Society

Thursday

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

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Eat here now: Darjeeling Express reviewed

Darjeeling Express lives at the top of Kingly Court, just off Carnaby Street, which was once the world-famous embodiment of Swinging London but now seems the global capital of the sports shoe. No matter – Kingly Court, which is built in the shape of a medieval coaching inn, is a happy nook: it is shut away, which means you can’t see sport shoes from the window. It is small in scale; it is for Londoners in their thinning melting pot. Kingly Court already has a superb restaurant in Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. Darjeeling Express, newly opened, joins it on the second floor. My companion calls the chicken kati the platonic ideal of

Roger Alton Roger Alton

In praise of Sharron Davies

It’s been quite a while since we celebrated any of Sharron Davies’s considerable achievements in the pool – well, a bronze and a silver in 1990 at Auckland was the last time – but I would bet a box full of brand-new Speedos to a secondhand pair of goggles that nothing has made her prouder than her part in World Athletics’ decision to ban transgender women from competing in female international events. She has campaigned for this for years with great courage and at considerable cost. Without her energy and bravery, it is possible that Seb Coe could have fudged the solution announced last week, when he ruled that he

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Bring back the savoury!

For a while now, we’ve been living through a renaissance of classical British cooking: a whole host of restaurants have been embracing the joy of the old school, the pies and puddings, the traditional and the retro. But there’s something missing. Bring back the savoury! An Edwardian favourite, a ‘savoury’ was an extra course that came towards the end of the meal, either just before or after pudding, or as an alternative to it. A savoury should be small – a ‘morsel’ – and strongly flavoured. To this end, the main ingredients are usually cheese, smoked or salted fish, bacon, or spice in the form of devilling. It is often

Lucy Holden

A toast to the old man pub

I’ve always preferred ‘old man pubs’ to bars, old man pubs being the kind decked out in mahogany and offering up a gin and tonic to anyone clueless enough to ask for a cocktail. Having just moved to Glasgow, I find myself surrounded by these sorts of places, Scotland practically being the home of pubs so wooden they’d float. There’s a joy in walking into a pub and the staff knowing your name. I’m 33 and I’d like to meet someone, but I also want to make friends. My initial idea was to use dating apps to contact people in Glasgow. I recced Hinge from Bath, where I last lived,

Wednesday

Constantin Eckner

Why Germans are going wild for King Charles

King Charles III is going down a storm in Berlin. Hundreds of wellwishers have turned out to greet the King during a reception at the Brandenburg Gate – and the monarch, who is on his first trip abroad since taking the throne, seems relaxed. But amidst the selfies and Burger King hats (which many of those who turned out to see the King have opted to wear), there is serious business to be done – and German politicians are optimistic that Charles’s visit can repair some of the damage caused by Brexit. While Charles’s mother Elizabeth was seen as apolitical, the King’s past commitments to social and ecological causes have

Annabel Denham

In defence of landlords

Whisper it millennials, but YIMBYism (Yes In My Back Yard) might be gathering momentum. Recent surveys have found more people agree than disagree that there is a housing crisis in their local area, and more would support building houses than oppose it.  They may be given the chance to do so. Last year, government announced plans to give residents the power to opt into more development on their own street through ‘street votes’. And the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill includes ‘community land auctions’, which would give councils much stronger incentives to permit more housing development.  We shouldn’t let politicians wriggle out of difficult conversations over the housing shortage But while YIMBYism

The Spectator

The lessons of the trans debate

The World Athletics Council has taken the decisive step of announcing that transgender women who underwent male puberty before their transition will henceforth be excluded from female events. The decision has been made, according to the council, to ‘protect the future of the female category’. World rugby has already made a similar ruling and other sports are expected to follow suit. It has been a long and heated debate, but a consensus is emerging on the side of common sense. Those who overreached on this issue are counting the cost. Nicola Sturgeon’s bizarre gender self-ID law that would have granted women’s rights to anyone who wanted to claim them went

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The rule of lawyers

Have you had your fourth Covid booster jab yet? They are being very quiet about it these days. I used to be bombarded with injunctions to attend my local clinic, but not any more. This is a shame because a new study suggests that unless I am properly up to date with my injections, I may soon be involved in a serious car crash. The research, published in the American Journal of Medicine, shows a very strong correlation between someone’s Covid vaccine status and the probability of them being involved in a very bad road accident. The correlation suggests that those who have not been vaccinated are 72 per cent

Dot Wordsworth

What’s the difference between rocks and stones?

‘You rocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things,’ exclaimed my husband, misquoting Shakespeare as though it were an improvement. In English a rock is different from a stone and it can be annoying when news reports, especially on radio and television, speak of crowds throwing rocks. This Americanism has not yet ousted stones in British English. ‘It is one of the peculiarities of the dialect of the people in the westernmost states, to call small stones rocks,’ wrote the Revd Samuel Parker in his Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (1838). My husband had been set off by a report from France. During the disorder there, the

Posie Parker Posie Parker

Fear and loathing in New Zealand

The mob lunged towards me, screeching and grabbing, and I knew that if I fell I would never get up. I’ve stopped expecting mercy from anyone whose motto is ‘Be kind’ but the event last week was terrifying. I was sure in that moment, on the New Zealand leg of my ‘Let Women Speak’ tour, that the trans activists who surrounded me would trample me to death if they could. They gather in menacing groups to intimidate us and hurt us if they can, just to prevent us speaking a simple truth: that women don’t have penises, men don’t have vaginas, there is no such thing as non-binary and transitioning

Doc

2598: By any other name

The unclued lights (one of two words) may be paired, one past and one present.         Across    1    USA dealt out compliments (8) 11    It’s still a healthy drink in spring! (7,5) 14    Go on to take legal action (7) 18    Parallel grooves are first adjusted (6) 23    Irritable, like our cats and dogs? (7) 24    Title father backs for Tarzan (3-3) 25    Salmon, by the way, for fellow presenter (2-4) 27    Example of first person in record book (7) 29    University officials South African cricketer Mike’s suggested (8) 33    Continuous story broadcast back in the Home Counties and London, initially (6) 35    Resistance units – I see thousands

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do we avoid paying for our friend’s restaurant over-ordering?

Q. When my husband and I meet certain friends for lunch, the bill is always higher than it should be, since one friend orders about five different dishes because she’s never sure what she wants. She barely touches any of them. We don’t want to quibble when it comes to dividing the bill, but we have retired and have to be watchful of our spending, unlike them. What should we do? – D.F., London SW10 A. Next time, you and your husband could feign reduced appetites due to a hectic social life and order small starters for each course. Then, when your friend doesn’t eat the array of dishes presented, you

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Guardian’s slavery dilemma

When you read the Guardian free online, a yellow notice appears asking you for money (‘Will you invest in the Guardian?’) to support its fearless journalism. But now arises a donor’s dilemma. After two years’ work, the paper has just produced a full report on and apology from its current owner for its founders’ involvement in slavery. The historian David Olusoga, part of the project, says that what the Guardian owes the descendants of slavery for this is ‘an unpayable debt’. The paper is attempting to pay it, however, setting aside £10 million for the purpose of restorative justice over ten years. So for the conscientious Guardian reader (is there any

Frank Young

Westminster School and the sad decline of boys’ schools

Westminster School, one of Britain’s oldest public schools, has announced it will go fully ‘co-ed’ from 2030. Having first admitted girls to the sixth form in the 1970s, the school will now admit girls from the age of 13. This decision means that soon there will only be four remaining boys’ boarding schools left in the UK: Radley, Eton, Harrow and Tonbridge. Westminster says the decision is ‘based on a desire fully to reflect the community we serve, and to shape that community by educating brilliant young men and women with a commitment to making a difference.’ But the decline and fall of boys’ schools is not something to celebrate.  There are roughly 800