Society

Wednesday

Silkie Carlo

Has your local shop blacklisted you?

Britain’s obsession with surveillance is reaching new heights. Several of the UK’s largest retailers have quietly installed facial recognition checkpoints on their doorways and inside their shops. It means that automated identity checks are taking place on our high streets without customers even being aware of it. You won’t be informed if your photo is taken and added to a watchlist, and no police report is required The cameras look like any other CCTV cameras, except they take a biometric scan of every customer’s face, like at a passport e-gate. The facial recognition scans are then compared against a private database run by the software company Facewatch. The database is

Terry Barnes

Lidia Thorpe has emboldened protests against King Charles

King Charles and Queen Camilla flew to Samoa for the Commonwealth leaders’ meeting early on Wednesday, after completing their visit to Australia the previous day. Not, however, without again being confronted by the historic grievances of Aboriginal community leaders. It was a disgraceful display of look-at-me exhibitionism, but Monday’s one-woman disruption of the King and Queen’s formal welcome by part-Aboriginal firebrand senator and full-time activist, Lidia Thorpe, gave others licence to express their concerns directly to King Charles. It was no surprise that they took the heavily indigenous-flavoured last day of the royal itinerary to do just that. Unlike Thorpe’s outbursts on Monday, those remonstrations were very polite and low-key.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The gratuitous trade in images of Palestinian pain

It is getting to the point where I am dreading going online. For I know the minute I open my laptop I will be exposed to the grimmest images of human suffering. The internet is awash with dead Palestinians. Their broken bodies clog up social media. Their ashen remains get thousands of shares. ‘Look at this’, cry the death-sharers, as they post another photo of something that was once a human being. The grisly trade in images of Palestinian pain is starting to feel more exploitative than insightful. It is less about raising awareness than about stoking a gut feeling. Its impact is visceral, not political. It is a pornography

Tuesday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Paddington shouldn’t have been given a passport

Paddington has an official passport. The makers of the new Paddington film Paddington in Peru revealed this in passing to the Radio Times today.  They needed the passport for scenes in the new movie, presumably showing Paddington clearing customs on his journey back to darkest Peru. So they approached the Home Office for a facsimile, which is odd in itself, given that any decent prop hand on a film set can rustle one up for you – one that will fool a camera, anyway – in half an hour.  The issues around immigration are often reduced to the level of a CGI bear – because this is the level at which many of the country’s

Niall Gooch

The cowardice of the Chris Kaba case

Since 2010, British police have shot dead 30 people. This works out at an average of around 2.1 people per year. In two consecutive years – 2012-13 and 2013-14 – not a single person was fatally shot by police in the UK. In 2023-24, the last period for which we have full data, it was two; for 2022-23, it was three. Which is to say that incidents where the British police kill people are vanishingly rare. It is highly unusual for the roughly 6,000 licensed firearms officers in England and Wales to use their weapons at all. Over the past decade there have been only 66 incidents where officers have fired their

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The TV industry should be worried about AI

ITV are searching for an ‘AI expert’ to ‘create TV shows, films and digital content’, and to use this possibly baleful new algorithmic technology for ‘character development’ and ‘ideation’. The successful applicant will be ideating away for a tidy salary of up to £95,000 per annum.  AI could be a game-changer for TV and film, and not the good kind as far as workers in the industry are concerned. It’s taken a long while for technology to mount a serious threat to the sector, though its knock-on effect has been one of the big reasons that the quality of TV and film has declined in recent years. People who would

Danny Shaw

Labour should be wary of scrapping short prison sentences

What is the point of a short prison sentence? David Gauke will no doubt think carefully about that question now that he’s been confirmed as the chair of the long-awaited Sentencing Review. Launched by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), it aims to provide ideas for a new framework of sentencing across England and Wales that ministers hope will help keep the prison population in check and drive up the use of alternatives to prison.  Replacing short prison terms with community sentences is one idea that Gauke has favoured in the past and it’s gaining currency again. But it’s not straightforward, as I’ll explain. Even a short prison sentence has its

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Mass prisoner releases aren’t working

Today, over a thousand offenders will walk out of jail early as part of the government’s ongoing emergency scheme to ease the pressure on our crippled prison system. This time at least officials have dropped the pretence that no dangerous criminals will walk free earlier than a judge decided they should serve. Goodbye just deserts, hello justice by logistics.   It remains to be seen whether we’ll witness the previous disgraceful scenes of people celebrating with champagne in front of our prisons.  But our criminal justice system is so hollowed out by complacency and incompetence, I wouldn’t bet against it happening again.  As well as undermining public confidence in the rule of

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Newcastle, Saudi Arabia and desperate decline of English football

Is a major scandal over the sale of Newcastle United to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund about to engulf the club? And perhaps cause embarrassment to some high-profile politicians too? Leaked WhatsApps sent by Amanda Staveley (the businesswoman who helped negotiate the deal) made the front page of the Daily Telegraph yesterday. They suggest that assurances given during the takeover that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was not personally managing the deal were not quite accurate. Mohammed Bin Salman will probably have no direct role in the running of the club Staveley’s WhatsApps reveal that a delicate stage of the negotiations the Crown Prince was ‘losing patience’. Does that mean that the Gulf potentate was really calling the

Monday

Alexander Larman

Keir Starmer’s concerning decision to ditch Shakespeare’s portrait

Politicians are said to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. In the case of Keir Starmer, he campaigned in the most uninspiring, plodding prose imaginable, and has now chosen to govern in what might politely be compared to a child’s first attempt at poetry. It is all word-vomit and incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo.  The country needed a leader who could make a passionate and convincing case for the importance of literature. What we got instead was an Arsenal obsessive Still, this befits the character of a man who, according to reports, has overseen a steady exodus of portraits of key British figures from the walls of No. 10. First came down

Rhys Laverty

The strange paradox of Britain’s treatment of miscarriages

Since this month, the UK government has been able to send mothers condolences for the deaths of children whom it would have been perfectly happy to allow to be killed in different circumstances. This situation has been created by the expansion of the government’s baby loss certificate scheme, which was launched back in February. It allowed mothers who, since 2018, have experienced a miscarriage before 24 weeks of pregnancy, to receive ‘a certificate in memory of your baby’. Miscarriages after this point are registered as stillbirths. Last week, the scheme expanded to include all miscarriages prior to 2018. If personhood can be conferred or defined then it can be withdrawn

Terry Barnes

Ignore the heckling, Charles’s Australia visit has been a triumph

If King Charles and Queen Camilla were feeling a tad apprehensive about their reception in Australia, they needn’t have worried. Already half-way into their visit to Australia, the reception for the royal couple has been as warm and sunny as the Sydney weather over the weekend and, so far, all has gone very well. The was a small glitch on Friday night, when the King and Queen’s plane was about to touch down at Sydney airport. The sails of the Sydney Opera House had been illuminated with images from Charles and Camilla’s previous visits. The King and Queen were supposed to be able to see the Opera House from the air, but were

Debbie Hayton

Parents should be worried about Labour’s trans plans

Keir Starmer’s new Office for Equality and Opportunity – launched earlier this month – purports to ensure that ‘equality is at the heart of every mission’. The terrifying reality might be something rather different. One key immediate priority is a ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’. The government has said, ‘Conversion practices are abuse. They have no place in society and must be stopped.’ A ban on conversion practices could have a chilling effect on ordinary people across society But here’s something: they have already been stopped. Abusive practices are illegal, and there is scant evidence of them happening anywhere in the UK. Stories of quacks delivering electric shocks in a futile

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Is it time to ban the boy band?

It was Oprah Winfrey, I think, who said that ‘if you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are’. I read that to mean that if you get famous when you are young – get famous before you have a stable sense of yourself – then you are in trouble.   One Direction’s Liam Payne, who struggled with depression and addiction before falling to his death last week after what seems to have been his umpteenth relapse on drink and drugs, is only the latest in a long line of those who reached adulthood damaged beyond repair by fame.   The chimney-sweeps and cotton

Jawad Iqbal

What is the point of the Commonwealth? 

The Commonwealth is outdated, pointless and increasingly irrelevant. What better time to point this out than on the day when this historical oddity – born out of the ashes of the British empire – begins its biennial shindig? The 27th meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government summit gets underway in the Pacific island of Samoa today – with a plentiful dose of  pomp and ceremony – under the official theme, ‘One Resilient Common Future: Transforming our Common Wealth’. Who dreams up this stuff? It is the first time the event is being hosted by a Pacific island nation and the first time King Charles will deliver the opening address

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does Wes Streeting’s ten-year NHS plan amount to anything?

The Health Secretary is making a big fanfare about a cash boost in the Budget and a new plan to reform the NHS so that it becomes a more community-based, prevention-focused service. But at the moment, his plan for the health service is very much in nascent form: the government is nowhere near close to publishing it and is instead going to start asking for ideas from the public and healthcare workers.  Wes Streeting’s ministerial colleague Stephen Kinnock sketched out how this consultation would run when he spoke at The Spectator’s health fringe at Labour conference. He told us that there would be a lengthy ‘national conversation’ about what people

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland has become a hostile environment for Jews

Is Ireland the most anti-Semitic country in Europe? Most Irish people would vehemently disagree. But if you asked: ‘is Ireland the most anti-Israeli country in Europe?’ then many people here would actually take the question as a compliment. Hating Israel is not just acceptable in Ireland, it has become virtually mandatory. The latest evidence for this took place at a county council meeting in Dublin on 7 October, the anniversary of the Hamas pogrom. A Fine Gael councillor, Punam Rane, engaged in one of the oldest tropes in the book when she claimed that: ‘The entire US economy is ruled by the Jews, by Israel.’   Matters reached joyously absurd levels

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Nepo babies will never know the joy of making it on their own

Did you know that Bruce Springsteen’s son, Sam, is a fireman? Fireman Sam Springsteen. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Good on Sam: the child of a star, doing something useful for a living. Brooklyn Beckham-Peltz, the daddy of all nepo babies who has just launched his own brand of hot sauce, could learn a thing or two. Nepo babies, despite their apparent good fortune, will forever be one of life’s plus ones Beckham junior, son of David, might also take a leaf out the books of other celeb offspring who are doing something useful. The daughters of Richard Branson and Roger Taylor have both worked as doctors.

Robin Ashenden

John le Carré and the perils of resurrecting Smiley

Next week, a new novel comes out featuring George Smiley, John le Carré’s meek, mild, fiercely intelligent Cold War spymaster.  Karla’s Choice will be the tenth book where Smiley plays a central role, yet this time there is a difference. It isn’t le Carré, who died in 2020, telling us the story, but his son Nicholas Cornwell (under his usual pen name of Nick Harkaway).  Harkaway, determined to continue and build on le Carré’s legacy, said earlier this month that his father had given him permission to ‘write into this world.’ Following Silverview (a le Carré novel Harkaway finished for his father after the author’s death), Karla’s Choice, we’re told, is set in the period between The

Saturday

Lisa Hilton

Richard Dawkins, Nicholas Farrell, Mary Wakefield, Lisa Hilton and Philip Hensher

33 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Richard Dawkins reads his diary for the week (1:21); Nicholas Farrell argues that Italy is showing the EU the way on migration (6:33); Mary Wakefield reflects on the horrors, and teaching, of the Second World War (13:54); Lisa Hilton examines what made George Villiers a favourite of King James I (19:10); and a local heroin addict makes Philip Hensher contemplate his weight (27:10).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.