Society

Wednesday

Linden Kemkaran

What’s the problem with Anthony Ekundayo Lennon identifying as black?

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon, the white director who has identified as black, is on the receiving end of a backlash from black and ethnic minority actors. They are aggrieved that Lennon has taken a black person’s place on an Arts Council England-funded programme. The Independent’s Paula Akpan lambasted Lennon, “you don’t get to pick and discard which signifiers of blackness you’re going to wear. Choosing when to don a cape of blackness is a luxury that black people do not have”. Yet substitute the word ‘black’ for ‘woman’, and you suddenly see why it was possible that Lennon felt he could simply become whatever it was he felt inside. Self-identification is everything, sensible debate

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Even Oxford University can’t save Jenni Murray from the transgender activist mob

Here we go again. Perhaps there should be a template for journalists writing about transgender issues and the treatment of women with the “wrong” opinions. The template would look something like this: A small group of noisy, angry people, many of them male, have demanded that [Insert woman’s name] not be allowed to speak/ appear/ have a job/ do anything because [woman] once said things the small group of people didn’t like or agree with. Really, we could use it for so many cases and so many women: Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Janice Turner, Posy Parker, Linda Bellos… Quite a diverse list that: makes you wonder what it is they have

Toby Young Toby Young

In defence of Roger Scruton

Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.’ Unfortunately, that experience is due to intensify for the 74-year-old conservative philosopher. Last weekend, the government announced it had set up a commission to try and make new housing developments ‘beautiful’ and appointed Sir Roger as its chair. It’s one of the few sensible things the present government has done; so, of course, it’s caused a scandal. Within minutes of Sir

Toby Young Toby Young

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon and the left’s dilemma about race

I feel some sympathy for the director Anthony Ekundayo Lennon. According to the Sunday Times, which broke the story last weekend, he’s the beneficiary of an Arts Council England grant intended for ‘theatre practitioners of colour’ even though he’s white. To obtain the grant, Lennon described himself as ‘mixed heritage’ but what’s interesting about this case is that both the Arts Council and the theatre he’s linked to are standing by him. They have defended his right to identify as a person of colour, claiming it’s not an act of deception but a choice he’s made and which they respect. Needless to say, he’s come in for a fair amount of

Tuesday

Rebecca O'Connor

Has HMRC done enough to solve the botched implementation of child benefit charges?

You’ve just had a baby. Life is upside down, but in a good way. A couple of months in, you are talking to your antenatal group and someone mentions child benefit. It’s not something you’d have thought you’d be eligible for, as you and your partner earn too much to get any benefits, as a rule. You go to the HMRC website, fill out the form and get a letter back. ‘I am writing to tell you that you are entitled to child benefit at £20.70 a week’, it begins. ‘Brill, that will pay for the nappies’, you think. So you take it and you are £1,076.40 a year to

Dominic Green Dominic Green

Life & Arts Podcast: Heather Mac Donald on how race and gender pandering corrupts universities

This week on the Spectator USA Life & Arts podcast, I’m casting the pod with Heather Mac Donald. A scholar at the Manhattan Institute, Heather is the author of The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, a scathing and accurate critique of just about everything that’s gone wrong with American higher education. In her previous book, The War on Cops, Heather tried, she says, “to give voice to the millions of law-abiding minority residents of high-crime areas who support the police and are desperate for more law enforcement protection.” When she was invited to speak at Claremont McKenna College in California, student

Robert Jackman

Mumsnet and the British media aren’t ‘transphobic’

Is the British media transphobic? Yes, according to a writer in the Outline, a US publication, who accuses the Times and the Guardian of rampant bigotry in the row about gender. Several prominent British feminists are also singled out for alleged ‘hate-peddling’. The logic here is muddled but is worth unpicking. The author appears to claim that the views of British feminists like Helen Lewis (who has urged caution over the Government’s proposal to reform the Gender Recognition Act) are somehow comparable to the Trump administration, which is – according to the New York Times – seeking to remove legal protections for transgender individuals. This is a complete misunderstanding of both debates. Right now,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The good news about the developing world you probably haven’t heard

The world’s poor are, as we know, suffering under the yoke of capitalism, getting ever poorer as we rich grab an ever-greater share of the world’s resources and pollute the environment for everyone else. We know this because the Left keeps telling us so. But amidst the unrelenting gloom of an ever-more unequal world, one might think there would be a little room for reporting the odd piece of positive news. Yet it is not easy to find. One thing you probably haven’t seen this week are the latest statistics from the International Energy Authority (IEA) which show that the number of people without access to an electricity supply in

Sunday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: a life in sixteen lines

The latest challenge, to supply a short verse biography of a well-known figure from history, produced a commendable entry in which notables long gone — Diotisalvi, Vercingetorix the Gaul, Dr Dee — rubbed shoulders with those still very much with us — Anthony Weiner, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson. There were borrowings from Edward Lear and Lennon and McCartney (‘BoJo was a clown who thought he was a leader/ Made it to King Charles Street too…’) as well as echoes of Ogden Nash. An honourable mention goes to Brian Allgar for getting into the Halloween spirit with his life of Vlad the impaler. On equally eye-catching form were D.A. Prince, Sylvia

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Will a ‘zero tolerance’ approach stop attacks on NHS staff?

Obviously it is wrong to attack NHS staff. But does the government’s new ‘zero tolerance’ policy consider why such attacks take place? There are eternal reasons, such as the inherent nastiness of some people, and wider social ones, such as drug abuse. Are there also specific NHS-related ones too, though? The worst aspects of the NHS are not usually medical: they are to do with a bureaucracy which puts patients last. It is utterly extraordinary, for example, that a waiting time of four hours in A&E is now the norm or even, it would seem, the (often missed) target. Often have I sat there wondering not at the aggression of

Qanta Ahmed Qanta Ahmed

The ECHR’s ruling on defaming Mohammed is bad news for Muslims | 3 November 2018

In a monumental irony, the ECHR’s agreement with an Austrian court that offensive comments about the Prophet Mohammed were ‘beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate’ has handed a big victory to both Islamists and Islamophobes – while infantilising believing Muslims everywhere. The case concerns an unnamed Austrian woman who held a number of seminars during which she portrayed the Prophet as a paedophile. After she was convicted by an Austrian court of ‘disparaging religion’ (and fined nearly €500), she appealed to the ECHR claiming the punishment breached her right to free expression. The court disagreed. As a practising Muslim, I find this notion – that the Prophet was

Friday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The crusade against blasphemy laws only goes so far

GK Chesterton observed that “Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.” And indeed this week began with an orgy of self-congratulation on the part of Irish pundits about the electorate doing away with a reference to blasphemy in the Irish constitution (no one would have turned out to vote, if the presidential election wasn’t happening the same day). What fewer of them mentioned is that the law hadn’t been used since 1855 (unsuccessfully); blasphemy was only defined by law as an offence to any religion (not specifically Christianity) in 2009; and

The Spectator

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018 | 2 November 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Developed by the London-based group Concentric,

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Introducing Table Talk, a new podcast from Spectator Life

Olivia Potts and I are delighted to be launching Table Talk, a new Spectator Life podcast with Spectator Radio. Each episode, Olivia – who writes the Vintage Chef column – and I will be joined by a guest familiar to Spectator readers. We will discuss their life story, through the food and drink that has come to define it. For our inaugural episode, we’re joined by Prue Leith: chef, restaurateur, broadcaster, journalist, novelist and, of course, Great British Bake Off presenter. We speak to her about her time in South Africa and Paris, and how that helped shape her attitude to food. We hear about some of her cooking mishaps,

The Spectator

The winners of the Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2018

Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a gala dinner hosted by Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator, and attended by over 120 guests from across the world of business. We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Economic Disruptor of the Year is Pockit – a low-cost, easy-access banking app aimed at helping Britain’s ‘unbanked’. Pockit is billed as ‘a bank for

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Man made

This year’s Isle of Man Masters, sponsored by Chess.com, could claim to be the strongest ever open chess competition. The line-up was formidable, with most of the English Olympiad squad participating, as well as former world champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand.   As it was, the championship titans failed in their bid to capture the £50,000 first prize. Leading scores were as follows, with Radoslaw Wojtaszek emerging as the title holder after the obligatory playoff: Wojtaszek and Naiditsch Arkadij both scored 7/9 in the main event, ahead of Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura, Wang Hao, Gawain Jones, B. Adhiban and Jeffery Xiong, who all scored 6½.   Jones-Aronian:

Raymond Keene

no. 530

Black to play. This is from Cornette-Jumabayev, Isle of Man 2018. Black’s next move led to an overwhelming material advantage. What was it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 6 November or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 … Rxh3 Last week’s winner Malcolm Belt, Exmouth

The Spectator

Letters | 1 November 2018

Political vitriol Sir: Vitriol and incivility seem to be everywhere in politics just now. In the last issue (27 October) John R. MacArthur linked a ‘rise in national coarseness’ to the election of Donald Trump, while Freddy Gray hints at a longer historical perspective when he writes that American politics ‘has always been unpleasant’. That ‘always’ is not hyperbole: in Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow describes in vivid detail the ‘vile partisanship’ of the 1790s, stoked by newspapers that were often ‘scurrilous and inaccurate’. ‘Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,’ said Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. The second president, John Adams, lamented the ‘sour, angry,

Taki

High life | 1 November 2018

New York I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where I live on the Upper East Side, and approximately $30. I even walked to the Heights once. One hour down the FDR, turn left on to Brooklyn Bridge, dodge the aggressive bikers and avoid the vendors; it’s a 20-minute crossing, give or take ten minutes depending on the crowds. Once you’re over, turn right and you’re there. The Heights are sedate, leafy streets with fine old homes turned into apartments, lush gardens and lofty harbour views. It feels like a staid patrician neighbourhood where time has stood still since the