How could they? How could girls brought up in the wealthy West abandon their families and their own bright futures to join Isis, a gang of vicious thugs? It’s not just our girls, either, they’re sneaking off to Syria from across Europe and America too, teenagers, bright ones typically, set on becoming sex slaves in
What a pleasure it is to see the Hollywood actor Sean Penn neck deep in PC ordure. The rodentine thespian was handing out an award at the Oscars to his friend the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu, for his film Birdman. ‘Who gave this sonofabitch a green card?’ Penn quipped about his mate — at
Are you Lush or are you Aldi? Me, I’m Aldi all the way. So much so that when someone — usually my daughter — tries to drag me anywhere near one of Lush’s painfully ubiquitous high street cosmetics shops, I respond a bit like the Antichrist does in the ‘it’s just a church, Damien’ scene
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Viewfrom22-19Feb2015.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the disappearing Lib Dems” startat=937] Listen [/audioplayer]One of the most remarkable features of this parliament has been the sangfroid of the Liberal Democrats. Nothing seems to shake them. The mood of the two main parties is often dictated by the latest opinion polls, but the Liberal Democrats
Have you seen the prices for houses in Israel? Astronomical, mate. You wouldn’t believe it. An arid and perpetually embattled country which everyone has recently decided to hate, and with a bloody great big wall topped with razor wire running through the middle of it — I’d have expected the cost of a nice four-bed
‘Oh, I’m an owl,’ said my friend Nick. ‘You’re probably a lark.’ I raised an eyebrow. He explained. Apparently all human beings are either owls or larks, being genetically predisposed to stay up late or get up early, and to be at their best after sundown or dawn. Nonsense, of course, complete nonsense. Nick just
‘You did this,’ David Cameron repeatedly declared to Tory donors as he reeled off a list of the government’s achievements at the Black and White ball on Monday night. Three months before the general election, the atmosphere at this lavish fundraiser at the Grosvenor House Hotel was self-congratulatory and more upbeat than perhaps it should
One of the highlights of my week comes on a Saturday morning, when I make myself a cup of fair-trade coffee and settle down to read the letters page of the Guardian. My wife usually joins me — it’s a sort of date thing, romantic in its own way — and we sit there cackling,
God it’s nauseating when an exact university contemporary of yours turns out to have become a hugely successful investor with a fund worth many millions. The bit during our meeting where I most wanted to throw up my ravioli was when this fellow — Guy Spier his name is; read PPE at Brasenose with my old
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_5_Feb_2015_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Alex Massie discuss Labour’s problems north of the border” startat=1118] Listen [/audioplayer]Just four months ago Scotland was the scene of great cross-party co-operation — unprecedented in peace-time politics. Gordon Brown was offering advice on David Cameron’s speeches, Douglas Alexander and the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson turned themselves into a
Isn’t it about time the English language got itself a gender-neutral pronoun? This was the clarion call from the Guardian last week — and when that particular clarion sounds, we must all stand to attention and cut out the sniggering. I assume the writer of the piece was moved to action having seen photographs of members
The other night on Channel 4, I watched the best political interview I’ve seen all year. It was with Nick Clegg, and conducted by a guy called Alex Brooker. And it gave me, if only for a few moments, a glimpse of a better world. You’ll know who Nick Clegg is. Brooker, though, might have
‘Let’s make the rich pay more.’ Does that sound so right-wing? To me it has a positively socialist ring. It should appeal to egalitarians: to those who call themselves socially concerned and seek new ways to redistribute wealth. So why not apply it for the NHS? Let’s make the rich pay more for health care.
How should we refer to non-white people, and foreigners in general, given that of course we do sometimes need to mention them, perhaps over dinner in White’s or when mulling over where to go on our holidays? This is an important question, because the approved terminologies seem to shift by the day, if not the
Did you know that 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded in the entire history of the world? Probably you did because it’s been all over the papers. Not only that but President Obama slipped it into his State of the Union address and the president of the World Bank quoted it at Davos and
It’s strange how quickly we all forgot about Ebola. Speak for yourself, you might say — and I will. Until a friend sent me a report this week on the progress of the epidemic, Ebola had, I’m sorry to say, almost faded from my mind. The report contains good news: where the outbreak was worst,
These days George Osborne is rarely seen in public without a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket. But he used to take pride in being recognised as a political insider through and through — a member of the guild of politicians, in his own phrase. He revelled in writing detailed articles about the lessons Westminster
They have been burning churches and murdering Christians again in Niger. You’d think that they’d have more immediately pressing concerns than worrying about a cartoon, Niger regularly winning the award for being the worst country anywhere on God’s earth, and the poorest. But nope, it’s kill-a-kuffar time once more. Some 45 churches set alight and
What should we do with James Blunt? This is what I have been asking myself. And I am not looking for comedy answers here, such as ‘Lock him in a shipping container and force him to listen to songs by James Blunt’ or ‘Allow him to become a properly recognised bit of Cockney rhyming slang’.
I watched the video with some trepidation. Stonewall (the campaigning gay and lesbian equality organisation) had just sent me the YouTube link. This was to a short film of the dinner that Stonewall’s founders attended last year to celebrate the quarter-century anniversary of our existence; and most of us had been there. Now we were
