Society

Thursday

Toby Young Toby Young

The thrill of running late

‘Dad, why is it that whenever we go anywhere, we’re always running to catch a train?’ asked Charlie, my 13-year-old. This was just over a week ago and Charlie and I, along with 16-year-old Ludo, were running from the Holiday Inn Express in Birmingham to Snow Hill station in the hope of catching the 7.25 p.m. to the Hawthorns. Miss that and we’d be in trouble because the next one wasn’t until 7.57 p.m. and we’d be late for kick-off. We were there to watch QPR play West Brom and the match started at 8 p.m. Charlie’s right. He and I have vowed to go to as many QPR games

Peter Jones

How the ancients handled refugees

Hardly a day goes by without headlines about immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees. In the ancient world, movements of people were also very common (state boundaries did not exist), often because war, famine or exile left them with no option. So how did refugees try to win acceptance? In Homer’s world of heroes (c. 700 bc), a man indicated he was harmless by kneeling before his (proposed) helper, perhaps touching the knee, and appealing for aid in the name of Zeus, god of suppliants. He expected a welcome into the household as a guest, and becoming part of that household, or being helped on his way. When Athens was a democratic

The Spectator

In blockbuster Britain, the BBC is being left behind

There’s a great revival under way in the British TV and film industry, but it’s not the BBC that’s behind it. Netflix is normally secretive about its figures but this week published a list of its most popular shows and top of the pile is Bridgerton, which imagines Regency London as a racially mixed society. Although funded with US money, it is shot in Yorkshire with a British cast, using British technical know-how, and, thanks to Netflix’s global audience of more than 200 million, this British show has now become the most-watched series in the history of television. Not so long ago, it was argued that subscription television would never

The Spectator

Letters: Don’t let the parish perish

Parish problems Sir: Emma Thompson draws attention to a serious problem in the Church of England (‘Power to the parish’, 25 September). Why are they trying to make it easier to close down parishes when the parish is where the people are to whom the church must minister? The parish is also the major funder of the C of E through the generosity of its many local donors. If you take away the incumbent, you take away a major portion of the income for both parish and diocese. One reason many parishes struggle to pay their parish share is because it has been swelled by the diocese to pay for the ever-growing

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Petrol panic, Labour’s meltdown and China’s crypto crackdown

Home The crisis of the week was a shortage of fuel at garages. ‘There is no need for people to go out and panic buy,’ said Paul Scully, the small-business minister. That set motorists queueing. BP had shut some petrol stations and blamed a shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers. Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, blamed ‘one of the haulage associations’ for leaking details of a government meeting at which fuel industry people expressed concerns that fuel stocks were at two-thirds of normal levels. But Rod McKenzie, the managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association, said it wasn’t him. The government suddenly said it would

Roger Alton Roger Alton

England’s shameful betrayal of Pakistan

Any English person with a love of cricket knows life has its ups and downs. But until now we have had no need to feel truly ashamed. The decision by England to scrap a mini-tour of Pakistan feels like one of those watershed moments from which any reputation for fair play will never recover. The men’s tour would have been four or five days at most, to play a couple of T20s. It’s hardly a trek across the Antarctic. And this against Pakistan, a country which, more than any, needs international cricket at home. And a country which bailed England out last year, when Britain was in the grip of

Wednesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

It’s time for James Bond to die

I saw the new James Bond last night, but after reading today’s reviews I’m not sure I watched the same film as the critics. Perhaps the glitz of the Royal Albert Hall and proximity to the stars make reviewers better disposed towards a film. Those of us watching in the Odeon, Leicester Square, eating Joe and Seph’s 007 Dry Martini popcorn (transmuted into caramel coating with five per cent vodka) were perhaps less carried away. The Bond of No Time to Die is, you’ll have gathered, terrifically in touch with his emotions. He’s got a vulnerable side; he’s angry and wounded; he’s empathetically good with a little girl (he feeds

The Spectator

The BBC is being left behind in blockbuster Britain

There’s a great revival under way in the British TV and film industry, but it’s not the BBC that’s behind it. Netflix is normally secretive about its figures but this week published a list of its most popular shows and top of the pile is Bridgerton, which imagines Regency London as a racially mixed society. Although funded with US money, it is shot in Yorkshire with a British cast, using British technical know-how, and, thanks to Netflix’s global audience of more than 200 million, this British show has now become the most-watched series in the history of television. Not so long ago, it was argued that subscription television would never

Alexander Larman

Did the music industry enable R. Kelly?

As Harvey Weinstein was to film, so Robert ‘R.’ Kelly has been to the music industry. An energetic and profligate figure who enjoyed enormous commercial and artistic success in his heyday, Kelly’s downfall, with his convictions on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, is now total. It looks likely he will be given a life sentence for his crimes, and few, other than his most devoted admirers, will be mourning his entry into the penal system.  Yet Kelly’s fate, while richly deserved, is not the end of the story. Instead, questions have to be asked of those who were around him while he behaved egregiously behind the scenes. It transpired,

James Walton

No Time to Die is a compelling mess

Times being what they are, James Bond can no longer just be the main character in the Bond films. He’s also had to become a defiant metaphor for them. Since Daniel Craig took over the role, Bond has regularly been told that he’s badly outdated. Yet, by the closing credits, he’s once again proved how much the world still needs him. That this has been reflected at the box office is, I’d suggest, largely down to one neat trick: Craig’s Bond films have thrown in just enough gruff emoting to get people to go along with the pretence that his Bond is a radical reinterpretation, while still essentially sticking to

Tuesday

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

The problem with having a happy clappy prison service

The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has said in the past that he wants prison to be ‘unpleasant.’ To that extent he should be pleasantly surprised. Our prisons are indeed engines of despair, indolence, violence and incivility. Our Prison and Probation Service, notoriously allergic to transparency and accountability, has been able to camouflage this to some extent during the pandemic. It’s harder for prisoners to be unpleasant when they’re locked down in a space hardly bigger than a disabled toilet for 23 hours a day. In the meantime, the department Raab has now inherited – with an ever-growing army of HQ bureaucrats – has not been idle. The prison service

John Connolly John Connolly

The Manchester refugee charity representing the best of British

In October The Spectator will be heading to Manchester for Conservative party conference for the first time in two years, after last year’s event was cancelled because of the pandemic. While the return of party conferences is a welcome sign that things are finally getting back to normal, it’s also a reminder of the damage that Covid and its lockdowns caused over the last year and a half. Charities were hit hard by the pandemic facing closures after being unable to fundraise or campaign. That’s why The Spectator has decided this year to donate all the ticket money for our events at conference to a charity based in Greater Manchester: Caritas

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Harry and Meghan are wrong about Covid vaccine patents

Pharmaceutical companies might think it a bit rich being asked to waive the patents on their Covid vaccines by Harry and Meghan, a couple who have rejected the concept of public service in an attempt to monetise their royal status. But let’s overlook the charge of hypocrisy and ask whether there really is any substance to Harry and Meghan’s charge that ‘ultra-wealthy’ pharmaceutical companies are holding up the vaccination of the developing world by refusing to surrender their intellectual property. It is certainly not true in the case of AstraZeneca, which has made its vaccine available at cost price. Not only that, it has licensed production to the Serum Institute

Peter Hunt

Prince Andrew has no good options

It’s not a good look, aged 61, to be hiding behind your mother. The ninth in line to the throne joined the Queen at Balmoral, making it difficult for papers to be served in the Virginia Giuffre civil case. The Aberdeenshire estate may cover 50,000 acres, but it hasn’t provided refuge — a state of being that has eluded Andrew for the past six years. The Queen’s favourite son (and one of her blind spots) has a damaged reputation that continues to be pummelled remorselessly. It’s a process that has produced — on his part — one flawed strategy after another, from the disastrous Newsnight interview to trying to prove

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Why can’t men write about sex?

Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix work and pleasure and put this controversial claim to the test. I set up a sort of interview-date with a nice young lady called Laura, a former international gymnast who was working as a waitress, but looking for more permanent work. She sported a lovely glossy dark ginger mane. We weren’t getting on too badly, but not much of a story there. Luckily there was scope for deepening the research: we went back to mine, and a bit of horizontal research definitively established that the alleged incompatibility of gingers is

Sunday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Is anti-Etonian prejudice really OK?

Don’t you wish Angela Rayner would come off the fence, just once in a while, and tell us what she really thinks? In a meeting of delegates to the Labour Conference, the heiress presumptive to the Labour leadership is reported to have said of the governing party: ‘We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum: homophobic, racist, misogynistic… banana republic…vile, nasty, Etonian…piece of scum.’ I’ll let the purity-police in her own faction take Ms Rayner to task over the orientalist and patronising stereotyping of communities in the Global South as ‘banana republics’. What bothers me, if I’m going to speak my truth, is the way in which ‘Etonian’

Scott Anthony

The secret spy films made by MI6

Those attending the premiere of No Time to Die this week would perhaps be surprised to learn that the Bond films were once considered to be a national security threat. In the 1960s, with the image of Cold War espionage increasingly becoming shaped by films like Dr No, and TV series like Danger Man and The Avengers, MI6 feared that campy pulp fiction would drown out the real threat of Communist subversion. ‘The biggest single risk to security at the present time,’ one Whitehall report argued, ‘is probably a general lack of conviction that any substantial threat exists.’ ‘The master spy’, the intelligence services complained, ‘seems as much a part

Thursday

The Spectator

Which countries have the highest energy bills?

Seeds of change The Chelsea Flower Show opened in autumn for the first time, delayed thanks to the pandemic. The show has been cancelled before due to the world wars — during the second world war the site was used for an anti-aircraft gun emplacement. But it wasn’t always held in Chelsea. It began as the Royal Horticultural Society show in Chiswick, held from 1827 onwards. It moved to Kensington Gardens in 1861 when rival flower shows were attracting visitors away. In 1888 it moved to Temple Gardens, between Fleet Street and the Thames. It was first held in Chelsea — in a single marquee — in 1913. Highly charged

Harry Mount

End of the line: it’s time to rethink the queue

Flying to Kalamata this week, I did my own little bit to reduce the terrible queues at Heathrow Terminal 5. Heroically, I stacked up the grey luggage trays once they’d been emptied by passengers coming through security. As a result, there were more loaded trays for people to pick up, and a smaller tailback of passengers — including me — waiting to pick up their unloaded trays. It was just a tiny example of the hundreds of things that could be done to reduce queues in airports, hospitals, train stations, supermarkets… The British may be famous for their patient queueing but it doesn’t mean we actually like doing it. So