL helps transwomen purchase essentials such as makeup) and a ‘designated queer space on campus.’  Stonewall’s position seems baffling until you grasp its postmodern perspective LSE have left the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, a ranking scheme whereby organisations are awarded points according to how closely they follow Stonewall’s policy recommendations. In 2019 LSE set itself the target of being

Hugh Thomson

Jonathan Raban changed travel writing forever

Jonathan Raban was largely responsible for changing the nature of travel writing. Back in the 1970s when he began, the genre still viewed the world from under the tilt of a Panama hat (‘I looked at the tops of the columns. Were they Doric or Ionic?’). It was considered ill bred for a writer to reveal anything about themselves; they were supposed to be a transparent pane of glass through which one could view the world. Raban tore this up, and with glee. He had worked closely with American confessional poets like Robert Lowell and John Berryman, producing one of the best essays on Lowell’s late poems about his messy divorce. 

Frank Furedi

Britain is not a basket case

It’s a dinner party in Brussels and I try to turn the conversation to the war in Ukraine. My host is having none of it. She is determined to initiate another round of discussion on the theme of ‘isn’t Britain a basket case?’ From bitter experience I know that I am in for a lengthy diatribe about ‘nothing works’ Britain.  At times it feels as if there is a veritable crusade targeting Britain. Media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic constantly refer to Britain as if it is a country in the throes of an existential breakdown.  All these critics hold that it is wrong, even shameful for the British people to take pride in their culture and their past ‘Britain

Saturday

Nigel Jones

Germany is paralysed by pacifism

Germany’s marked reluctance to supply Leopard 2 tanks to help Ukraine repel the brutal Russian invasion has very little to do with the feeble evasions and excuses offered by Berlin, and everything to do with the long shadows cast by German history. January 30 sees the 90th anniversary of Adolf Hitler becoming Germany’s Chancellor, yet the 12 brief years of Nazi rule inflicted such deep wounds on the country and the wider world that they have dictated German policy ever since. Whole generations have grown up in Germany since 1945 who despise and distrust armies and the concept of military force Another imminent anniversary – next Friday’s International Holocaust Day –