[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Toby Young and Fraser Nelson discuss Michael Gove’s personality and the attacks from all sides”] Listen [/audioplayer]A few weeks ago, I was a guest at a huge tea party for children’s authors, publishers and commentators at the South Bank, but the atmosphere, over the cupcakes and finger sandwiches, was decidedly frosty. There were
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Josie Appleton and Camilla Swift discuss the rise of the dog police” startat=1509] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Be careful!’ shouted a woman on the North Wales beach. ‘The dog police are back!’ Using her walking stick to help her, Lynne stumbled towards the path leading off the beach as fast as she could, followed by her
Where are the threats of a boycott, the calls for isolation, the outraged letters to the Prime Minister? Where are the rainbow logos, the delegations of human rights activists, the declarations of solidarity? On 16 March Bangladesh is to host the T20 World Cup, one of the top limited overs tournaments in international cricket. All
My aim as a hospital visitor is to cheer, befriend, have a chat, do something to disrupt the bleak monotony of the modern hospital day. Some patients talk amiably while others are grumpy, demented patients kept on wards for months and who won’t shut up. Many conversations lead nowhere. Some days the pillow talk is
Next week is ‘Hug a Slug’ week. Well, come on, you did believe it for a couple of seconds. We’ve all grown so used to the fog of humourless eco-rectitude that has settled over our gardens that you probably didn’t even blink. No right-thinking (let alone left-thinking) person these days would dream of paving their
It was, perhaps, inevitable that heading to interview the Transport Secretary I would end up stuck in traffic — so by the time I reached Patrick McLoughlin’s office, I was running a few minutes late. The normal punishment for tardiness is to be left languishing outside a minister’s office. But McLoughlin does things differently. When
The first gay marriage will be conducted this Easter, and those who still object to the idea find themselves in a minority. The majority, according to polls, can’t see what all the fuss is about. How far we have travelled in a relatively short period of time. Until 1967, the punishment for homosexuality was a
Tallinn, Monday ‘I have some sad news,’ says the Estonian politician, as we sit down to dinner. ‘War has broken out.’ The pain in his voice is palpable. For this patriotic man, and many like him, Russia’s invasion of Crimea has reawakened memories of an era everyone here hoped was over. Wandering the cobbled streets
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”John O’Sullivan discusses why we shouldn’t be so afraid of Putin” startat=1088] Listen [/audioplayer]If Vladimir Putin’s invasion and occupation of the Crimea brings to an end the Pax Americana and the post-Cold War world that began in 1989, what new European, or even global, order is replacing them? That question may seem topical
Thanks to the centenary of the first world war, counter-factuals are much in vogue. How different might history have been had Archduke Franz-Ferdinand never been assassinated, had Britain kept out of the conflict, had the Allies been defeated? Questions such as these are more than just a parlour game. They serve to cast the shadow
Ben, an articulate 14-year-old hard at work in the school design and proto-typing centre, is explaining to Lord Baker of Dorking how 3D printing works. Baker, a former Tory education secretary, listens intently before declaring the technology ‘marvellous’. This coming July will mark the 25th anniversary of his leaving the Department for Education — but Lord
If David Cameron were to divide Europe up, he’d make some crude distinctions. There would be the basket cases, like Italy, Spain, Greece, France — examples, by and large, of how countries should not be run. Then there’d be the former Soviet bloc, sceptical about Brussels because they recently escaped a remote, controlling bureaucracy and don’t
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Julie Burchill debates Paris Lees on intersectionality”] Listen [/audioplayer]On Saturday morning, when the body of the beautiful Antipodean model and television personality Charlotte Dawson was being taken from her home in Sydney, I was back in Blighty rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck in for yet another happy hour in the gladiatorial
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_27_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Ed West discusses political bias in the church” startat=640] Listen [/audioplayer]I am training for ordained ministry at a Church of England theological college. I am a trainee vicar, if you will. I am also a Conservative, which puts me in an extremely small minority and quite a tricky position. At my college, there
The American economy always feels better when the Super Bowl is on. Ads for trucks and beer fill the airwaves. It’s steak and cigar season for the corporate bigwigs, not a time for the calorie conscious. For a few days, they can forget about foreign labour and cratering emerging markets and wallow in the fantasy
It might not be something you want to mention in the Half Moon Inn in Balcombe, or around any of the other communities where people are getting anxious about shale gas explorers ripping up the countryside with their drills and pipelines. But if shale is the tremendous source of wealth that David Cameron insists it
‘As part of our plan to help Britain succeed, after months of negotiation, today we have a deal for the first nuclear power station in a generation to be built in Britain.’ That was David Cameron in October, announcing that his government had reached an agreement with the French power giant EDF over the construction
I had always assumed that the one thing atheism had going for it was that you could have a lie-in on Sundays. For the past year, however, an atheist church has been meeting in London on Sunday mornings. Founded by two comedians, Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, the Sunday Assembly is a symptom of what
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”From this week’s View from 22 podcast, Burchill and Paris Lees debate intersectionality” startat=86 fullwidth=”yes”] Julie Burchill vs Paris Lees [/audioplayer]In the early 1970s, my dad was a singular sort of feminist. As well as working all night in a factory, he had banned my mother from the kitchen for as long as
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris discuss how far we should let Putin go”] Listen [/audioplayer]It’s been a generation or so since Russians were in the business of shaping the destiny of the world, and most of us have forgotten how good they used to be at it. For much of the last century