Society

Monday

Debbie Hayton

Eddie Redmayne’s transgender confusion

Eddie Redmayne is clearly still troubled by his portrayal of the transsexual Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl. Eight years after Redmayne’s acclaimed performance, it is the one film the actor seems nervous talking about. Now, Redmayne has distanced himself again from that role – and suggested he will no longer take parts that could go to trans actors. ‘No one wants to be limited by their gender or sexuality but, historically, these communities haven’t had a seat at the table. Until there’s a levelling, there are certain parts I wouldn’t play,’ he said in an interview with the Guardian. This isn’t the first time Redmayne has put on sack

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Who thought the Prince Andrew sex bath picture was a good idea?

How big does a bath need to be for ‘sex frolicking’ to be a possibility? That’s not, if you’d asked anyone six months ago, the question on which the reputational future of the monarchy might be in part held to depend – and yet here we are. A bizarre photograph has been released by the brother of Ghislaine Maxwell in an attempt to discredit Virgina Roberts Guiffre’s claims of abuse. The photograph made the front page of the Daily Telegraph, no less. It showed two people, described in the accompanying story as ‘acquaintances’ of Ghislaine Maxwell, sitting facing each-other, fully clothed, in the bathtub of Maxwell’s old home. Each of these people had

James May

Cycle wars: why 20mph is plenty for motorists

I live in Hammersmith, in west London, which is an area where people seem particularly fond of just running out into the street without looking – which is their prerogative because they are people not machines. 20mph is plenty fast enough and 30mph does feel too fast. And, to be honest, if you could go around somewhere like London, or Manchester, or Birmingham, at a constant 20mph, you’d be absolutely delighted. I do a lot of cycling around London and we can become over obsessed with things like rules, street furniture, signage, traffic lights and so on. They’ve been doing this with a bike lane near me; it’s not particularly

Sunday

Kara Kennedy

A chav’s guide to chavs

People who aren’t chavs think that chavs are offended by the word. I’m a chav and I can tell you with authority that we’re not. Trust me, I have a ghastly Welsh accent, filler in my lips and a penchant for Burberry nova check. Until recently I never even thought calling someone a chav was an insult. I use the term all the time as a compliment, of sorts.   A clip of Kim Kardashian wearing the chav make-up look of yesteryear went viral on social media this month. Taking part in the ‘M to the B challenge’, a TikTok craze that has been going since 2020, Kardashian threw on an

William Cook

Dresden’s Rumpelstiltskin and the strange tale of European porcelain

Strolling along Dresden’s Brühlsche Terrasse, an elegant promenade above the River Elbe known as ‘the balcony of Europe’, the wartime destruction of Germany’s most beautiful city seems like the echo of a bygone age. Since reunification, the reconstruction of its baroque Altstadt has been meticulous – the panorama Canaletto painted has been painstakingly restored. Reduced to ruins in February 1945, Dresden can once more be called ‘the Florence on the Elbe.’ Much ink has been spilt over the rights or wrongs of the Allied bombardment of my father’s birthplace (he was born here in 1942 and survived the bombing as a small boy), obscuring the far more interesting story of

Alice Sullivan

What the Census reveals about trans people in Britain

‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’. Brits were asked that question for the first time in the 2021 Census: 93.5 per cent said ‘yes’, 0.5 per cent said ‘no’ and the remaining six per cent did not respond. This means that, of those who answered, 0.58 per cent said their gender identity did not match their natal sex. In a debate where tensions are running high on both sides of the Scots border, this data is sorely needed – and is worth digging into. The gender identity question confirms the rise in trans identities among youth. Among 16-24 year olds, one per

Chris Miller

Morris Chang: the microchip mogul caught between Biden and Xi

At the centre of the world’s tech sector sits a Taiwanese chip tycoon most people have never heard of. Morris Chang is the founder of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest chipmaker. He became rich and powerful by making chips the rest of the world can’t live without. And as the world’s semiconductor industry is being reshaped by Chinese and US efforts to control the future of chip technology, Chang finds himself courted by the world’s most powerful governments but also under pressure amid an escalating geopolitical clash. The tale of Morris Chang is not only a story of visionary entrepreneurialism and technical brilliance Though TSMC is far from

John Armstrong

World Athletics’ trans policy isn’t scientific

This week it was revealed in the Telegraph that World Athletics is engaged in a confidential consultation with national governing bodies over the question of whether transwomen should be allowed to compete in the female category.   World Athletics’ current rules allow males to compete in the female category if their legal sex is female and they have held their serum testosterone levels below 5 nMol/l for 12 months. Their ‘preferred option’ in the consultation is to change the acceptable testosterone level to 2.5 nMol/l for 24 months.  All this talk of nanomoles and serum testosterone is a dramatic misdirection Lord Coe, president of World Athletics, announced in November that athletics will ‘follow the science’ –

Zareer Masani

How the British saved India’s classical history

In India, a generation has been brought up on the academic Edward Said’s unhistorical prejudices towards the British and what he called the ‘colonial gaze’. In his eyes, British Orientalists were guilty of what is now termed ‘cultural appropriation’.  To his followers it therefore may come as a surprise to learn that it was British Orientalists who in fact rediscovered India’s classical history and heritage and made it available to the rest of the world.  Sir William Jones, a brilliant polymath, contributed more than any other individual to India’s national renaissance. Alongside his day job as a judge in Calcutta, Jones mastered Sanskrit, translated Indian classics and used it to

Saturday

Gordon Caldwell

The NHS is drowning in paperwork

The NHS is in a state of crisis, with increasingly long delays for ambulances and emergency care. Often people believe that hospital delays and bottlenecks are caused entirely by the difficulty of discharging patients to social care. But there is another factor which is just as much of a problem, and which should be far easier to fix: the masses of unnecessary paperwork doctors and nurses have to fill out every day.   In many hospitals as many as 30 pages of nursing documents have to be filled out every time a patient is admitted to hospital In the picture above, I once laid next to all the forms nurses had to

Alexander Larman

Bathtime pictures won’t save Prince Andrew

As the furore about Prince Harry and Spare finally shows some signs of dying down – the book’s second week sales dropped 82 per cent, albeit with a wildly impressive 82,538 copies sold – it is time, once again, for his uncle to take centre stage. It seems as if the beleaguered and not-so-grand Duke of York has been involved in one scandal after another recently, and this week has been no exception. Firstly, it has been made clear by King Charles that his disgraced brother can have no further official dealings with Buckingham Palace. His offices in the building have been closed down and he has now been informed that

Natasha Feroze

Matthew Parris, Lionel Shriver and Gus Carter

24 min listen

On this week’s episode, Matthew Parris wonders what ‘winning’ in Ukraine really means (00:52), Lionel Shriver says she’s fighting her own war against words (08:43), and Gus Carter wonders whether it’s a good idea to reintroduce Bison into Britain (18:28).

James Esses

The strange reaction to the death of a child rapist drag queen

On Sunday 22 January 2023, Darren Moore was found dead. Moore was a long-standing and well-known drag artist in Cardiff where he lived.   He was also a convicted child rapist.   The fact that news outlets had the ability to report on the colour of Moore’s wig but not on the atrocious crimes he had previously committed is worrying But this chilling fact has been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media as they report his death. Instead, the commentary and news coverage has been hugely positive about Moore’s life. At times, the coverage has bordered on gushing, with article after article going into great detail about the warm

Vivek Y. Kelkar

Pakistan is crumbling

Stampedes for subsidised government-distributed flour, the worst economic crisis in decades, a coalition government unsure of its moorings and reluctant to carry out much-needed economic reforms, sectarian and separatist violence across large spans of the country, terrorist groups, diplomatic and ideological problems with neighbouring Afghanistan, and some of the worst floods the country has ever experienced – disaster has gripped Pakistan.  On January 7, Harsingh Kohli, a labourer and a father of six, was trampled to death while trying to get subsidised flour at the Gulistan e Baldia park in the city of Mirpur Khas in Pakistan’s Sindh province. The trucks had been sent by the government with flour at a

Theodore Dalrymple

Why are we letting dangerous criminals roam the streets?

If you repeatedly ask someone to do something that is inherently, and obviously, impossible, and then blame him for not having done it, you might be suspected of ulterior motives, such as a desire to hide something such as your own incompetence.  And so it is with the criticism constantly levelled at the Probation Service, which is accused of not keeping the public safe. It does not do so because it cannot do so. Blaming it diverts attention from the defects of policing and criminal justice policy now going back over decades.   The probation service is a scapegoat for the failure of the police and the judiciary  Much publicity

Friday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Did Sandi Toksvig think she could change Justin Welby’s views on gay sex?

An urgent ecumenical update: the conclave has taken place. The great community leader has descended from the summit of Sinai, bearing, not tablets of law, but sorrowful tidings. Yes: the Archbishop of Canterbury has ‘grabbed a coffee’ with Sandi Toksvig, following her twee plea for an audience a few months ago on the subject of the Church of England’s attitude to gay sex.  The good news is that the ‘long-promised coffee’ was ‘calm and considered,’ according to Toksvig. The bad news is that Sandi is sad: Justin Welby had to report, unsurprisingly to anyone paying the slightest attention, that any change in the Anglican Communion’s stance on same-sex relations is

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s leaders are failing in their duty to keep people safe

Life in Europe is becoming increasingly precarious; a case of hoping it’s not your turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a Salisbury court on Monday a 21-year-old Afghan with a long history of violence was convicted of the brutal murder of Thomas Roberts; on Wednesday, a Palestinian allegedly stabbed two people to death on a German train. That same day in Spain a Moroccan under a deportation order was arrested after a verger was killed with a machete and a priest badly wounded in two related attacks in the city of Algeciras. Meanwhile in France an Algerian and a Kosovan are in custody after two

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Is Nicola Sturgeon a transphobe?

Is Nicola Sturgeon a transphobe? I ask because she has decreed that Isla Bryson, a violent man who identifies as a woman, should not be locked up at a women’s prison. And every woman who has said similar in recent years, every feminist who has said that no blokes should be allowed into women’s prisons, women’s domestic-violence shelters and women’s changing areas, has been horribly attacked by the right-on. They’ve been denounced as phobes, bigots, TERFs and worse. So is Sturgeon a bigot, too? Should she be cancelled? This is the disturbing story of the male rapist who says he is a woman. Scot Isla Bryson, whose birth name is

John Oxley

Why ‘Spotify dads’ are turning on the Tories

It’s probably never been cool to be a Tory. There will never be a Conservative youthquake – they are the unhip party, the unkissed party. Voting Conservative has always been a mark of being a bit older, a bit more settled down. Like a sensible saloon car and comfortable shoes, it was something you eased into when you acknowledged you were past the flush of youth. Now, however, the party is seemingly losing even that. New polling from Portland Communications shows the Conservative party is losing sway with the least cool demographic of all: middle-aged dads. On almost every metric, the party is in retreat, with its vote share among

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

We must remember the unique atrocity of the Holocaust

At the heart of marking the Holocaust lies a conundrum. On the one hand, genocides happen all over the world, from Cambodia to Darfur. Each life lost is an equal horror; there can be no hierarchy of death. On the other, the attempted liquidation of world Jewry during the second world war was an entirely specific atrocity. It was an expression of mankind’s oldest hatred by the most advanced civilisation on Earth, using the most sophisticated science, technology, logistics and propaganda at its disposal. It was unique. It was about the Jews. Clearly, balance is required. But it seems in short supply. Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. My teenage children