Society

Thursday

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: The crash we need

On this week’s episode, we ask whether there’s such thing as a good financial crash. We also look at the reality of the housing crisis and the ethics of dwarfs in the entertainment industry. First, with the Dow Jones taking a tumble at the end of last week, market watchers were on high alert for signs of another financial crash. In this week’s magazine, Liam Halligan looks at the state of the stock market and asks: could a coming crisis could spell the end of the easy-money era? He joined the podcast to look at the behaviour of global markets at a volatile moment, along with economist and author, George Magnus. As

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: The Minister and the Murderer

My guest on this week’s books podcast is the author and critic Stuart Kelly. His new book, The Minister and the Murderer: A Book of Aftermaths, tells the story of the only convicted murderer ever to become a minister of the Church of Scotland. We talk about the Ten Commandments, faith and doubt, Stuart’s experiences of being stalked by evil and nearly struck by lightning — and quite how you combine the multiple universe hypothesis in quantum physics, Jorge Luis Borges and a back issue of the DC comic The Flash. You can listen to our conversation here: And if you enjoyed that, do subscribe on iTunes for a fresh discussion

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Whose fault is the local government funding crisis?

Local government appears to be on its knees, and it’s not the usual suspects of authorities run by opposition parties who are complaining loudest. Today, Surrey County Council is revealed to have a £105 million funding gap, and this after Northamptonshire issued a Section 114 notice, which bans almost all new spending. Organisations such as the Taxpayers’ Alliance argue that Surrey still managed to find additional money for its chief executive, suggesting that this is still a story about inept management of local government finances. Perhaps, but it’s also worth looking back at how the funding crisis began. In the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review, one of the first departments to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why should suffragettes who broke the law be pardoned?

I am proud of my great-aunt Kathleen Brown, who once hijacked a horse-drawn fire-engine in the suffragette cause and charged it down Tottenham Court Road clanging its bell. She did time in Holloway. She was also sent to prison in Newcastle for breaking a window in Pink Lane Post Office, and went on hunger strike. She was tiny and brave and I remember her for having hair so long she could sit on it. Would she have wanted to be pardoned by Jeremy Corbyn, as he now proposes? Surely the point of a pardon is to correct an individual injustice — because the person concerned did not commit the crime,

Liam Halligan

The end of the party

Since the crash ten years ago, stock markets the world over have been steadily recovering. The Dow Jones, a bellwether index, has enjoyed double-digit growth in five of the past ten years and soared by 25 per cent last year — credit for which, inevitably, has been claimed by Donald Trump. ‘The reason our stock market is so successful is because of me,’ he said on board Air Force One a few weeks ago. ‘I’ve always been great with money.’ We should not expect him to repeat this point any time soon. Earlier this week, the Dow suffered its worst fall in six years, losing 4.6 per cent in a

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Sometimes men deserve to be paid more

It is 100 years since women got the vote and I have been joining in the celebrations, on public transport — lightly tapping attractive women on the knee or gently massaging their lovely shoulders and saying, cheerfully, ‘Well done, babes!’ Some react with anger and irritation to my heartfelt congratulations, especially when I ask for their phone numbers so that we might discuss suffrage further — which is, I suppose, an indication they did not really want the vote in the first place. Certainly it imposes a terrible pressure upon them — they are forced, every five years, to make a clear decision. The statistics suggest many resent this imposition

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 8 February 2018

Laikipia I woke with the breath of a leopard a few feet from me as I lay in my bed. Before he came there were the sounds of Laikipia’s darkness: nightjars, insects, a wandering hyena. Then it all went abruptly silent and I heard him exhale, just on the other side of the bedroom door. I got out of bed and listened to him snuff the air. A hiss came from the back of his throat, then a deep-throated cough. Our three dogs sat up in their baskets, ears up, hackles raised, silent and staring. At dusk I had put them — Jock, the labrador, Sassy the collie, and our

Christopher Winn

Abbaye Saint-Michel

‘A little corner of England which is for ever France, irreclaimably French.’ That is how the Catholic priest Monsignor Ronald Knox described the Abbaye Saint-Michel (St Michael’s Abbey) in Farnborough, Hampshire. It was founded in 1881 by the Empress Eugénie, widow of the Emperor Napoleon III. When they were forced to leave France following the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870, the couple, along with their son Louis-Napoleon, the Prince Imperial, settled in Chislehurst, Kent. The Emperor died there in 1873 and in 1879 Louis was killed fighting for the British in the Anglo-Zulu War, leaving Eugénie bereft. She moved to Farnborough, bought a large house (Farnborough Hill,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

This Six Nations could be anyone’s

‘It’s never easy going to Rome,’ observed Anthony Watson after the traditional mauling of a hard-working but outgunned Italian side at the weekend. Eh? Well Watson is a brilliant winger (two tries in ten minutes no less) and a thoughtful and well-spoken credit to English rugby. But a difficult trip, Anthony? Sure the A23 to Gatwick can be pretty hellish, valet parking is a tad pricey, and security a nightmare. And don’t get me started on Fiumicino Airport. But all that said, Anthony, I don’t think it’s never easy going to Rome. And in the unlikely event you were referring to the rugby: come off it. England never fail to

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Falling US shares tell us only that investors were overexcited in January

If you were the incoming or retiring chairman of the Federal Reserve, you might be quietly pleased to see stock markets plunge on the day of the handover. As Jerome Powell was sworn in on Monday to succeed Dr Janet Yellen as head of America’s central bank, the Dow Jones index of leading US stocks was falling by a one-day record of 1,175 points, with Asian, European and London markets following overnight. But this wiping out of recent gains does not reflect badly on Yellen, whose steady hand leaves behind US inflation at just 2 per cent, unemployment barely above 4 per cent and a strongly recapitalised banking system. Nor

Polly Morgan

Add dwarf to cart

You’re planning a party. You’ve hired the vaults of a former bank, Le Caprice is doing the catering, and a celebrity DJ will round things off on the dance floor — but you want that little bit extra to give your fashionable, jaded guests something to remember. What about a dwarf? It’s a curious fact that even people who think of themselves as modern and caring feel quite comfortable laughing at dwarfs. Type the words ‘dwarf’ and ‘rent’ into a search engine and you’ll be amazed at the number of websites offering to ‘supply a little someone’ for every occasion. Just click ‘dwarf’ and ‘add to cart’. One online agency

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Extreme pain, of the purest intensity, changes everything

Since my pulmonary embolism a couple of years ago, I have become something of a connoisseur of pain. The agony — a deep ache of the purest intensity — is caused by the pressure of a blood clot on the highly sensitive membrane of the lungs. It’s so exquisite it’s almost a religious experience. Your world is pain; all you want to do is to curl into a foetal ball and allow the earth to swallow you up: anything to make it stop. Mothers who’ve experienced it tell me it’s worse than giving birth. I never wanted to go through such pain again but this week I nearly did: completely

Peter Hitchens

A very minor prophet

Now that I seem to have become a prophet of doom, I wonder whether I should have been a guru instead. Doom doesn’t sell. Bookshops hide my books in back rooms. My recorded harangues and TV appearances reach a few thousand dedicated YouTube enthusiasts. But Dr Jordan B. Peterson, supposedly as reactionary as I am, speaks to millions. His new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos adorns the front table of every Waterstones. Annoyingly, friends of mine recommend his lectures to me, people on Twitter tell me incessantly that I ‘must’ explore his work. They become positively rude if I express reluctance. How has he done this?

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

There’s no housing shortage. It would be easier if there were

Britain does not have a housing shortage. We have a problem with the cost not the availability of homes. This can’t be solved by building more houses, because it is not caused by an insufficiency of houses. I’m no economist. My understanding of the dismal science is rudimentary. I may be shot down in flames as an ignoramus. But here goes. Residential property has become a kind of currency, prized more for value than utility; and its role as a financial asset is messing with its ability to perform the function of actually housing people. Straining to increase the supply of housing will no more restrain price than straining to

Michael Moorcock

Texas Notebook

Returning to the United States a short while ago I received a stern talking to from an immigration officer. Why had I been in Paris longer than usual? I’ve lived in the US for nearly 25 years. I originally moved to be closer to my son, who was being educated nearby, and to my American wife’s relatives in Houston. We bought an old house in a small town about an hour from Austin. Built for his new bride by the only Confederate governor of Texas after he came back from the civil war, it’s rather eccentric. We fell in love with it immediately, planning to live there for at least as

Lucy Vickery

Occasional verse | 8 February 2018

In Competition No. 3034 you were invited to provide a poem written by a poet laureate present or past on the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.   There are those who view the role of laureate as a poisoned chalice. Craig Raine has described how he said to Ted Hughes, during a discussion of the then-vacant post, ‘Of course, no one in their right mind would really want it.’ (‘You’d get some terrific fishing,’ Hughes responded.) And Andrew Motion was candid about its pitfalls: ‘How was I to steer an appropriate course between familiarity (which would seem presumptuous) and sycophancy (which would seem absurd)?’   You strode into

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Theresa May makes it an unhappy birthday for Dennis Skinner

The S-bomb landed on PMQs this afternoon. Suffragettes. Exactly a century and a day has passed since parliament granted women the vote. Mrs May was honouring the occasion when she heard – or pretended to hear – Labour sisters shouting ‘some women.’ ‘Some?’ she said. ‘Yes universal suffrage did come in, ten years later, under a Conservative government.’ A good hit. Quite probably she faked the ‘some women’ heckle. We got a lecture from moany, droney Jeremy Corbyn who wore a pained expression like a vegan bishop. ‘We should understand that our rights come from the activities of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to bring about democracy and justice.’ It

Mark Piggott

Men and women of the world, unite!

I’ve worked in several warehouses unloading stock and I’ve also worked in supermarkets stacking shelves. I’d have to say the latter is marginally harder. Not that there’s much in it: both are physically hard, mentally untaxing, and probably undervalued – but then, don’t we all feel undervalued at work? Warehouse jobs are more of a laugh. When unloading boxes that all looked the same, some were much heavier than others. If you were on the van you’d make out the heavy ones were light and vice versa. Oh, the japes we had… Best of all, there was usually an unloaded pallet you could hide behind for a nap. Whereas on

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Tesco equal pay claim sets a dangerous precedent

I have decided that my work is of equal value to that of Claudia Schiffer and that therefore in future I should be paid the same as her. Why not? Okay, we don’t quite do the same thing, but we both get up in the morning, go out and do what we do as best we can. Yet she is paid more than I am, which is indefensible. That is pretty much the basis of the claim by 100 female Tesco shop floor workers who have launched an action against the supermarket claiming that they should be paid the same as men who work in the store’s warehouses. It is

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: A customs union is the least worst Brexit option

Theresa May has been condemned for her failure to stick up for the NHS during her conversation with Donald Trump last night. The criticism comes after Trump tweeted to say Britain’s National Health Service was ‘going broke and not working’. But while we can be rightly proud of the NHS, we shouldn’t be blind to its problems, says the Daily Telegraph. Politicians have queued up to defend the institution and talk of ‘how much they love it’. ‘Only in Britain is it necessary to fetishise the way we deliver health care’, argues the Telegraph. Nigel Farage is right then to say that the ‘NHS is the nearest thing we have