Society

A conventional hierarchy of print media would put serious journalism at the top. Far beneath that would be tabloid journalism. And then at the very bottom would be advertising. Except, in one respect, I think that order should be reversed. Yesterday’s advertising is much more interesting than yesterday’s serious journalism. I suspect this is because advertising, like tabloid journalism, reflects what people really care about — and always have done. Gossip. Sex. How to attract the opposite gender. What car to buy. Health complaints. Miracle cures. Death. Money. The Beckhams. The Windsors. The new 55in QLED 4K television. At last relief from embarrassing itching. Love Island’s Kaz Crossley displays her

The Spectator is a child of the 19th century, and damned proud of it. First published in 1828, the link provided by its 10,000 issues to a long-vanished age of Regency waistlines and Romantic poets is one of the great wonders of journalism. Its success was built upon Victorian foundations, yet it is a peculiarity of the current media landscape that The Spectator, the only current affairs magazine actually to have been published in the 19th century, should in many ways seem the least Victorian of the lot. The New Statesman, Prospect, Standpoint: all have a certain quality of moral earnestness that one could imagine Gladstone admiring. The Spectator, by

The Spectator has always known when and how to wield the scalpel. A tour through its history reveals how, from the get-go, it mercilessly parodied the world in which it lived. When still six weeks young, The Spectator savaged the morbid obsessions of late-Georgian society. The caricaturist George Cruikshank exposed the press’s fetishisation of a contemporary murder: the accompanying article, ‘Points of Horror!!!!’, tartly noted that ‘the taste for murder in the enlightened public’ was ‘so extravagantly eager, that murderers will come to be held in the light of public benefactors’. As for the coronation ceremony of Queen Victoria in 1837, it was deemed to have combined ‘that love of

There was an interesting moment at the government’s daily Covid-19 press briefing a couple of weeks ago. Angela McLean, the Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, was reiterating the government’s core message. ‘What really matters’, she said, ‘is that people stay home, protect lives and save the NHS’. Then, a look of confusion, possibly even concern, took over her face. She raised a finger to her mouth and said: ‘Or is it the other way around…?’ In short, she couldn’t remember, for a moment, which message was most important: protecting lives or saving the NHS. She did have the message wrong. The government’s latest public-health adverts make clear what the moral priorities

It seems odd to be writing about the transgender debate amid the coronavirus crisis, but in some ways, it’s important that normal life, where possible, goes on amid that crisis. That is one good reason for parliament returning to business this week. That business includes Commons select committee hearings on things other than coronavirus. Today, Liz Truss was at the Women and Equalities Select Committee in her role as minister for equalities, overseeing the Government Equalities Office. That brief includes the trans issue and the – postponed, possibly forever – reform of the Gender Recognition Act. Truss’s opening remarks to the committee were interesting and worthy of attention because she

These are dark times that are affecting all of us, but I see a glimmer of hope for communities like mine in the Peak District in Derbyshire. Our group’s community-led response, in the face of coronavirus has given me faith that we, and areas like ours, will come out of this with a renewed sense of community and local civil society will be stronger than ever. I live in Chapel-en-le-Frith in the High Peak. The area has recently transitioned from a large village into a small town, as new developments have steadily increased our numbers over the past few decades. Prior to this crisis, people’s view on the sense of

Over the next few weeks we are likely to start hearing more and more about a growing death toll – not the one from Covid-19 but the one from other conditions. Disturbingly, it appears to be rising, and we are going to have to start asking what role the lockdown has played in this. In its latest release on weekly deaths in England and Wales, released this morning, the Office for National Statistics reveals that there were 18,516 deaths in the week ending 10 April. That is 7,996 more than the five-year average for deaths in this particular week of the year. However, in only 6,213 cases was Covid-19 recorded as

It occurs to me that one of the most important lessons we’ve learnt so far during this time of plague is that the majority of the glitterati, TV journalists and armchair epidemiologists on Twitter, are all scientifically illiterate. This is not a new phenomenon. One of my most precious possessions is a copy of CP Snow’s 1959 Rede lecture on the ‘two cultures’ – science and the humanities. At the time he suggested you had: ‘Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf mutual incomprehension – sometimes hostility and dislike, but most of all a lack

As those who have been keeping a close eye on the number of daily coronavirus cases and deaths in the UK can attest, it appears that good news may be on the horizon. Over the past few days the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 has begun to show signs of plateauing, while the number of daily reported UK deaths (which does not include deaths outside hospitals) has been steadily reducing. The positive signs suggest the worst may be over and the virus has peaked. Some are now suggesting it’s time to seriously consider leaving the lockdown – and fast. Speaking on Newsnight last night, Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based