Society

David Willetts, one time minister of state for universities and science turned chief spokesperson for baby boomer self-flagellation, is clearly troubled by the year of his birth. Since his 2010 book, The Pinch: How the baby boomers took their children’s future and why they should give it back, he’s been desperately seeking atonement for the privileges that happy date accrued. Now, thanks to a report from the Resolution Foundation, we know the precise cost of easing Willetts’s conscience: £10,000 – to be made payable to every 25 year old. A cheque for £10,000 landing on the doormat will no doubt make hitting the quarter of a century milestone a little

I have never much liked cars. I am aware that they serve a purpose, much as do security measures at international airports – but then I don’t like them very much either. Cars are horribly noisy, arrogant, dangerous, foul-smelling and claustrophobic and bring out the worst in us. The noisy thing bothers me most – and so I was delighted by the advent of electric cars, which are almost silent and also smell less bad than normal cars. Now I read that there are plans to fit them with some kind of noise-making device because too many pedestrians are being killed by their sudden, silent, approach. Here’s my suggestion: scrap

After winning the ‘broadcast journalist of the year’ gong on Tuesday at the London Press Club awards, Kay Burley topped off a busy week with a debut on the Andrew Marr show. The Sky broadcaster joined Amanda Platell and Ayesha Hazarika for the paper review segment of the early morning current affairs show, Only while discussing the sad news about Sir Alex Ferguson’s health problems, Burley caused quite a splash on air. Flicking through the Sun to show viewers at home the depth of their coverage on the story, Burley inadvertently showed more that she had intended – turning to a picture of a model wearing very little: Ever the professional, Burley

It is easy enough for a remorseless liberal like Matthew Parris (‘They say Enoch Powell had a fine mind. Hmm’, which appeared in the magazine on 28 April) to denigrate Enoch Powell on the strength of his widely execrated speech on immigration and some tortured comments on homosexuality. Powell should be remembered as the man who restored conservatism to intellectual coherence in the 1960s. He pointed it away from an outmoded imperialism to a realistic patriotism, and from a largely dirigiste and paternalistic view of economic policy to a radical economic liberalism. It is surely a view of conservatism that will achieve a remarkable vindication in March next year when

Jeremy Hunt as Home Secretary said something very important by mistake. He told the Commons in May 2018 that ‘a computer algorithm failure’ meant 450,000 patients in England missed breast cancer screenings. As many as 270 women might have had their lives shortened as a result. This point hasn’t received the analysis it deserves. Scores of women died sooner than they should have done, because of an algorithm. He’s probably right, you know. It really could have been a computer model to blame here. But that’s obviously unsatisfactory, since we need humans to hold to account when things go wrong. Let’s say it was a poorly programmed algorithm – who’s at fault? The tech guy who

A couple of weeks ago a reader (Emma Lyons) queried Taki, the High Life professor of ancient Greek culture and society, who had argued that Achilles and Patroclus, heroes of the Trojan War, were not gay, and implied that Greeks did not do transgenderism. On both counts a little clarification is required. The 5th-century BC Athenian playwright Aeschylus indeed represented Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, as many ancients did. But professor Taki was talking about the situation in Homer’s Iliad (c. 700 BC), in which they were no such thing. The wrath of Achilles, with which the Iliad opens, was down to Achilles’s loss of his captive woman Briseis, taken