Society

Wednesday

Michael Mosbacher

Why Jesus College shouldn’t have returned its Benin bronze

Jesus College Cambridge can claim a world first. It is the first institution, at least in the twenty-first century, to return a so-called Benin Bronze because it was looted in a British punitive raid in 1897 on the historic Kingdom of Benin, now part of the territory of Nigeria. The College’s Master Sonita Alleyne has today handed over its Okukor – a brass statue of a cockerel that took pride of place in the college’s dining hall peering over generations of students – to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Germany announced in May that its public museums would return their hundreds of Benin artefacts; Dan Hicks — Curator

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The cold hard truth about heat pumps

When I went to Poland not long before Covid, I found a country more bitterly divided by a culture war even than we are. So I would not rule out EU leaders being right that the current government there has intruded on the independence of the judiciary for its own political ends. This is the background to recent Brussels fury that the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (supreme court) asserted the primacy of Polish law over that of the EU earlier this month. The problem never arises in the EU, of course, because there the European Court of Justice has never had an independent judiciary to be tampered with. It has aways

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Novara Media was cancelled by a culture it helped to create

Something stirring happened online yesterday. People rushed to the defence of a media outlet they dislike. In the name of standing up for freedom of speech, political differences were put aside and the case was clearly made that even people we passionately disagree with must be at liberty to speak and publish. This was freedom of speech in action. People of all political persuasions rallied together to demand ‘freedom for the thought we hate’. The outlet in question is Novara Media. When YouTube temporarily suspended Novara’s channel, it wasn’t just the middle-class millennial Corbynistas who make up the bulk of its viewership who rushed to its defence. So did many

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The staggering cost of ‘Plan B’

Finally, the government is modelling the cost (and benefits) of lockdown restrictions. The introduction of vaccine passports, mandatory face masks and work-from-home advice would cost between £11 billion and £18 billion according to a leaked assessment of the so-called ‘Plan B’. And while all this may reduce the spread of the virus at large events by as much as 45 per cent, only a small part (between 2 and 13 per cent) of Covid transmission takes place in such venues — so the extra restrictions would, at most, cut levels of the virus by 5 per cent nationally. The document has been leaked to the Politico website and assumes ‘Plan

Peter Hitchens

The link between drugs, terrorism and mental illness

Rod Liddle once actually said to me the immortal words ‘You were right and I was wrong’ at a Spectator summer party. This is a moment I shall treasure till the hour of my death. But even so, I was disappointed. For the subject was only Theresa May. I had predicted she would be a terrible premier. Rod had believed she would be good at the job. A year later, it was obvious who was correct. For one brief shining moment I had hoped that Rod had changed his mind about something much more important. I wish he and a lot of conservatives would shift their opinions about the role

Richard Ekins

It’s time to take back control from our judges

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill has its second reading today. Writing for the Guardian yesterday, David Davis MP denounced the government’s plans as ‘an obvious attempt to avoid accountability [and] to consolidate power’ which is ‘profoundly un-conservative’. He could not be more wrong. The Bill is a welcome first step in restoring the balance of our constitution, a balance put in doubt by a decades-long expansion of judicial power. If anything, parliament should go further and amend the Bill to make it a more effective means to restore the traditional constitution. Judicial review, Mr Davis argues, is ‘a cornerstone of British democracy’, a ‘check on the balance of powers

Matt Purple

A new name isn’t enough to save Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg emerged from his walk-in T-shirt closet last week to make a stunning announcement: Facebook will be changing its name. And while we don’t yet know what the new name will be, I think I may be able to help here. How about this: Boomerware? Or in keeping with Silicon Valley’s penchant for trendy misspellings: LyfeSuck? Or instead of a name, there’s just the sound of Rome burning? The reason that ‘Facebook’ is getting retired, per Zuck, is that he wants to ‘transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.’ What that means is that he’s trying to distance himself

Harry Clynch

Is Cambridge university ashamed of Winston Churchill?

When I first started at Churchill College, Cambridge, I was proud that I had joined an institution whose very existence was a testament to the legacy of a personal and national hero. As I walked around the college grounds, I felt that I was now part of a community that was much bigger than myself; a community partly defined by the life and times of our country’s greatest leader. Standing for the college toast at my first formal dinner, the words ‘To Sir Winston, and the Queen’ almost made me believe that my own life was now, in a small but important way, linked to the life of the great

Sunday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Will Sajid Javid really fire 106,000 unvaccinated NHS workers?

When Sajid Javid was interviewed at Tory party conference recently, he was asked if he’s going to start firing unvaccinated NHS staff, given that care workers are about to lose their jobs under ‘no jab, no job’ rules. He said he was considering it, which would be quite a move. The unjabbed may make up a small percentage of the NHS workforce of 1.6 million people. Today’s Sunday Times says that he has decided to press ahead by introducing legislation that will make vaccinations ‘a condition of employment’ for health workers. This would follow what Joe Biden has done in America — where all medical employees face vaccine mandates and companies with more

Simon Clarke

It’s time to prepare for winter Covid restrictions

Earlier this week, the health secretary Sajid Javid said in a Downing Street press conference that the government was not yet ready or willing to activate its Covid ‘Plan B’. His announcement came after the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) argued last week that Plan B measures – such as mandatory masks, working from home and vaccine passports – should be prepared for now to reduce the need for tougher restrictions in the winter. Both Sage and the health secretary will have been keeping a close eye on the number of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths, all of which have been rising steadily this month. The worry, of course, is

Peter Apps

The dark side of ‘insulating Britain’

Let me start with some statements of fact. The planet is heating up dangerously fast with devastating consequences for everyone that lives on it and if we don’t stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere we have no future as a species. In the UK, a major source of our carbon emissions comes from homes and a large part of that is because we burn gas whenever we put the radiators on. Each UK household emits around 2.7 tonnes of carbon every year heating their home. That’s utterly unsustainable and must stop. To some the answer is to insulate our homes so tightly that we no longer need to use much

Saturday

Debbie Hayton

When I was the victim of a transphobic hate crime

The question was direct and to the point, ‘Are you one of them blokes?’ With those six short words, I was the victim of blatant transphobia. We have been advised to report such attacks. ‘We need the stats,’ explained one transgender campaigner in 2018. That was in response to ‘hateful’ stickers which read ‘Female is a biological reality’ appearing in Edinburgh. This attack was personal and in my face. But if this was transphobia, I was in no danger. The woman who asked the question was in her 60s, laden down with groceries and she would have needed to stand on a box for it to be truly in my

Friday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The latest celebrity must have? A trans child!

Hard luck, Madonna, your lovingly assembled rainbow family is no longer the most cutting-edge crew on the showbiz block. If you want to excel as an A-list parent these days, you need a trans child to show off on social media. Jamie Lee Curtis has revealed that her child, born Thomas, now answers to the name of Ruby. The 62-year-old actress has declared to a waiting world – via People magazine – that the most difficult thing about adjusting to this unforeseen circumstance is calling them by their new name. ‘It’s speaking a new language…l earning new terminology and words… that was the hardest thing, just the regularity of the

Graham Medley

In defence of Sage’s models

As a member of Sage, I support public scrutiny of our scientific advice. However, once our models enter the public domain they are interpreted in many different ways and some of the crucial context can be lost. Modelling is an important tool for epidemic management, one that has been tested against numerous infectious disease outbreaks and continues to be improved. If we knew what the future held, decisions would be easy — but we don’t know what will happen. The alternative to using models is to guess. Models mean that the assumptions and data used are clear. It’s repeatable science. Guessing is not repeatable and relies on prejudices and wishful

Hardeep Singh

The fatal flaw in the Assisted Dying Bill

The push for legalised assisted dying for the terminally ill is back with a debate on Baroness Meacher’s private members’ Bill on the subject today in the House of Lords. It’s an emotionally charged issue which goes to the heart of medical ethics. It is also true that euphemistic language is often deployed by advocates of assisted dying to frame the narrative. Another way of describing ‘assisted dying’ is of course the grislier ‘assisted suicide’, or ‘assisted killing’. Even euthanasia, which is the act of intentionally ending a life to relieve suffering means ‘good death’. Meacher’s Bill will be debated by more than 140 peers, but it’s not clear that

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

There are no safeguards when it comes to euthanasia

Molly Meacher, whose Bill to allow assisted dying gets its further reading in the Lords today, gave an interesting interview on BBC radio today – there was no other speaker to counter her arguments; an exchange of views came later in the programme. She explained that her engagement with the cause had been prompted by the lonely death of an aunt who had a terminal illness; she went on to describe the unpleasant conditions that could not be dealt with by palliative care. But then the interviewer, Martha Kearney, went on to ask about the problem that old people might be made to feel a burden. Baroness M said that

Thursday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Does ‘white privilege’ exist?

On Wednesday Radio 4 aired a programme called White Mischief, which promised to trace ‘where whiteness came from and how its power has remained elusive.’ It asked whether white privilege existed. Or rather it pretended to ask. It assumed that it does. Instead of directly admitting that it was putting forward one point of view, it was one of those annoying programmes that affects a sort of light-hearted neutrality, and vaguely claims to be moving away from the unhelpfully limited conversations we have been having so far. So instead of soberly setting out the issue, it began with a jokey clip of Grayson Perry hooting with laughter at some wise

The Spectator

Letters: How to feed the world

Doom and gloom Sir: The depressing article by Tom Woodman (‘You must be kidding’, 16 October) confirms my growing fears about the damage being wrought by the promoters of apocalyptic climate change, which has become a dangerous cult with alarming echoes of millenarian doom which has stretched through many previous centuries. While sensible care for the environment is a good thing, the descriptions of a frightening future of the imminent end of the world through drought, flood and fire now imbues every aspect of education and politics. Constantly bombarding young people with the news that the end of the world is nigh has led many of them into completely unnecessary

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

My advice to Dave Chappelle

I’m accustomed to a sense of urgency in relation to Netflix offerings because the streaming service often buys short-term rights that abruptly run out. But this time, I rushed to see Dave Chappelle’s new stand-up special The Closer lest Netflix’s own disgruntled employees succeed in getting the performance taken down. Strictly speaking, the affronted staff aren’t demanding the show’s withdrawal, but it’s hard to see what else the proposed employee walkout on Wednesday was designed to accomplish. After all, in the olden days if you didn’t like something on television you just didn’t watch it, but in our enlightened times you make damned sure no one else can watch it

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

My night in Béziers with Zemmour

Béziers is the ancient winemaking capital of the Occitanie region in the deep south of France and a stronghold of the French right. Its popular mayor, Robert Ménard, a former journalist, was elected as an independent, but with a strong endorsement from Marine Le Pen. Her political movement, the Rassemblement National, formerly the National Front, with historical roots in anti-Semitism, has been powerful here for decades. So is it paradoxical, bizarre, or perhaps evidence of a more profound shift of social and political tectonic plates, that last Saturday night thousands of Biterrois turned out at the Zinga Zanga theatre to cheer Éric Zemmour, a Parisian Jewish intellectual, author and television