Society

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Giorgia Meloni stoking Britain’s migrant crisis? 

In the last week, more than 1,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel, which is twice the number of people that the government’s barge can house on the Dorset coast.   This was unveiled last week as the latest wheeze to address Britain’s migrant crisis: a floating barge with 222 rooms to house up to 500 migrants as their asylum applications are processed. It might be an idea to put in an order for a few more.   According to Frontex, the European Border Agency, 5,622 migrants landed on the Kent coast in January and February this year, an increase of 82 per cent on the same period in 2022. 

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Elon Musk is right about BBC funding

The BBC has today been using its various news platforms to protest against being described as ‘government funded’ by Twitter. It has instructed Twitter to remove this insult ‘as soon as possible’ and its journalistic contacts have found a direct link to Elon Musk himself who, we are told, is a ‘fan’ of the BBC. So perhaps a quiet word with the right person in power can overcome this little hiccup. Radio Four even had a ‘debate’ which just featured one interviewee: Mary Hockaday, a former BBC executive. ‘As a BBC journalist, I care about accuracy,’ she said, ‘the simple fact is that to describe on Twitter the BBC as

Cara Usher-Smith

Why Britain needs more marriage

Hungary is something of a bête noire in the international community. Viktor Orban and his government have had much-deserved condemnation over their treatment of certain minority groups, as well as undermining judicial independence and what many see as an attack on the freedom of the media.  But Orban’s administration has been getting something right, and it would be a shame if the country’s pariah status means its greatest achievement goes overlooked. Hungary has become a marriage super-power. According to the Marriage Foundation, which rightly promotes legal matrimony as the bedrock of a healthy society, Hungary’s marriage rate has exploded over the last decade, rising by 92 per cent. The country

Colin Freeman

Why ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ is still the best of the BBC

Radio Four recently broadcast a ‘Best of’ edition of From Our Own Correspondent, marking 100 years since the birth of one of its most distinguished contributors, the late Charles Wheeler. Listening to the likes of Allan Little reporting on the fall of Mobutu, and Brian Barron in Vietnam, one is reminded that however tedious Thought for the Day and You and Yours may have become, some segments of R4 still shine. Indeed, for many listeners, From Our Own Correspondent is the essence of the Beeb’s nation speaking unto nation remit – a weekly mailbag to Auntie from staff worldwide, sometimes grim, sometimes quirky. With its brief to provide ‘insight, wit

Sam Leith Sam Leith

We live in a one-way shame culture 

Anyone who has ever published a book and been dismayed by an anonymous review online will have cheered inwardly at the story of David Wilson. Professor Wilson is a criminologist and historian who has published several books. Each of his books has received a scathing one-star review on Amazon from a pseudonymous critic calling himself ‘Junius’. The latest was posted, he says, within a few hours of his new book being published: ‘abysmal… avoid… low quality… poor research… would disgrace an undergraduate dissertation’.  Such reviews aren’t just words: they can cause material harm to books in Amazon’s ranking system. Most authors will have experienced something like this (I’ve got off pretty lightly so far, though I

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Labour is right: the Tories are soft on law and order

The spouse of one of Britain’s major party leaders would be forgiven for feeling both queasy and furious about Labour’s wave of attack ads against Rishi Sunak. Not Akshata Murty, aka Mrs Sunak, who has already been through some very rough stuff about her and her husband’s tax affairs – but Victoria Starmer, wife of Keir, on the basis that those who dish it out must expect to have to take it back in kind and without complaint. Politics is the proverbial rough old trade at the best of times, but there is now every sign that the looming 2024 general election will be one of the dirtiest ever.  People

Sunday

Andrew Tettenborn

The truth about the Dartmoor wild camping row

It’s often said that the less important the issues at stake, the bitterer the argument about them becomes. This seems to have been more than confirmed in the last few weeks in Devon by the curious case of the argument over wild camping on Dartmoor. The high moor on Dartmoor is an anomaly. Although nearly all of it is privately-owned by a mixture of estate owners, small farmers and others, for as long as anyone can remember people have in practice been walking and riding across the wilder unfenced parts of it, known as the Commons, for recreation without anyone making objection. Since 1985, any objection would have been futile:

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Northern Ireland’s flawed peace has still saved countless lives

A fortnight before the signing of the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998, 25 years ago tomorrow, two republican terrorists were waiting at the back of a supermarket in Armagh city, Northern Ireland, for Cyril Stewart. Mr Stewart was a former police reservist, medically retired the previous year after a heart attack. He was well known in the city and in local football circles where he was an official. He was executed in cold blood in front of his wife at the back of a Safeway’s in pursuit of Irish unity. Barely three weeks earlier, the future inaugural First and Deputy First ministers of the Northern Ireland Executive stood together in

Robert Service

Putin only has himself to blame for the end of Finlandisation

Joseph Stalin knew better than Vladimir Putin. After world war two, as the Cold War began, the Soviet dictator took the view that it was more trouble than it was worth to invade Finland again, as he had done with humiliating setbacks in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Too many parents or grandparents of those in the Finnish audience had died in the 1939-1940 war for suspicion of Russia to have faded And so the Finns were spared the fate of Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians and other peoples of eastern and central Europe who were occupied and then communised. They had to pay a price for this absolution. The country was

Theo Davies-Lewis

We don’t need Westminster: An interview with Wales’s ‘radical’ Archbishop

Andrew John is a ‘radical’, not a politician – or so he claims. The Archbishop of Wales stated his mission when he was elected to the post barely two years ago after a swift and overwhelming majority among the Church in Wales’s electoral college. John is low-key, humble and mild mannered in person, but is also unafraid to speak his mind: he has aired uncompromising views on migration, integrity in public life and nationalism. His most outspoken opinions are on the issue of Welsh independence. Earlier this year, John went further than any of his predecessors in expressing his personal thoughts on the subject: he said the ‘situation we have

Michael Biggs

Why does the census say there are more trans people in Newham than Brighton?

Did you realise that one in every 67 Muslims is transgender? That adults with no educational qualifications are almost twice as likely to identify as transgender as university graduates? That the London boroughs of Brent and Newham are home to higher proportions of transgender people than Brighton and Oxford? These are some of the astonishing results from the 2021 census of England and Wales, which was the first in the world to ask about gender identity. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released detailed census data for England and Wales on Tuesday. These data deepen the problems raised by Alice Sullivan, professor of sociology at University College London, and myself

Saturday

Daniel Rey

Test cricket is being sabotaged

Test cricket should be in its prime. England is the most aggressive team in history, India and Australia are uncommonly good, and New Zealand has just played two of the most exciting matches of all time. Yet from Marylebone to Melbourne to Mumbai, administrators are sabotaging cricket’s finest form.  Every cricket lover knows that the charm of the five-day format relies on pitches that provide a balance of power between bat and ball. Too many pitches this winter failed to meet that basic requirement. Australia played South Africa on an overgrown Queensland meadow and won within two days. The collateral damage of fitting in another men’s competition is that the Ashes

James Esses

Children need to be protected from TikTok

TikTok is perpetuating significant harm to the welfare and wellbeing of young children. This week, it was announced by the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), that they were handing down a £12.7 million fine to TikTok for significant breaches of data protection law. It is one of the largest fines to have ever been imposed by the body. The fact that there are children aged 13 and under may have been exposed to this material is beyond terrifying Having conducted a thorough investigation into TikTok, the ICO found that in 2020, up to 1.4 million UK children under the age of 13 were accessing and using

Friday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Riley Gaines and the misogyny of the trans-activist mob

The misogynist mob strikes again. Its target this time was the American swimmer Riley Gaines. What was her offence? What did this young woman do to attract the attention — and the jeers and insults and threats — of the woke witchfinder-generals? She said men should not compete in women’s sports. Obscene. Fetch the ducking stool.  This is Gaines’ heresy: to refuse to believe that trans women are women; to prefer the light of scientific and moral reason over the delusions of the mob Ms Gaines was mobbed at San Francisco State University. She had just given a speech on why women’s sports must be for women only, not biological

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The French left is in thrall to violence

Since the middle of March in France, 1,247 Gendarmes, police and fire fighters have been injured in the line of duty. There have been over 2,500 deliberate acts of arson and around 350 buildings have been vandalised in some shape or form.  Forty-seven of those gendarmes were injured on Saturday March 25 when they were attacked by a large and well-organised army of environmental extremists at Sainte-Soline in western France, some of whom came from Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The previous October 61 gendarmes were wounded at the same location. Television footage of last month’s violence showed the extremists advancing towards the gendarmes in a well-drilled military manoeuvre, throwing Molotov

Thursday

James Heale James Heale

Can Mark Rowley clean up the Met police?

Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, faced a media grilling this morning as he championed his plans to clean up the force. It comes a fortnight after Louise Casey’s damning report into the Met, which branded it ‘institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic’. A YouGov poll out today shows that public confidence in the Met has been shattered, with 42 per cent of Londoners saying they ‘totally distrusted’ it following recent scandals. Some 700 officers are currently on restricted duties, with hundreds more facing re-vetting or ‘risk management measures’. Rowley has pledged to ‘remove the cancer from the bone’ as he seeks to root out hundreds of officers found

Francis Young

Does King Charles’ Green Man make him a pagan?

On 4 April the Royal Household revealed the design for invitations to the Coronation, the work of heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson. While the design is a riot of flora and garden fauna, heraldic and otherwise, one feature of the invitation has above all invited comment – the presence of an anthropomorphic green ‘foliate head’, wearing a crown of oak and hawthorn, with leaves of daffodils curling up almost like a pair of horns. Within minutes, the decorative face had been named. He was the ‘Green Man’, a vaguely defined figure found on plaques in gardens around the nation, who is in turn indelibly associated with another concept: paganism. The Green

Toby Young Toby Young

Are Queens Park Rangers cursed?

A dark cloud has descended over Queens Park Rangers, my beloved football club. On 22 October last year, when we beat Wigan Athletic 2-1 at home, we were top of the Championship table. Under our new manager, Michael Beale, we had won nine of our first 16 games, drawn three and lost four. Since then, it’s all gone Pete Tong – and not just a bit pear-shaped, but disastrously, catastrophically wrong. In the 23 games that followed, we have won twice, drawn six and lost 15, meaning we’ve only chalked up 12 points, the lowest tally in the division. We’re now just three points off the bottom three and look

Bruce Anderson

In praise of Bellamy’s

Of all London districts, there is no more charming name than Mayfair. It makes one think of pretty shepherdesses, giggling and blushing as swains serenade them with garlands of spring flowers. But that would have been some time ago, even before the last nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. These days, the serenading would be courtesy of powerful sports cars, revving through the traffic to cock a snook at the cops. Yet there are survivals from a gentler era. Behind Berkeley Square in Bruton Place, you will find the Guinea Grill, which sounds cheerful and lives up to its name. Virtually next door is Bellamy’s, with more gastronomic ambition, but equally