Society

Tuesday

Melissa Kite

Power-crazed zealots have taken over Surrey AA

‘What’s Bill W. got to do with it?’ said one of the committee members to the others as they discussed how best to ban people from meetings. This is a bit like saying ‘What’s L. Ron Hubbard got to do with it?’ at a Scientology convention, or ‘What’s Jesus got to do with it?’ at a church service. Oh no, wait, that’s exactly what they might end up saying at a Church of England gathering. They are moving towards gender neutrality, so at some point Our Father and the Son of God may have to be replaced by Our Heavenly Parent and a Daughter of God called Jess who never

Taki

Could a therapist fix my philandering?

New York Is it poor little ol’ me imagining things, or are Americans becoming stupider by the minute? I’ve been travelling and running into the species, and I swear that the most intelligent thing I’ve heard recently from a New Yorker is: ‘Like, you know, like uh, you know, uh, like uh…’ This particular moron was talking in a loud voice and didn’t give the impression of having been hit rather hard over the head with a baseball bat. There he was, just another inarticulate and tongue-tied youngster showing signs of early-onset dementia brought on by watching too much television. Once upon a time, American ‘exceptionalism’ drove the New World’s

Nigel Jones

Russia’s long history of female assassins

The news that a young woman anti-war activist, Darya Trepova, is suspect number one in the bombing assassination of Russian pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky may shock those schooled to believe that political violence is an all-male preserve. But it will come as no surprise to anyone with the sketchiest knowledge of Russian history. For in Russian politics, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, ‘the female of the species is more deadly than the male’. Since the days of the Tsars, women have always been at the forefront of political violence in Russia. The spectacular assassination in 1881 of Tsar Alexander II, known as ‘The Liberator’ for his abolition of serfdom, was organised by a

Monday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Who is behind the murder of Putin’s propagandist?

Those who live by hate often die by hate, too. Maxim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was one of the ultra-nationalist social media ‘milbloggers’ who emerged largely off the back of Russia’s war on Ukraine. On Sunday evening, he was addressing a gathering at a cafe in St Petersburg when he was killed by a bomb that also injured another 16 people. Fomin came from Makiivka, in the contested Donetsk region. In 2014, on escaping from prison where he was serving time for a bank robbery, he joined the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion. He would go on to become amongst the more famous ‘milbloggers’, whose Telegram channel had over 560,000 followers.

Sunday

Niall Gooch

The problem with holding Iftar in Manchester Cathedral

During Ramadan, which began last week, sunset finds observant Muslims taking their iftar, a ceremonial breaking of the rigorous fast, involving specific prayers. Often this is done as a community. Pictures of mosques hosting iftar bring to mind the parish festivities which were a common feature of pre-Reformation England, before the Protestants decided that attendees at such beanfests were having far too much fun. For reasons that remain unclear, it seems to have become fashionable for Christian churches in Britain to make themselves available as venues for the iftar. This year Manchester Cathedral, no less, opened its doors one evening for the local Muslim community, causing a brief stir on

Jonathan Sumption

The Guardian’s self-laceration is embarrassing to watch

The Guardian is currently engaged in an orgy of sanctimonious breast-beating. After two years’ research commissioned by its proprietor, the Scott Trust, it has discovered that its founding editor John Edward Taylor and some of his backers had ‘extensive links’ to slavery. This has caused something like a nervous breakdown in the paper’s York Way offices. The editor, Katharine Viner, writes that the revelation made her ‘sick to my stomach’. The paper’s staff are said to be ‘tormented’ by the thought. There have been abject public apologies, promises of amendment, and all the usual apparatus of cringing self-laceration. What is the problem? The Guardian was founded in 1821 as a

William Cook

The rise and fall of bohemia

In the Kunsthalle Praha, a smart new gallery in Prague, a Scottish professor from UCLA called Russell Ferguson is trying to explain to me the meaning of bohemia. Like a lot of fashionable buzzwords, it’s surprisingly difficult to pin down. Is a bohemian an artistic rebel? Or merely a pretentious layabout? Ferguson is an expert on the subject, and even he can’t quite sum it up. However, unlike most academics (and most journalists, for that matter) Professor Ferguson isn’t content to just sit around and chat. As well as writing a book about bohemia, he’s mounted an exhibition about bohemians here at the Kunsthalle – and after he’s shown me

Saturday

Sean Thomas

AI is the death of porn

I have a friend, let’s call her Ellie, who has a diverting side hustle: she sells erotic images of herself online: nude, semi-nude, basically nude but in roller-skates and smoking Cohiba cigars. That kind of thing. She does this on a site many people will know: OnlyFans, which has become the site for women (and it is mainly young women) who want to make money from exhibiting themselves for the sexual arousal of online subscribers. Ellie knows that some people might find her part-time job indecent or ill-advised, she doesn’t remotely care. As she says, it’s her body, her choice. It’s all adults, she has no kids or employers to

Danny Shaw

Charles Bronson and the problem with parole hearings

The letter delivered last week to Mr Charles Salvador, of HMP Woodhill, from the parole board did not bring him the news he wanted – it said his request to be released from prison had been turned down. But the outcome came as no surprise to me, nor I suspect many of the others who had watched his parole hearing by video-link at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in March. The conclusions that the parole panel reached were not rocket science, they were just common sense Salvador, whose birth name is Michael Peterson and who was previously known as Charles Bronson, has spent most of the past 50 years

Friday

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

The vindication of Michael Vaughan

It’s perhaps still too early to tell if the Jewish and Muslim communities, here in Britain and indeed throughout the world, were brought closer by the actions of the former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq.   How refreshing it is to see the quaint concept of proof being demanded before a man’s life is ruined Rafiq, you will remember, in November 2021 went to hear in person from Holocaust survivor Ruth Barnett, 86, about her experience of being on the receiving end in Nazi Germany of what you’d probably have to say was on balance worse than anything you could possibly experience in or around a cricket ground. He did this, no

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The battle over female Catholic priests has just begun

16 min listen

This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church’s most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It’s marked ‘Catholic women priests’, a development – such is the pace of chaotic change under this pontificate – that is now a real long-term possibility. Pope Francis says he’s against this innovation, but he relentlessly promotes bishops who favour it. Until now, they’ve been discreet about their views. Now, to use a fashionable cliché, they’re saying the quiet bit out loud. As I point out in this episode of Holy Smoke, Catholic conservatives are confident that women will not

Debbie Hayton

The trouble with Joe Biden’s trans declaration

Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility – just like the preceding 89 days of 2023. But, jesting aside, it has prompted an astonishing proclamation from the White House. ‘Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul,’ president Joe Biden has announced. Really? Who did Biden have in mind? Maybe he was still entranced by Dylan Mulvaney, a self-absorbed social media influencer who shot to fame last March after documenting a gender transition. Since then, Mulvaney has relentlessly taken to TikTok chronicling each ‘day of girlhood’ in nauseating detail. Biden is scaremongering On day 222 of this egregious series, Mulvaney was invited to the White House to interview Biden. Trans privilege really

Jawad Iqbal

Elon Musk is wrong to call for a pause on the AI race

On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein – at that time the most famous scientist in the world – put his name to a letter addressed to President Franklin D Roosevelt. In it he warned that the Nazis might be developing an atomic bomb and could bring about a chain of events that would lead to the end of civilisation. Einstein urged the United States to begin work on its own atomic weapons to save humanity. His warning changed the course of history. The Manhattan project was born and the United States won the race to make the A-bomb. Self-awareness is not a strong point in these would-be Cassandras This week

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Why did Guy Pearce apologise for this trans tweet?

Hollywood actor Guy Pearce has apologised for posting a pro-trans tweet. That’s where we’re at now with the culture war. The Twitterstorms don’t even need to make sense anymore, as the bizarre case of the LA Confidential star’s recent comments about trans actors has made abundantly clear. Pearce took to Twitter earlier this week and posed a string of very good questions. ‘If the only people allowed to play trans characters are trans folk, then are we also suggesting the only people trans folk can play are trans characters?’, he asked. ‘Surely that will limit your career as an actor? Isn’t the point of an actor to be able to

Thursday

Kara Kennedy

Is this the reason Harry and Meghan stepped down as working Royals?

Stepping down as working royals would ‘provide our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity,’ Meghan and Harry wrote in their infamous bombshell statement of January 2020.  Just one month before, the Sussexes had launched their Archewell website, with childhood photos of themselves with their mothers, Doria Ragland and the late Princess Diana.  ‘I am my mother’s son, and I am our son’s mother,’ the official letter read. ‘Together we bring you Archewell. We believe in the best of humanity. Because we have seen the best of humanity… from our mothers and strangers alike.’ Anybody who has been keeping

Joanna Williams

How trans ideology took over our schools

Concern with what schools are teaching about sex, gender and relationships has been growing. Parents worry their children are being exposed to inappropriate sexualised content and that they are being taught to question their gender identity. Some even report discovering their children are using new names and pronouns while at school without their knowledge or consent. Yet these fears are frequently dismissed as reactionary parents trading in anecdotes and panic. Nothing to see here, has been the message from schools and campaigning organisations alike. Until now. A report from Policy Exchange reveals the extent to which gender ideology is being promoted in schools and the shocking ways in which this

Ian Silvera

Amsterdam’s lazy campaign against British tourists

Amsterdam has launched a campaign telling rowdy Brits to stay away. Men between the age of 18 and 35 are being targeted with videos showing what happens to those who overindulge. Brits who search online for terms like ‘stag do’, ‘cheap Amsterdam accommodation’ and ‘pub crawl Amsterdam’ will be served with the warning adverts featuring tourists being locked up or hospitalised. To put it in wrestling terms, we’ve well and truly become the ‘heels’ of Europe. Brexit, it seems, has catalysed the unfair ‘bad boy Brit’ persona of a sometimes sluggish, mostly uncultured and drunken nation which urinates and swears its way across the continent while ordering beige grub in

Andrew Tettenborn

The Tories should think again on targeting Netflix

If you want to understand the curious attitude of our government towards media freedom, look at two provisions in the draft Media Bill, published yesterday. One is refreshingly liberal; the other curmudgeonly and authoritarian. First, the good news. The Bill reads the last rites over the Leveson Report of 2012. A worrying document embodying lofty patrician contempt for the popular press, this had called for highly intrusive controls over it. This included closer supervision of what journalists were allowed to do and editors to publish, an increase in damages for breach of privacy and a noticeable tightening of the dead hand of data protection on newspaper information-gathering. And, to cap

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Putin’s crackdown on Russia’s school children

In Russia, nowhere – and no one – is safe from the insidious reach of Putin’s war in Ukraine. In April 2022, during a school art class, twelve-year-old Masha Moskaleva drew a picture of a Russian and Ukrainian flag with missiles flying at a mother and child. Inside the flags, she had written ‘Glory to Ukraine’ and ‘No to War’.  Masha’s art teacher saw her drawing and called in the head teacher who then called the police. Officers interrogated her and her classmates, but Masha managed to slip away after giving them a false name. The following day, as her father, Alexei, was picking her up from school, the two were apprehended by police and taken for

Christian Wolmar

The new age of sleeper trains

It’s a fabulous combination: travelling by train and sleeping. And the good news is that the concept of sleeper trains is being revived. The bad news is that, like trams and trolleybuses, a wonderful form of travel was allowed to decline in the first place. The first sleeper carriages – as opposed to trains you happened to fall asleep on – were introduced in the US in the late 1830s, but these provided little more than hard wooden benches. It was George Pullman who built the first luxury sleeper coaches when he founded his eponymous company in 1867. America, with its vast expanses and a newly opened transcontinental line, was