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Society

Wednesday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

I’m A Celebrity has been enjoyably dull

The current series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has been a big contrast to the previous two. The 2022 and 2023 camps contained politicians, and they were two particularly hot – in the potato sense – politicians. Matt Hancock and Nigel Farage carried baggage with them into the camp. In Hancock’s case, radioactive baggage. None of that this year. Ant and Dec opined last year that they were a little sick of politicians on the show, and ratings took a small tumble. There was a feeling that Celeb was a place viewers went to escape from the sturm und drang of current affairs, and that it

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Masterchef gives me the creeps

Eating porridge with my daughter this morning (me brown sugar; her honey) I was telling her about Ready Brek, and the boy in the advert going to school surrounded by a warm glow. She shushed me: they were talking about porridge on the radio! In fact they were talking about a successor to Ready Brek called Porridge Pot. Someone said it was more like a pudding than a breakfast cereal, and was one of the processed foods adding to the obesity crisis. Masterchef fetishises fine-dining Then a foodie guru came on and told us about the pleasures of real porridge. Obviously I was the choir for her preaching. Or was

Francis Pike

South Korea has a long history of martial law

Yesterday afternoon South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made the shock TV announcement that he was putting his country under martial law. According to Article 77 of South Korea’s constitution, the People’ Power party President was within his rights. But why? Yoon wheeled out the standard coup trope that he needed ‘to restore order’. He argued that South Korea needed to be rescued from South Korea’s left wing Democrat party which won a majority in the unicameral National Assembly in April. Yoon accused of the Democrats of putting the country at risk from communist North Korea. But his problem was the absence of an emergency. Without that Yoon’s declaration of

Ed West Ed West

The right reason to give back the Elgin marbles

I took my daughter to Athens for a short holiday at half-term. She is studying Ancient Greek at GCSE, which makes me immensely proud as I didn’t even get that far with Latin. Delphi was wondrous but Mycenae was perhaps the most powerful: there is something about the place, as if one might close one’s eyes, touch the stone and travel back to the Age of Heroes. It is also salutary to ponder that this was once the largest city in Europe, just as Uruk, home to the written word, is now rubble. There is a streak of romantic Hellenism that runs through the British ruling class Yet the Parthenon, even though I’ve

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

The problem with the FA’s rainbow laces furore

The suits who run football in this country can always be relied upon to make a pig’s ear of things. The latest example of their capacity to cock up matters is the farce over this week’s return of the rainbow laces campaign in the Premier League. This campaign, now in its eleventh year, is an initiative backed by the charity Stonewall, in which team captains wear rainbow armbands and laces to signal support for LGBT+ inclusion and the fight against homophobia. It would be fair to say that things have not exactly gone to plan. The England and Crystal Palace defender, Marc Guehi, chose not to play ball at the

Lucy Vallance

How to prevent another Gregg Wallace scandal

‘Huw Edwards, Russell Brand, Jermaine Jenas, Phillip Schofield, Gregg Wallace… when will it end?!’ read the message from a friend. Sadly, the answer is that it won’t anytime soon. The media scandals that explode into the headlines – such as those surrounding Gregg Wallace, who is alleged to have made inappropriate comments while working on Masterchef (something he denies) – are met with fury and indignant cries. ‘How was this allowed to happen?’, people ask. But the truth is that these cases are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s easy to see how the ego of the ‘talent’ can grow to monstrous proportions Why is the broadcast media so susceptible

Alexander Larman

The new Jaguar is spectacularly hideous

Winston Churchill reputedly said ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ This adage must have been at the forefront of the minds of Jaguar’s chief executives as they unveiled the brand’s new electric concept car, the Type 00, during Miami Art Week. The company has had a torrid past few weeks as the advertisement they chose to announce their relaunch with was met with a mixture of incomprehension and ridicule. The company was accused of being everything from woke to simply incompetent at the job of selling cars that people might want to buy.  Unfortunately, the results are not just hideous, but spectacularly, provocatively so Therefore, the

Christian Wolmar

The Japanese are in for a big TfL culture shock

Tokyo Nothing can prepare the good people from Tokyo Metro – who are coming to London to run the Elizabeth Line – from the culture shock they will undoubtedly suffer here. Japan, as we all know, is a very different place and the way they operate their transport system is very different to how business is conducted here. To make it even harder for those plucky Japanese managers to adapt, the key difference is one that can only be felt rather than seen – the utter divergence in the business ethos of the two nations. Nowhere is that better expressed than in their respective railway networks. For a start, Tokyo

Robin Ashenden

Things can only get worse for Keir Starmer

Finally a date has been set – 29 January 2025 – for the government to debate points posed by the now infamous ‘Call a General Election’ petition. ‘I would like there to be another General Election,’ reads the blurb on the website. ‘I believe the current Labour government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.’ Many of the nearly three million who signed – unless they’re fantasists – will have done it more in agreement with the second statement than hope of the first. But how did we get here in under five months? Will Keir Starmer, at his announced

Justin Marozzi

Britain is finally debating cousin marriage

It is a biting winter’s evening in Cambridge and apparently we are making history. This is the first serious public discussion in the UK of the law on cousin marriage, and the desirability of legislating against it, since the mid-Victorian era. At a time when British universities seem more interested in discussing diversity, equity and inclusion and decolonising the curricula than engaging with the great issues of the day, there is an unmistakable frisson as we gather around a long beechwood table in the brightly lit Weston Room of the interfaith Woolf Institute. A portrait of the no-nonsense Princess Anne, its patron, smiles down upon us. Charles Darwin, who was

Monday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The Oxford Union has disgraced itself

The chamber of the Oxford Union, that once-proud institution, has been breached by the forces of bigotry, hatred, and mob rule. Invited to speak against an anti-Israel motion, I attended with three colleagues, each bringing unique expertise and experience to the room. But what unfolded on Thursday night was not a debate at all. It was an assault on the very principles the Union once claimed to uphold, presided over by organisers who behaved more like a mafia than custodians of an august society dedicated to free speech. This was an extremist mob dressed up like a wolf in black tie The motion for debate was itself a grotesque provocation: “This

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Is this the end for the luxury believers?

I’m not the biggest Donald Trump fan, so I surprised myself by being pleased when he won the American election so conclusively. There was a serious reason for this. Though I’m thoroughly for abortion and against sex pests, it’s no good the Democrats pretending to be the party of women’s rights when they’re in favour of allowing cheating males into female sport and perverted men into female prisons. This isn’t feminism at all, but what I’ve dubbed ‘Frankenfeminism’ which ends up making life both less fun and less safe for women – and that’s a rotten combo. But there was also a frivolous reason why I felt pleased, and that was

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why Gail’s triumphs

The bakery chain Gail’s, which opened its first branch in Hampstead less than 20 years ago, is reportedly touted for sale by Goldman Sachs with a half billion pound price tag. There are 152 outlets in the UK, all of them in relatively prosperous areas, and it has ambitious plans for expansion. But Gail’s is described as ‘divisive’; its popularity with ‘well-off, middle-class customers in the London suburbs’ being its chief offence against the Zeitgeist.  These days, I mentally calibrate almost all my discretionary spending by trying to think: if I didn’t buy this, how many Gail’s cinnamon buns could I buy with the money instead? Here is one of

Sunday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is ‘testosterone politics’ surging?

56 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Charles Cornish-Dale, an academic and bodybuilder known for writing under the pseudonym Raw Egg Nationalist. On the podcast they discuss the recent surge in testosterone politics on the right, what’s behind the fall in male testosterone levels, and why this could lead to the end of humanity… 

Emma Furnival

Why does Rachel Reeves want to destroy our family farm?

Living and working as a dairy farmer in Shropshire, I’ve witnessed firsthand the fallout from Rachel Reeves’ recent Budget. It has dealt a catastrophic blow to the farming industry, leaving many of us reeling. Just a year ago, the now Environment Minister Steve Reed promised us there would be no changes to agricultural property relief (APR). Now Labour has taken a bulldozer and smashed the policy to smithereens without any consultation with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) or the farming community, leaving us scrambling to process the changes and adapt.  The charges Labour have brought in will reshape British farming and our country’s landscape I come

Gavin Haynes

Make Schooner Scorer prime minister

The Schooner Scorer is a young man in a gilet with good bone structure, who glugs 2/3rd pints (schooners) in one fluid unbuttoning of the oesophagus.  This is a talent. Or at least, it is a thing; 440ml is not exactly a yard of ale. Even Therese Coffey could manage a full pint. But if we are all to be famous for 60 seconds on TikTok, we must be famous for something, and it is almost as though SS took a life inventory: ‘What do I enjoy? Drinking beers in widely known taverns. Well then, that shall be my calling.’ Each video is inaugurated by his catchphrase: ‘Schooner Scorer here, sixty

Saturday

Andrew Tettenborn

Is there really a human rights crisis in the Highlands?

It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands, and a demand for measures to deal with them. Problems include a high incidence of poverty; a lack of affordable housing and public transport; long trips to the nearest hospital or surgery; limited social care; cultural desertification; a lack of local places of worship suitable for refugees; limited childcare and access to fresh food; and a good deal besides. Highlanders aren’t cowering at the feet of some megalomaniac dictator in Lochaber So far, so predictable. But this report comes not from some progressive think-tank, but from

Patrick West

Is DEI dead?

The triumph of Donald Trump and the defeat of a Democratic party beholden to identity politics has prompted many to conclude that woke ideology is dead. The problem here is that people have been writing this obituary for some years now, ever since the ideology reached its apex of insanity in the summer of 2020. Still, it has refused to die. Corporations have come to realise that feigning voguish positions on social matters is not good for business However, the hyper-liberal dogma does now display tangible signs of retreat in one area: the business sector. If woke is not quite dead yet, then its opportunist capitalist offshoot, does at least

Daisy Christodoulou

How to fix VAR

Will football fans ever be happy, or are they addicted to outrage? In April, Coventry City played Manchester United in the semi-final of the FA Cup. Coventry was denied a dramatic winner in the last few minutes of extra time by the decision of the video assistant referee (VAR). It was a wildly controversial moment that focussed yet more attention on VAR, football’s attempt to provide referees with some technological support. For some, it proved that VAR is a disaster. The decision to disallow the goal for offside took away a moment of joyful spontaneity in favour of lengthy scrutiny of a TV replay that may not have had enough

Friday

Yuan Yi Zhu

History will not be kind to the MPs who backed assisted dying

Before MPs voted to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Kim Leadbeater, who has sponsored the bill, rose on a point of order. There were murmurs in the House. Then Leadbeater said, a little sheepishly, that she wanted to correct the record. She had wrongly implied that serving members of the judiciary had indicated they support the bill. The Judicial Office had written to her, telling her off; and now she was repenting at the eleventh hour. It was a fitting conclusion to a debate that has been, from beginning to the end, characterised by falsehoods. Still, MP after MP stood up and thanked Leadbeater for the way