Society

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Perhaps it is time to nationalise our failing railways

We mustn’t abandon the railways to market forces, many on the left asserted when British Rail was broken up and privatised in the 1990s. They needn’t have worried. A quarter of a century on and we have yet to see a market force take to the tracks. Wasn’t the whole purpose of privatisation supposed to be to transfer financial risk from the taxpayer to private finance?  Instead, as soon as the Covid crisis struck, while other industries were offered loans, furlough payments and business rate relief but were otherwise left to fend for themselves, the rail industry was propped up as if nothing was wrong. The government simply suspended the

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

What Roy Greenslade doesn’t understand about the Troubles

Belleek is the most westerly point in the United Kingdom. It’s a small village, right on Northern Ireland’s frontier where Country Fermanagh reaches out towards the Atlantic. The final destination for many motorists driving across a now invisible border are the beaches of County Donegal. It is the place we learned this weekend where journalist Roy Greenslade was persuaded to support the violent extremism of the provisional IRA in the 1970s and 80s. Greenslade’s views on republican terrorism were, of course, an open secret for many years, as he rose to senior positions at the Sunday Times, the Daily Mirror and, latterly, became a professor of journalism at City, University

Ross Clark Ross Clark

How worried should we be about the Brazilian variant?

How worried should we be about the news that P1, one of the two Brazilian variants of Sars-CoV-2, has been found in six people who travelled from Brazil to Britain before the hotel quarantine rules came into force, and that one of these people has yet to be traced? Variant P1 is of concern not just because laboratory study has revealed changes to the spike protein, which might make it theoretically more transmissible, but because of real-world data from Manaus, the Amazonian city to which its origins have been traced. It was first detected in Japan on 6 January among a family which had travelled from the city. A subsequent

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Why did I pay £9,000 for Roy Greenslade to lecture me on media ethics?

What qualifies Roy Greenslade to lecture students on media ethics? It certainly doesn’t appear to be his own attitude towards telling the truth. When he taught me at City, Greenslade liked to hold forth on the vices of the tabloid press. He was quieter on his own red top past, neglecting to often mention his rise to the top of the ranks at the Sun and the Daily Mirror. Nor, too, did he talk much about allegedly having a hand in faking a spot the ball competition. It is now clear there was something else Greenslade was eager not to talk about during his long career in journalism: his secret support of

Sunday

Jack Shamash

The battle for the soul of the Jewish community

There are two groups in the Jewish community – mainstream Jews who, while still religious, do their best to assimilate into the wider community and the Chareidi, ultra-orthodox Jews who tend to shun British society. Those two groups are now locked in a struggle for the future of the Jewish community. For over 100 years, the Chareidi – with their distinctive costume, based on the fashions of 18th century Poland – have had a sort of symbiotic relationship with the mainstream. If mainstream Jews needed kosher slaughterers, rabbinical judgements, circumcisions and even rabbis for the smaller pulpits, they relied on the Chareidi. They were the ones with an encyclopaedic knowledge

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Spectator Out Loud: Katy Balls, Matthew Lynn and Craig Brown

33 min listen

On this episode, Katy Balls explains how No. 10 infighting could lose Scotland, and reveals how Boris plans to get his side in order. (01:05) Matthew Lynn is next on the show, and tells the story of the Up Crash. (10:10) Craig Brown finishes the podcast, reading his review of a ‘dark portrait of sibling hatred’: Samantha Markle’s memoir. (21:20)

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The trouble with ‘BAME’

Are Black people and Asians the same? Are they different from other ethnic minorities? What about Jews? And who do we include when we talk about Asians? Korean, Thai and Chinese people, or those from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India? Does ‘Asian’ refer to a set of skin colours or geographical locations? And what exactly is BAME? One of the hallmarks of a functional democracy is to protect the needs of minority groups. As well as ensuring they are not unfairly discriminated against, we must also make certain adjustments to accommodate their specific needs. But modern sensibilities and sociological fashions risk lumping groups together and simply emphasising differences. The effect of

Harry Clynch

The campus Churchill delusion

Was Winston Churchill a racist? For students like me who attended Churchill College, Cambridge, it’s a question which barely even merits an answer: of course he wasn’t. But some Cambridge academics appear to take a different approach when it comes to assessing the record of Britain’s most famous prime minister. Churchill College recently announced a ‘year-long programme’ into Sir Winston’s allegedly ‘backward’ conceptions of empire and race. As part of this review, the college has held events such as ‘The Racial Consequences of Mr Churchill’. Many students are simply bemused. Academic debate is, of course, no bad thing. It is something to be encouraged at any university. But a problem arises

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The curious case of Cornelia Connelly

Visiting Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1980s, I found myself warmly welcomed (I cannot remember why) by a lively group of Catholic feminists. Their heroine was Mother Cornelia Connelly. I was embarrassed not to have heard of her since she did her greatest work near us in Sussex. Hers is quite a story.  In 1831, aged 22, she married Pierce Connelly, an Episcopalian minister, in her native Philadelphia. Both later converted to Catholicism. Pierce wanted to become a priest, which was difficult, what with a wife and five children. The couple eventually signed a perpetual deed of separation so he could be ordained. While still looking after her younger children, Cornelia became

Friday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Mr Potato Head and the cult of gender neutrality

Another pillar of the patriarchy has fallen. His name is Mr Potato Head – or rather, it was Mr Potato Head. US toy giant Hasbro has decided to make the branding for this nearly 70-year-old range gender-neutral, so it will just be Potato Head from now on. According to Hasbro, this is all part of an effort to ensure that ‘all feel welcome in the Potato Head world’ and to ‘promote gender equality and inclusion’. Neither Mr Potato Head nor his wife, Mrs Potato Head, are being shelved entirely as characters, Hasbro was later forced to clarify. But the overall brand will change, and a new family set will allow

Matt Dryden

Denying Shamima Begum a return to Britain could backfire

Today’s decision by the Supreme Court to prevent Shamima Begum from returning to the UK and mounting a legal challenge to the removal of her citizenship sends a strong message to other hopeful Isis returnees. But it might not be a victory in every sense. Begum’s return to the UK was described by the Home Office as a move that would create ‘significant national security risks’. The government argued that it would expose the British public to an ‘increased risk of terrorism’. They’re right to do so. We know that just one in ten Isis returnees have faced prosecution. The challenges faced by authorities investigating offences committed in overseas conflict zones, such as

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are people tiring of lockdown?

Is the decline in new Covid infections slowing down? That is the picture painted by the government’s figures for confirmed infections, arrived at via the NHS Test and Trace system. The most recent figures show that the 71,320 cases recorded in the seven days to Wednesday are 15 per cent down on the previous seven days — a substantial fall, yet over the previous few weeks numbers had been declining at around 25 per cent every week. The fall in deaths, on the other hand, appears to be accelerating. The figure for the past seven days — at 2,684 — is 30 per cent down on the previous seven days.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Shamima Begum’s citizenship should never have been taken away

The Supreme Court has today upheld the ban on Shamima Begum returning to this country to contest the Home Secretary’s decision to strip her of her citizenship. The judges ruled that her right to a fair hearing did not trump national security considerations. But Begum should never have been stripped of her citizenship in the first place. She was born in this country, grew up here and was educated here. This makes her British. To pretend otherwise is absurd. Stripping her of her citizenship allows us to ignore the fact that someone from this country – a liberal democracy with the rule of law – went to live in a self-proclaimed caliphate

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron is taking on the eco killjoys

Emmanuel Macron won’t forget the Yellow Vest movement in a hurry. The ragtag army that recruited regardless of sex, age, region and political persuasions, seriously rattled the president of France in the winter of 2018-19. Never in his wildest dreams could Macron have imagined, when he signed off his fuel tax rise, that within weeks he would be barricaded inside the Élysée as outside heavily-armed police faced down furious protestors. Still, it taught Macron one thing: that those in the provinces see the world differently to the progressive political and media class in Paris. That’s why Macron has prioritised combating Islamism and uncontrolled immigration over the environment in the lead

Samantha Smith

School closures are creating a mental health crisis

Imagine telling a child they wouldn’t be able to attend school. You might expect to be met with tears, tantrums and confusion. They would understandably be upset at the prospect of losing their structures and support networks for an unforeseen length of time. This is what children have faced since schools and early learning settings first closed their doors last March: opening and closing over and over again like some sort of revolving door. Separated from their friends, family and all sources of social contact outside of a computer screen, young people have suffered some of the worst effects of lockdown. People are creatures of habit: we need routine and

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The break-up: Is Boris about to lose Scotland?

40 min listen

Could No. 10 infighting lose the Union? (00:40) When should the government tell us how to behave? (13:20) Can a relationship work without hugging for a year? (31:30) With The Spectator’s deputy political editor Katy Balls; The Spectator’s Scotland editor Alex Massie; vice chair of Ogilvy and Spectator columnist Rory Sutherland; Deirdre McCloskey, Professor of Economics, History, English and Communications at University of Illinois at Chicago; writer Rob Palk; and journalist Emily Hill.  Presented by Lara Prendergast. Produced by Max Jeffery and Charlie Price.

Debbie Hayton

Why aren’t exams going ahead?

When Boris Johnson talked about trusting teachers, I suspected that the government must be desperate. Trust is not a word I have head much in my 25-year teaching career. I am no longer trusted to go into a GCSE exam hall to look at the paper that my class is sitting in case I somehow manage to undermine the integrity of the exam. But that was 2019. This morning Gavin Williamson confirmed that this year, it will come down to me and my colleagues in school. There will be no exam papers, no external markers, and certainly no algorithms. Before the pandemic we weren’t even trusted to mark coursework for

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why do old people have fewer antibodies after the vaccine?

The UK policy of delaying second doses of the Pfizer vaccine has been criticised by some as risky, with Pfizer warning that there is no data on the effectiveness of its vaccine other than for the dosing regime used in phase 3 trials: two doses, 21 days apart. But evidence is steadily trickling through. Earlier in the week I wrote here about the Scottish population-wide study which found that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine reduced hospital admissions by 85 per cent between 28 and 34 days after the jab. This morning comes Imperial College’s React-2 study, which paints a picture that is, on the face of it, rather less

Kristina Murkett

Prepare for the next A-level fiasco

When I was at school, the best grade you could hope to achieve on your termly report card was A5, with A being the highest grade for attainment, and 5 being the lowest grade for effort. I expect there will be a lot more students hoping for, and outright expecting, their own A5s this summer.  In light of the news that GCSEs and A-levels exams will be cancelled this year, Ofqual has now confirmed that grades will be decided by teachers. Schools can use mock exams, coursework and essays, or assessments set by exam boards, but these are optional, will not be taken in exam conditions, nor decide final grades. Make no mistake:

The Spectator

Letters: Immunity passports are nothing to fear

Nothing to fear Sir: Many of us await the day when we can travel abroad for much-anticipated holidays — but surely there is a distinction between immunisation passports and Tony Blair-type IDs (‘Papers, please’, 13 February)? If a country requires you to be immunised to travel there in order to protect its citizens against Covid, then I would be happy to have that ‘passport’ requirement. It is quite different from carrying ID with you in your own country. Let’s face it, the danger from Covid will fade in time, and the ‘passport’ requirement along with it. After all we happily travel with a passport in our pockets to show who