Society

Saturday

Julie Bindel

Scotland must rebel against this oppressive gender ideology

It’s been a pretty bad week for the women of Scotland. As Nicola Sturgeon doubles down on the pending legislation that would permit men to self-identify as women ­– legislation that around two thirds of voters are opposed to – the feminist NGO, For Women Scotland, lost a legal case against the Scottish government over its definition of ‘woman’, which includes, well, men.  It is little wonder that, in this world of madness, somebody decided to make a film exploring the issue, aptly entitled, Adult Human Female, which explores the silencing of those that speak out against misogynistic transgender ideology. Made by Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne, both socialist activists and academics, the film gives voice

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Nothing will ever be good enough for Harry and Meghan

Imagine you’ve paid good money to see a French farce – and halfway through, it turns into a Greek tragedy. Do you ask for your money back, or think ‘Well, it’s not what I expected, but I’ll give it a go anyway’? I previously wrote of Meghan Markle’s Netflix outing ‘If she can provide “content” on this level – creating a character we love to hate on a level with an Alan Partridge or a David Brent – maybe we should just cave in and award her the applause she craves, because comedy gold such as this does not come knocking every day.’ Though ‘Volume One’ made many of us ooh and

Friday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

An invitation to the editor of Edinburgh’s student paper

You’re reading this because quite a long time ago now, I was a student at Edinburgh University. As well as doing a bit of academic work, I fell into journalism editing the university newspaper. It’s called the Student and it’s pretty old. Founded in 1887 – by people including Robert Louis Stevenson – it’s probably Britain’s oldest student newspaper. I can write this today because of my time as a student journalist: without that experience, there’s no way someone of my background would have made it into the national media. The paper also helped people who went on to have vastly more distinguished careers than mine: Gordon Brown, Robin Cook,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Could 30,000 Britons really die of flu this winter?

Could flu really kill 30,000 people in Britain this year as our immune systems, rendered naïve after two years of lockdowns and other anti-Covid measures, are over-ridden by the virus? That suggestion has been reported in places this morning. There has certainly been a sharp increase in people reporting flu symptoms over the past couple of weeks, as shown up in the various metrics used by the UK Health Security Agency. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic there are now more people being admitted for flu – at 6.8 per 100,000 in the week to 11 December – than are being admitted for Covid (6.6 per

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Rogues Heroes: What Prince Harry has in common with the SAS’s founder

I’ve enjoyed the recent BBC blockbuster Rogue Heroes, a drama that is mercifully free from the moralising that Auntie often inflicts on viewers. All the same, as I told the Daily Telegraph this week, one should take the Boys’ Own interpretation of the formation of the SAS in world war two with a pinch of salt. Eight out of ten for entertainment but five for historical accuracy.   The main problem with Rogue Heroes is that it is true to David Stirling’s version of how the SAS was born. But as I make clear in my recent biography of Stirling, The Phoney Major, based on two decades of research, he was

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Bank of England’s interest hike shows the worst is to come

After a faltering start in its programme of rate rises, the Bank of England is catching up. Today’s half-point rise in its base rate to 3.5 per cent may be relatively modest compared with last month’s 0.75 per cent rise, but it is still twice as high as any rise the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was prepared to inflict on the economy during the first quarter-century of its existence. The MPC has turned itself into a prisoner of the markets – if it does anything unexpected, there is likely to be trouble In the space of three months rates have now been jacked up by 1.75 per cent. That is

Toby Young Toby Young

The number at my Christmas table is growing ever smaller

When I imagine the perfect Christmas lunch, I think of the end of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge turns up unexpectedly at his nephew’s house and discovers a warm family gathering: ‘Nothing could be heartier… Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!’ I can picture myself as an old man, parked in front of the telly wearing a Christmas hat, as Caroline creeps out to the neighbours’ drinks Back in my youth, the Christmas lunches hosted by my father, while not exactly hearty, were opportunities to get together with my extended family – my three half-siblings, my mother and sister, my grandmother Edith, an old friend of my father’s

Alexander Larman

Harry and Meghan’s Netflix show is worse than the Royals could ever imagine

At the end of the sixth episode of the interminable, grotesquely self-indulgent wallow in self-pity and score-settling that constitutes Netflix’s Harry and Meghan, a single thought dominates: we’ve been had. After all the months of hype and expectation, building up to a frenzy over the past few weeks – with every trailer for the show being scrutinised as if it was going to reveal some dark secret – the final judgement on this deeply unimpressive, prurient series has to be that it is nothing more than a cynical exercise in presenting a deeply partisan account of two obviously troubled and unhappy people’s lives: their truth, if you will. Watching Harry

Mary Dejevsky

Striking nurses don’t deserve a bumper pay rise

Today’s strike by nurses may indeed be the biggest action – or inaction – of its kind in NHS history. But there is a distinct sense of having been here before. The nurses’ grievances been a daily theme of news broadcasts for weeks, as though, as a group, they are uniquely affected by the double-digit inflation rate, and uniquely deserving of a commensurate pay rise. Not only that but their complaints about low wages, long hours, intolerable working conditions and the general hardheartedness of government replicate many of those heard back in the spring of 2021, when the then-Chancellor (a certain Rishi Sunak) drew their ire.  Back then, Sunak made

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

A last-minute alternative to Christmas cake: boiled fruit cake

This time last year, I was disgustingly well organised. Awaiting the arrival of my first baby, with a late December due date, I’d ensured everything was squirrelled or squared away. I’d bought all my presents by October, wrapped them by December; I’d made my Christmas cakes and bought my Terry’s Chocolate Orange. For the first time in my life, I sent Christmas cards to everyone in my address book. I’d even made and frozen the gravy weeks in advance. It was my way of nesting – the baby could arrive when it liked. I was prepared. It can feel that every homemade edible component of Christmas demands commitment: puddings, cakes,

Sean Thomas

Antarctica: the best journey in the world

If there is one minor pitfall of being a travel writer, it is this. Whenever you tell a bunch of people what you do, invariably someone will ask: ‘Where’s the best place you’ve ever been?’ I struggled to answer until I got on a special new boat called the Greg Mortimer, operated by a Australian tour company called Aurora – and headed for Antarctica. We sailed south out of Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, and crossed the Drake Passage. After three days I saw my first Antarctic iceberg. I’d observed icebergs before, in Iceland and Greenland, so I knew already that they could be striking, poetic, impressive. But this was

Wednesday

Winston Marshall

Sohrab Ahmari: Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Twitter files

49 min listen

Winston speaks Sohrab Ahmari, author of The New Philistines, From Fire By Water and The Unbroken Thread, a co-founder of Compact magazine and former editor at the New York Post. Sohrab was an editor at the Post when they dropped the Hunter Biden laptop story and explains its significance and what the Twitter files reveal. They also discuss the future of free speech in America.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Inflation slows to 10.7% – and may have passed its peak

Has inflation peaked? The Consumer Prices Index fell to 10.7 per cent last month, down from 11.1 per cent in October. This follows predictions that October would be the month in which inflation peaked – so this morning’s figures from the Office for National Statistics will raise hopes that the worst may be behind us. This doesn’t appear to be a blip. The market expects this to continue for the next two years before bottoming out in 2025. There will be optimism, too, that we can look forward to a sharp fall in the CPI over the next few months as the surge in energy prices begins to drop out of

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Why Messi matters

I hope that the Argentinian national team (also known as Lionel Messi) will win its third (or first?) World Cup on Sunday. But even if it doesn’t, the team’s legendary number ten has surely achieved that rare and precious accolade – earned by Pele in 1970 and Maradona in 1986 – of so dominating a World Cup that it will forever be linked to him. With respect to the supercharged Kylian Mbappé this has been Messi’s tournament. And you can be sure that, win or lose, the world’s media will be focused on him when the game ends. Messi’s ‘last dance’ as it has been dubbed (appropriately, as he has

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The Twitter Files show Donald Trump should never have been banned

The latest Twitter Files revelations are the most disturbing yet. They show how the employees of this private company, not voted for by a single American, conspired to censor the democratically elected President of the United States. It was nothing short of corporate tyranny, a sinister assault on public life by social media suits most people had never heard of. It should be front page news. The newest report is written by Bari Weiss, who examines the decision-making process behind Twitter’s banishment of Donald Trump in January last year, a couple of days after the 6 January riot on Capitol Hill. We all know Twitter’s official story: two tweets written

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The fall of FTX is just the beginning of the crypto collapse

It will come as no comfort to those who have already lost fortunes, but it is remarkable how resilient the crypto currency market has been this year, especially following the collapse of the FTX exchange in November. But if the arrest of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas and the request by US authorities for his extradition isn’t a sign to rush for the exits then I don’t know what is.   Without trying to pre-judge his case, there is going to be a lot more of this to come. FTX, it is easy to forget, was one of the more trusted players in a market that remains largely unregulated. Bill

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Why the rising unemployment rate might not be such bad news

Is unemployment beginning to bite? Or are the workless trying to rejoin the economy? That’s the key question after the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 per cent today.  Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning reveal that even though unemployment is up, ‘economic inactivity’ is starting to fall, having previously grown by some 565,000 people since the pandemic and lockdowns. A city of workers the size of Manchester had stopped working and weren’t looking for jobs either, meaning they weren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. But this trend away from work might be beginning to reverse.  The number of people who are economically inactive has now

Mary Dejevsky

It’s no surprise Britain can’t cope with snow

If you’ve managed to avoid the dimly-lit pictures of people’s back gardens, count yourself lucky. Yes: snow has arrived in the capital. The Foreign Secretary made a point of thanking London-based diplomats for showing up to his speech in Westminster yesterday – or, as he put it, ‘battling through’ two or three inches of snow to get there. James Cleverly had a point: St James’s Park next door was a veritable winter wonderland; Whitehall was now clear, but had received a generous covering of the white stuff the evening before, while the capital’s transport was as disrupted as it inevitably is during a ‘snow event’. This morning, the snow continues

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why is Elton John so pompous?

‘All my life,’ Elton John told the Twittersphere last Friday afternoon, ‘I’ve tried to use music to bring people together. Yet it saddens me to see how misinformation is now being used to divide our world. I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter, given their recent change in policy which will allow misinformation to flourish unchecked.’  The first things to grab your attention about this utterance are its strangely stilted syntax and grim grammar. That ‘yet’ is an attempt to cover a leap of a non-sequitur. ‘I’ve decided to no longer use Twitter’ feels like an auto-translation from a tongue where subject and object come the other way around, and

Hardeep Singh

Why Sikhs love King Charles III

Poor old King Charles has had a tricky start to his reign. Harry and Meghan’s tell-all Netflix show, in which they drop various ‘truth bombs’ about their time as serving royals, continues to dominate the headlines. The Royals are also recovering from the fallout from the drama sparked by Lady Hussey, the Queen’s long-serving lady in waiting, asking a guest at a Buckingham Palace reception where she was ‘really’ from. But amidst the various royal ruptures, Charles deserves praise: for fulfilling his promise to be a ‘defender of faith’. The monarch showed this commitment clearly last week when he paid a visit to a gurdwara (Sikh temple) in Luton. His visit