Society

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Should Muslim parents be allowed to challenge LGBT lessons?

We saw two different worlds, or at least two different value systems, collide in the High Court in Birmingham this week. On one side there was Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, the headmistress of Anderton Park, a little primary school in Sparkhill, a largely Pakistani bit of the city; on the other, two men who represent Muslim parents there. You may well have heard about the case. It has turned into one of those totemic issues: tolerant Britain vs backward religious people. At issue is the question of whether and how children should be taught about gay relationships — and whether and how parents who don’t like it should be allowed to protest

Benedict Spence

It’s not just hooligans – hipsters also love a football shirt

When I was young, from about the age of nine to 13, I went through what my parents recall with a shudder as ‘the football shirt phase’. Where some children rebel by smoking, and others take to eyeliner, my vice was polyester. My first shirt was a quirky one — an early Noughties AS Bari white and red home shirt with an itchy collar. The thing smelled of washing powder no matter how much I wore it — which was daily for the best part of three months one very hot Italian summer. I’d wear football shirts everywhere, from family meals to drinks parties, trips into town and to Mass.

Lucy Vickery

Back space

In Competition No. 3120 you were invited to submit a poem reflecting on the Apollo 11 moon landing written in the style of the poet of your choice.   Cath Nichols’s enjoyable entry looked back on the lot of the Apollo wives through Wendy Cope’s acerbic eye. Nick MacKinnon was also an accomplished Cope impersonator:   Bloody men are like bloody rockets, you wait nearly five billion years and as soon as one feels up your craters another Apollo appears…   Rufus Rutherford, channelling Basho, submitted a charming haiku. And Robert Schechter, as Ogden Nash, also kept it brief: To the marvellous event that happened fifty years ago I dedicate

Wednesday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Meet the top cop who wants to police your pronouns

What is the purpose of the police? Maybe your answer has something to do with “preventing crime” or “arresting criminals”. Or maybe you think it’s the job of officers of the law to tell us how to behave, to police our conduct, and to make sure we all speak to each other nicely. In which case, the copper for you is Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke of Cheshire Police. DCC Cooke has rather a big job in Cheshire, where there were more than 30,000 violent crimes in the year to August 2019 and the monthly rate of violent crime is up by more than 50 per cent in the last

Simon Cottee

The warped world of the British Isis fugitive Tooba Gondal​

Tooba Gondal, a notorious female Isis recruiter from Britain, was until Sunday a captive in the Ain Issa camp in north-eastern Syria. Now that the camp has fallen amid the chaos that is unfolding in the region, she is free again, as are hundreds of the other foreign denizens of the camp she was housed with. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. In April the Rojava Information Center in Syria published an interview with Tooba Gondal in which she expressed her desire to return to the UK with her children. It is possible that this is now where she is headed. Gondal, 25, is wily, resourceful and tough – and probably in possession

Tom Slater Tom Slater

What Extinction Rebellion and the People’s Vote campaign have in common

Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced it will finish its ‘Autumn Uprising’ earlier than planned in order to make way for the People’s Vote march on Saturday. The two groups have been in informal discussions for some time aimed at avoiding getting in one another’s way, according to a report in the Times. Even if the Metropolitan Police’s draconian city-wide ban on XR may have made such a deal unnecessary, it reminds us how much the groups have in common. It’s not exactly a stretch to say these two predominantly bourgeois movements may have some crossover in support. Talking to the Times, People’s Vote comms chief Tom Baldwin said: ‘I don’t

Tuesday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Extinction Rebellion has already won

‘I wouldn’t be here if you were a climate denier’. This was William Skeaping, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (ER), talking to Toby Young on The Spectator podcast. That statement tells us much about the environmental pressure group’s tactics and strategy. It also reveals that, in the battle behind the climate war, Extinction Rebellion has already won. ‘Deny’ these ‘truths’ and we will simply refuse to talk to you. You will be nothing to us. That’s the message from ER. Skeaping’s words were a neat framing of his movement’s preconditions for engaging in debate. The terms would seem to be these: agree that the future of life on the planet is in

Toby Young Toby Young

Is hate crime really on the rise?

The Guardian ran a story on its website today headlined: ‘Hate crimes doubled in England and Wales in five years.’ Alarming if true, but is it? The story is based on some data released by the Home Office today which, on the face of it, does appear to show the number of hate crimes increasing. The number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2018-19 was 103,397, up from 94,121 in 2017-18, a rise of ten per cent. But drill down into the report, and the picture becomes more hazy. The word doing most of the work here is ‘recorded’. Yes, the number of recorded

Douglas Murray

On black privilege

Discussions of ‘privilege’ have become one of the themes of this age. In a short space of time, the obsession with the subject has forced its way from the margins of the social sciences right into the centre of all cultural and political debate. Politics and office politics is increasingly consumed by it. One day it is Rory Stewart being asked to account for his privilege by that ghetto-denizen Cathy Newman. Another it is Don Lemon being talked over by a black trans woman at the mass asylum breakout that constituted last week’s Democrats LBGT Town Hall. Everywhere the privilege discussion is the same. Who has privilege? Who should give it

David Green

Six ways to reform the market economy

There is a big temptation to see the coming general election as a contest between advocates of a Corbynite command economy and liberal champions of the market. The trouble with that narrative is that there are many forms of a market economy, and even ardent capitalists see that there are fundamental flaws in the prevailing system. Currently there are two dominating business cultures: entrepreneurial and extractive. Only the former is compatible with a prosperous future for the UK. Entrepreneurial culture is about creating wealth by investing in productive assets and employing people to develop improved goods and services. Extractive business culture is very different and many commentators on both sides

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The myth of Britain’s air pollution pandemic

It is a good thing that there is an air pollution bill in the Queen’s Speech today. We should not have to tolerate foul air. But the suggestion that this will be addressing some dramatic and growing crisis is misplaced. The idea that Britain is in the midst of a ‘silent pandemic’ of air pollution deaths – as claimed by a UN Special Rapporteur two years ago – is not even slightly aligned with the truth. In fact, air pollution in Britain has fallen dramatically over the past half century. A clean air act is about furthering huge progress that has already been made, not about challenging some growing problem.    

Robert Jackman

The fightback against the 5G conspiracy theorists

According to reports this morning, the government is planning to issue an order to all local councils forbidding them from stopping trials of 5G mobile broadband on the basis of what it considers to be unfounded safety claims. For those that not familiar, 5G (literally ‘fifth generation’) is the next wave of wireless internet which will apparently boost our connection speeds tenfold and increase the UK’s productivity by some £2bn a year. Yet three councils – Totnes, Glastonbury and Frome – are opposing local trials of 5G masts until they’re convinced it doesn’t present an increased cancer risk. The government wants them to think again. An increased cancer risk might sound

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Mumsnet, Flora and the spread of the corporate culture wars

There is something endearingly British about Mumsnet’s bloodymindedness. A website that, in theory, should be about the extortionate cost of childcare and moaning that Dear Husband forgot to take the bins out again has somehow found itself in the vanguard of the radical feminist movement. That quirk has now cost the site a partnership with Flora, which severed ties over what activists called ‘trans-hostile posts’ on Mumsnet’s forums. A margarine substitute producer might not be the kind of firm you’d expect to have strong political views but women discussing their sex-based rights on the internet seems to scrape their toast the wrong way. I can’t believe it’s not misogyny. Here’s

James Kirkup James Kirkup

A ‘transphobic’ crime wave has hit Oxford

Oxford is suffering a crime wave. Police are investigating numerous serious offences over more than six months. Thames Valley Police has issued this sweeping statement about unacceptable acts in the city: “Thames Valley Police is appealing for witnesses following a number of public offences in Oxford. Officers are investigating a large number of offensive stickers that have been placed across Oxford city centre containing transphobic comments. It is believed they started appearing in March 2019 within the High Street, Catte Street and Parks Road area. Investigating officer PC Rebecca Nightingale based at St Aldates police station said: “Behaviour like this is not acceptable and we take incidents of this nature

Sunday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Asians are doing too well – they must be stopped

Riddle: when is discrimination against a historically disadvantaged racial minority perfectly legal? Answer: when they do too well. The first ruling on the Students for Fair Admissions suit against Harvard University is in. A federal judge in Massachusetts concluded last week that for America’s be-all-and-end-all university to discriminate against Asian applicants in order to serve the all-hallowed goal of ‘diversity’ is constitutional. (Or strictly speaking, if you can follow this logic, the university did not discriminate against Asians by discriminating against them.) The reasoning: ‘Race conscious admissions will always penalise to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process.’ The decision has already been appealed, and

James McSweeney

Are we heading for a climate apocalypse? Not again

I was five years old when the world first ended. That was in 2000, the year that a United Nations official predicted 11 years before that entire nations would be wiped out by rising sea levels. Since then, I have survived the Arctic melting on at least six separate occasions (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018), to say nothing of the geopolitical chaos that followed the oil shortages of 2015. As of last year, my troubles have been worsened by the complete submersion of the Maldives, which has narrowed my holiday options. This week, as I ventured into London to shop for a woolly jumper and flippers ahead of

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems about the yellowhammer

For the latest competition you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from John Clare’s lovely ‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’ to Robert Burns’s unlovely ‘The Yellow, Yellow Yorlin’ (‘But I took her by the waist, an’ laid her down in haste/, For a’ her squakin’ an’ squalin…’ and you took up this challenge with gusto. Strong performers, in a top-notch and wide-ranging entry, included Bill Greenwell and David Shields. The winners, below, earn £25 each. W.J. Webster A certain subtle, govian fellow, When asked what code name he preferred, Chose ‘hammer’ as a striking word Then made his point by adding ‘yellow’. For, emberiza

Saturday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

All ages are gullible – including our own

In the great days of the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, when I was a youth, that acid but hilarious satire on contemporary Britain had a cast of imaginary characters of whom one of my favourites was the Very Reverend Dr Spacely-Trellis, the ‘go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon’. Spacely-Trellis was a ‘modern’ Anglican of the sort disposed to question the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, and quite possibly the existence of a deity. Most of those interludes featuring the left-of-centre bishop ended with him in the pulpit and in full cry about the evils of the hour, concluding ‘We are all guilty!’ as his despairing flock dived for the nearest

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Remainers lost – and Richard Dawkins needs to accept that

Deny Remainers oxygen Sir: Your correspondent Richard Dawkins seems to have a very tenuous grasp of logic for an academic (Diary, 5 October). He excoriates a referendum on the grounds that in the run-up the voters may have been misled. There is one choice between two alternatives, and the supporters of each outcome will do their best to persuade. Both may be less than truthful. Yet he adores a general election with five or six candidates hawking their conflicting and unfulfillable manifestos — all of them those pillars of veracity, politicians. Let us be frank. Since the shock result of 2016 we have listened to the whines of the EU fanatics

Peter Jones

Extinction Rebellion proves Aristotle was right about the follies of youth

Extinction Rebellion is blocking the streets again, foolishly demanding the impossible on a very important issue. But what does one expect from the young? As Aristotle pointed out, since they have no experience of life, they always have exalted notions and think themselves equal to great things. As a result, never having been duped before, they readily trust others and are easy meat for adult exploitation. Platonic criminal theory can help them. The ancients generally argued that society was held together by systems of rewards and penalties, and revenge, recompense and deterrence were the main features of their penal thinking. Plato, however, took a different view. He thought of crime