Society

Thursday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Muhammad has been a popular name for ages

Muhammad topped the list of most popular boy’s baby names in England and Wales last year, knocking Noah from first place. The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics this morning, show that Muhammad was the most common name given to newborn boys last year; 4,661 boys were named Muhammad with 4,382 Noahs. The year before there were 4,586 Noahs and 4,177 Muhammads. When you analyse the names by different spelling, though, it becomes clear just how popular the name is. The spellings Muhammad, Mohammed, Mohammad and Mohamed combine for a total of 7,730 baby boys in 2023. That’s just over one in every 40 births. While today’s news

Robin Ashenden

The pundits’ attacks on farmers would make Alan Partridge blush

In the weeks since Rachel Reeves’s Budget and its shock attack on agricultural property relief, we’ve seen various armchair pundits pontificate on farmers’ lives – a source of mounting exasperation for farmers themselves. The peak of pundit-on-ploughman contempt came, unsurprisingly, from LBC’s James O’Brien First, there have been the panicky announcements from the government – that the threshold for agricultural tax relief is £1 million, or that no, actually, it’s £3 million if you’re under 5’8” and are married to a woman called Susan or…“Ooh, look over there! A bird!”’ We’ve had Owen Jones on Jeremy Vine declare that farmers were overreacting due to ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric from the media, that

Lynne O’Donnell

Will Trump finally stop America funding the Taliban?

For more than three years, democratic governments have been trying to pretend that Afghanistan does not exist. The embarrassed silence has given the Taliban drugs and terror cartel a free hand to transform Afghanistan into the world centre of jihad, while locking up women, and robbing western taxpayers of billions of dollars in aid and cash. After President Joe Biden’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal, following President Donald Trump’s 2020 surrender deal with the Taliban, Afghanistan became the country no one wanted to talk about. Rather than coming up with a policy for dealing with Afghanistan, the Biden administration has thrown money at it Rather than coming up with a policy for

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The marketing genius of Jaguar

Woke it may be, but Jaguar’s ‘Copy Nothing’ video is a work of marketing genius. With its ungendered models, ungrammatical slogans (‘live vivid’, ‘delete ordinary’) and strange absence of cars, the 30-second ad has brought global attention to a brand that was dying for want of a new generation of customers, in an auto industry in turmoil over its stalled transition from carbon fuel to battery power. And a week later comes the reveal in Miami of the futuristic Type 00 electric concept car that the fuss was really about. Love it or hate it, the dictum of founder Sir William Lyons that inspired the video’s title, ‘a Jaguar should be a

The Spectator

Letters: In defence of Radio 3

Vote of no confidence Sir: Rod Liddle is too harsh on those calling for another general election (‘I hope you didn’t sign that petition’, 30 November). You do not have to be a Trumpian denialist to believe the result in July raised serious concerns. Labour received just 33.7 per cent of the votes cast, yet won 411 of the 650 seats in the Commons. Labour’s total votes amounted to 23,622 per MP elected. The figure for Reform UK was 823,522. First past the post in individual constituencies works well with two major parties. But when support is significantly more divided, it is not fit for purpose. The petition was surely

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

In defence of first past the post

Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working out, after its general election, what sort of a coalition government will be entailed by its system of proportional representation. And the Germans are fretting already about whether and how a new coalition might be put together, the last one having disintegrated. A new election looms, held according to Germany’s ‘personalised proportional representation’ voting system. Voters may not have agreed on much but they did share a longing for bold and decisive government Joe, meanwhile, is a first cousin twice removed whom I didn’t even know. He’s 16, and has

Alexandra Shulman

Chanel should be led by a woman

Since I’m considering giving a small Christmas drinks party, I’ve been reading all the festive entertainment features. There are recipes for canapés (does anyone actually make their own complicated snacks?), floral arrangements, garden illuminations and individual cocktails. These suggestions are exhausting enough to put one right off the whole idea. All the experts interviewed on their entertaining skills share an insouciance about hosting which unfortunately bears no resemblance to how I feel in the run-up. They don’t appear to fret about numbers, are able to whip up simple delicious food for a cast of thousands and always hear the doorbell ring. They never seem to stress about whether it’s necessary

The Spectator

Which are our most popular museums?

Volt-face Luton’s Vauxhall plant is to close, partly because of the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate which obliges manufacturers to sell increasing proportions of electric vehicles. Remarkably, the history of the electric car can be traced back half a century earlier than the combustion engine. There are several possible claims as to who built the first road-going electric-powered vehicle, but one is a Scottish inventor, Robert Davidson, who produced one in the 1830s, about the same time as Thomas Davenport in Vermont. By the end of the 19th century electric cars were competing with petrol cars, but died out for the reasons the industry is struggling today: it was hard

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The column you don’t want to read

Curiously unobserved about last month’s US election: how astonishing it was that the candidates’ policy positions during the pandemic played a role in neither the campaigns nor the results. It may feel as if Covid was a long time ago, but do the math. It wasn’t. In the US and UK, medical hysteria gravely blighted a good two-and-a-half years of our lives, only roundly concluding a couple of years ago – if then, for several passengers on my flight to London last week were still wearing those insipid paper masks, the sight of which inspired both my pitying contempt and shudder-inducing flashbacks. Yet the biggest public health debacle in world

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron is the author of his own despair

‘Notre-Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so,’ said the President-elect Donald J. Trump this week, as he confirmed that he would be honouring Emmanuel Macron with his presence for the big reopening of France’s most famous cathedral on Saturday. ‘It will be a very special day for all!’ Just like Trump, Macron relishes such stately occasions, and it would be churlish to deny him credit for Notre-Dame’s impressive reconstruction following the devastating fire that shocked the world in 2019. Paul McCartney has reportedly been given an ‘exceptional authorisation’ to sing ‘Imagine’ within the sacred walls, while the rapper Pharrell Williams will perform outside. Victor

Peter Jones

How Aesop’s fables apply to today’s politics

Aesop’s animal fables, as Robin Waterfield points out in his new translation, were certainly not written for children: the animals are ‘brutal, cunning, predatory, treacherous, and ruthless’, despising the weak and mocking people’s misfortunes. The ancients regularly used them against political opponents. Plenty could be so used today. Gnat, who had settled on Bull’s horn, was about to fly off when he asked Bull whether he wanted him to go away. Bull replied: ‘When you came, I didn’t feel you. And when you go, I won’t feel you either.’ Obviously, Nigel Farage or David Lammy with Donald Trump. So: match the following three fables with the late John Prescott, Rachel

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Can Meghan and Harry stoop any lower?

Looking back on the Queen’s 1992 ‘annus horribilis’, the events involved – though surprising at the time – seem almost staid now. The wife of her favourite son was photographed canoodling with an American. Her daughter divorced. Her daughter-in-law was the co-creator of a frank book about the sorrows of her marriage to the Queen’s eldest son, and to top it off, Windsor Castle burnt down. There’s a whiff of Sunset Boulevard about the isolated pair as they flail around wondering where to go next Three decades on, there’s a marked difference between the Queen’s awful year and that of her grandson, Prince Harry. The Queen’s year might have happened

Douglas Murray

Beware the Qataris

I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The late Queen had to greet Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. This week the King and Prince and Princess of Wales had to meet the Emir of Qatar and his wife. True to form, the state media in Britain managed to miss every major problem with this. The BBC did say that there might be protests around the visit because of Qatar’s record on ‘LGBT rights’. But more troubling is that Britain should ever have welcomed the leadership of such a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet. It’s troubling that

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The many faces of pigs in blankets

There are not many phrases that offend me more than ‘pigs in blankets’. The correct name for this dish is, of course, kilted sausages. In fact, the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage has many incorrect names: the Irish go with kilted soldiers while the Germans call them Bernese sausages. The Americans for some reason wrap hotdogs in croissant pastry and call them saucisson en croûte, as though they’re some kind of European delicacy, à la Escoffier. Careful though, sometimes these deviations in name mask a greater sin. One Christmas, my posh nan promised ‘devils riding horseback’. I was thrilled for what I assumed must be the Nigella-fied version. Instead, she served baked

Philip Hensher

The joy of the Turkish barber

Just as you always hope will happen, I knew I had met the man of my dreams almost on sight. I had made a booking the day before. I arrived. Burak was just finishing the previous customer and gestured with a comb towards an armchair. A Turkish coffee was brought. The customer paid and left and I took his place in the chair before the mirror. ‘Now, sir,’ Burak said, with an ingratiating formality not quite his own. ‘What can I…’ But as he was asking about the haircut, the nervous pale English boy at the next station in the barber’s interrupted. ‘Er, Burak,’ he said, tremulously. ‘I wonder, er,

Melissa Kite

Tenerife is a soap opera in the sun

A warm Sahara wind was blowing and by late afternoon the western sky where it met the sea was the colour of golden sand. Surfers bobbed like seals on the milky ocean, waiting for a wave. It stretched like a sheet of silk all the way to the golden horizon. Lying by the hotel pool facing the seafront, I was watching the surfers, the fishing boats, the palm trees waving on the promenade, and something else. ‘John, I just need to be honest with you,’ said a glamorous, buxom, pink-lipsticked blonde lady in her sixties wearing a leopard-print sarong, sitting on a sunbed sideways facing the back of a slim,

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 7 December 2024

I have just discovered a new (to me) podcast called Sorry, Partner hosted by Catherine Harris and Jocelyn Startz, two American enthusiasts, who interview top bridge players for their blog. I found it when I googled Portuguese international star Antonio Palma. Among many other things, I found out that he plays in at least one tournament a month and that his favourites are Madeira and WBT (World Bridge Tour). I couldn’t agree more! I really liked this hand from the World Bridge Games in Buenos Aires, which Antonio played in the qualifying rounds, against one of the lower ranked teams. West was the unlucky player who came in with 2♠.

Toby Young Toby Young

Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society

Bishop did not wish to be associated with ‘someone who appears to be modelling himself on a Bond villain’ In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things, that aborting babies with gay genes was ‘common sense’ and that ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that their [blacks] intelligence is the same as ours [whites] – whereas all the testing says not really’. He also defended the explanation offered by Larry Summers of why there are fewer female professors in Stem subjects than male – there are more men at the right-hand tail of the IQ

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Ginger Rogers theory of information

I had a friend whose approach to entrepreneurialism was to take two separate things that seemed stupidly popular and somehow find a way to combine them. He thought karaoke was ridiculous; his friend thought 24-hour rolling news channels were daft. The two of them created a 24-hour karaoke channel in Asia – and sold it at a sizeable profit. The idea of gynogenic climate change holds that the planet is warming up, but that it is women who are to blame Following this model, I wondered if it might be a useful thought-experiment to contrive political theories which are annoying to people on both the left and the right. The