Later this year, the Advertising Standards Authority will reveal to the world their list of rules designed to wipe out ‘gender stereotyping’ in TV ads. I’m already looking forward to it because the ASA’s first thoughts on the matter, published in July, were fascinating. An ad for baby milk which showed a girl growing up
So much for Donald J. Trump, ‘America first’ isolationist. Gone is the man who, as a civilian, repeatedly endorsed a speedy withdrawal from America’s longest-running war (2012 tweet: ‘Afghanistan is a complete waste!’), who railed against George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq and advocated leaving Syria to the whims of the Russkies and others. On
I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the clue’s in the name — was waiting to board a flight when he started ‘harmlessly’ talking about 9/11. There is no reason to believe he has any connections with extremists, but he was kicked off
Do you believe Chloe Ayling? She is the 20-year-old glamour model whose dramatic story has been all over the newspapers throughout August. She claims to have been lured to a fake photoshoot in Italy, injected with ketamine, stuffed inside a suitcase and shoved into the boot of a car. So far, so just about credible.
Ever since I was a child, I’d always yearned to see a green woodpecker. With its scarlet cap and lime-green body, it looks far too colourful and exotic to be a native species. But it very much is, as you can tell from the fact that it has a rustic nickname — the yaffle. This,
When a new MP is offered a job as a parliamentary private secretary for a cabinet member, it’s often a test to see if they really would do anything to get into government. It involves running errands, spying on colleagues, ferrying messages around the Commons and planting inane questions for backbenchers to ask in the
All along Harley Street, charlatans and medical experts have set up side by side with no obvious way to tell them apart. The same wide steps lead up to the same glossy front doors, all with prestigious brass knobs. Each separate house is itself a layered stack of quacks and docs: radiology one floor above
Friends arrived last week to find me in a mudhole, inside a cave-like tunnel into the hill, fiddling around with our spring-fed water supply. Hearing their car, I slithered out to greet them, covered in slime like a monster from the deep. It would be natural to say this took them by surprise. It did
People who feel unkindly disposed towards economic migrants are chemically imbalanced, according to a study from the University of Bonn. More specifically, they are deficient in oxytocin, a neuropeptide hormone sometimes known as the ‘cuddle drug’ because of its ability to turn normal human beings into simpering halfwits. Psychologists ran a series of studies in
We like to think we have moved on from the age of snobbery. Judging others by birth or status, or at least being seen to, is the height of rudeness, and just not very cool. But English snobbery is in fact as potent as before — and possibly even more insidious. Among my age group
David Cameron was in the news again this week after being paid £1 million a minute to give a speech explaining why Brexit was a terrible mistake at the annual Gay Stranglers’ Guild gala dinner at a brutal dictatorship in central Asia, before spending a week cruising the Baltic on the yacht of Putin’s second-favourite
Some years ago, when Millwall played West Ham United, the Millwall fans sang the following song (to the tune of ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’, if you want to hum along): ‘Oh east London, is like Bengal. Oh east London is like Bengal. It’s like the back streets of Delhi. Oh east -London is
As usual for August, I’m in France, where the news in brief is ‘Euro up, Macron down’. The youthful French president, who swept to power with two-thirds of the second round vote in May, has seen his approval rating plunge to 36 per cent — at the time of writing, 2 per cent worse than
Politics is such a fickle game that it’s perfectly acceptable to believe six impossible things before breakfast without ever having to apologise for being so wrong. Remember, for instance, when everyone was predicting that the dead cert increased majority for Theresa May would lead to the creation of a new party? Perhaps, like everyone else
Does anyone actually enjoy flying any more? I know I don’t. I realised recently, while anxiously repacking my tiny carry-on case with its cache of toiletries dribbled into miniature bottles, that travelling with an airline now feels a bit like going on holiday with a friend who — just beneath the surface — actually hates
‘Studying history at Balliol,’ writes Chris Patten, ‘I knew that the one thing which made me uneasy was a grand theory or over-arching generalisation.’ The remark comes from a Lord Patten’s latest book, First Confession. Henry Keswick wrote an unpleasant review in this magazine, and I’ve spent some time recently discouraging mutual friends from bothering
I’ve had it with the Conservatives. For me, and I know I’m not the only one, the final straw was the announcement at the weekend that the Equalities Minister Justine Greening wants to change the law so that people are free to specify their gender on their birth certificate regardless of medical opinion. What were
It’s summertime and the living is easy… unless you’re a civil servant working on Brexit. Whitehall has recognised that the UK needs to step up its preparations for leaving the EU and to offer greater certainty about the country’s immediate future. A big speech is planned for September, probably by the Prime Minister, which will
Never meet your enemies — you might like them, and that ruins stuff. I had dinner with the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about a year ago. During his time in office, Rowan came out with what I considered to be some of the most cringing, effete, left-liberal, self-abnegating rot I have ever heard.
At a party earlier this summer, I was chatting to a man who asked me how I voted in last year’s EU referendum. I don’t see why anybody asks that question more than a year on, and I don’t see why anyone should be expected to answer. There is no faster way to sour a
