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The decline of football speak
The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and returnees, no doubt a breakout star or two, some eyebrow-raising new hairstyles (Mo Salah) and some ingeniously tweaked – and therefore ‘must-have’ – revenue-gouging strips. As ever, there will be new rules, including yet further tinkering with VAR.
But what interests me, as an English teacher and student of socio-linguistics, will be any novelties in the figurative language which the players, fans and journalists use to describe the game. Over nearly 50 years of watching football, it has been fascinating to hear the football lexicon evolve in ways that can be quite culturally revealing.
Pseudish terminology is in the ascent, that type of language that seeks to convey sophistication
Cliché is an essential part of football language (‘the beautiful game’). Indeed, football seems to revel in stale phraseology. This would have infuriated George Orwell, who hated football but understood the effective use of language (he would have winced at ‘kicked off’ in line one of this piece) and included ‘never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print’ as one of his six rules for writing. This could – and, I would argue, should – be tweaked and posted on the pundits’ screens to flash urgently, when necessary; which is often.
According to Adam Hurrey, writer of Football Clichés and Extra Time Beckons, Penalties Loom, the genre can be divided into two broad categories: ‘hypertruths’, or statements of the bleeding obvious which persist as they are ‘comforting, reliable filler’. Classic examples would include ‘a game of two halves’ and ‘if you don’t shoot, you won’t score’. Then there are the ‘received wisdom’ phrases which aren’t and never were true (‘you can score too early’; ‘2-0 is a dangerous score’) but ‘tap into fans’ primal fear and paranoia that their team will inevitably let them down’.
Both of these categories seem to be in decline, possibly reflecting the greater competitiveness in football broadcasting. In the ruthlessly commercial and youth-orientated Premiership, everything must appear shiny and new. Any commentator trotting out tired language could see themselves put in the ‘Motty’ box and earmarked for early retirement. The great football cliché is looking to be in some danger.
Perhaps as a reaction to this, pseudish terminology is in the ascent, that type of language that seeks to convey sophistication and a firm grasp of the latest tactical innovations. I’ll be especially interested this season to hear how long the recently minted buzz phrase ‘the press’ continues to dominate commentary.
‘The press’ (often a ‘high press’) is essentially meaningless, signifying nothing more than a team playing aggressively and harrying the opposition. But it seems to say to the humble viewer: ‘I know what “the press” is because I am a tactical expert – you don’t because you’re not’. Will its management-speak vacuity see it fade away, like other tacticalese, such as ‘playing through the channels’; or will it embed itself firmly? I know which I’d prefer.
I’ll also be interested to discover whether phrases borrowed from American sports continue to be used. My theory is that these emerged when football was in the doldrums (the 1970s and 1980s) and there was greater cachet attached to exotic sports that were not synonymous with hooliganism and negativity. ‘Stepping up to the plate’ and ‘out of left field’ were borrowed from baseball; ‘game plan’, ‘punt’ and ‘turnover’ from American football. These seem to be heard less often now, perhaps because of the Premiership’s greater confidence in itself and dominance of the market.
Also fascinating will be whether once-common phrases finally die out as their ancient origins become too distant. ‘Down tools’ (for giving up) seems to be moribund in a country where few have tools to down anymore – though Keir Starmer’s father, a toolmaker apparently, and the continuing prevalence of strikes, may prolong the life of this particular phrase.
‘Set out their stall,’ sounds anachronistic now too and may well raise the question by younger fans of what exactly a ‘stall’ is. Ditto an ‘onion bag’ or a ‘cosh’. ‘Skipper’ sounds odd in a country whose strong nautical traditions have become archaic. As does ‘back to square one’, with its origins, according to some, in a BBC radio grid system. Even ‘Fergie time’ might have had its day, 11 years on from its eponymous inspiration’s final game.
Perhaps most engrossing of all though will be football commentary’s approach to culture wars. ‘Man of the match’ was effectively outlawed a few years ago for reasons that, in a game where only men – by Fifa statute – are allowed to take part, remain unclear.
But the new rules have frequently been breached, by accident or design, especially by the older co-commentators, without apparent sanction. Here is an early example of what may be an unsustainable absurdity from day two of the new season: ‘Mo Salah is player of the match for me. He’s been the best man on the pitch.’ (Jermaine Jenas, TNT Sports, 17 August, Ipswich vs Liverpool). It will, to borrow a phrase from tacticalese, be interesting to see how this plays out.
Alain Delon seduced us all
In a 1962 interview, Alain Delon pushes aside a carafe of red wine and explains that when offered his first cinema role, he didn’t really want it: je n’avais pas envie de faire spécialement ça. Delon, who died over the weekend at the age of 88, may not have been immediately seduced by cinema, but cinema was instantly seduced by him. In a lifetime filled with roles playing rogues and gangsters – Plein Soleil (1960), Il Gattopardo (1963) and Le Samouraï (1967) – the role he is best known for is himself, a shapeshifter who flirted with the actor’s mask; sometimes hiding behind it, sometimes letting it slip off altogether. There, in the space between authenticity and artifice, Delon found his métier, delighting in his confection as much as his audience did: ‘I fell in love with the camera,’ he says.
He incarnated a certain kind of melancholy, ineffably French beauty
Born in Sceaux, outside Paris, in 1935, Delon’s early life was turbulent. An only child, he was left with a foster family at the age of four. The fracture of his family preyed on his mind until the very end. Interviewed by Bernard Pivot in 1996, Delon said that the greatest wish God could grant him would be to lead him to his parents, so for the ‘first time, at last’ he could see them together. It’s not hard to see why director Luchino Visconti cast him in the role of Tancredi in his film adaptation of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, a novel about the fall of an aristocratic dynasty. Later, in Joseph Losey’s Monsieur Klein (1976), Delon channelled yet more of his early agony as an exploitative art dealer during the second world war, caught out by the bluff of a double identity in the form of a Jewish man with the same name. Delon was always playing on the slippery nature of identity and its discontents.
A friend of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s, Delon openly pledged his support for the Front National in a Swiss newspaper in 2013, declaring that he found its progress ‘uplifting’. Six years later, when the Cannes Film Festival honoured him with a Palme d’Or, the film industry was up in arms, asserting that his ‘gruesome’ politics and misogyny were ill-aligned with its progressive intentions. Choosing his words carefully yesterday, Macron described Delon as a ‘monument’ to France, glossing over so much of the political controversy that divided his admirers. Monuments can’t, after all, be torn down on the basis of contemporary opinion; not yet at least. Delon, unapologetic to the end, proved to be that rare thing: an open and genuinely conservative French cultural icon who fought in Indochina (never mind the court martial for stealing a jeep) and just happened to be one of the best-looking actors France has ever seen.
Of his looks, people are unequivocal. He incarnated a certain kind of melancholy, ineffably French beauty. France will take his outrageous good looks as her own, touting his handsomeness as evidence of a very specific Gallic charm. A few have pointed to the photo of co-star Marianne Faithfull fawning over Delon while boyfriend Mick Jagger draws miserably on his fag in the corner. But over the course of his romantic life, it was his beauty that caused him so much trouble. Delon’s romantic life was fabulously chaotic. He was the father of three children by two different women – actress Nathalie Delon and Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen – yet his adultery and indiscretions were tolerated as a French institution. After all, seeing your mistress between cinq à sept is an established part of the culture, so much so that Agnès Varda named a film after the late afternoon practice.
Soon, surely, the biopic of Delon’s life will emerge, and the facts of it – his former bodyguard Stevan Markovic found dead in a skip, the children warring over his estate, the parties with Georges Pompidou, the cemetery he built for his 30 dogs in the grounds of his Loire château – will eclipse even some of his greatest films. Smiling at the camera in 1962, could Delon have imagined that his life would prove to be his greatest role? I think he sensed it. In fact, I think in a Ripley-esque double turn, he played with it, delighting himself most of all.
Why do prison staff keep having sex with inmates?
As I read last week’s Steerpike exclusive on the thorny topic of ‘inappropriate relationships’ between prison officers and prisoners, my mind turned to Wandsworth in 2020, and a particular young woman officer whose behaviour was often far from appropriate. She would start conversations of a sexual nature with prisoners, asking what kind of pornography they enjoyed, and whether she was our type. She’d often touch our arms or chests, or brush against us when passing on the narrow landings. I’m not aware that she ever went further than that, but I always felt her interest in criminals went far beyond the professional.
None of us ever made a complaint. In many ways she was one of the better officers. She treated us fairly, was reasonable and consistent in her application of the rules and seemed to have our interests at heart. And yet still when she brushed against me or placed a hand on my upper arm, I felt an intense crawling wrongness.
Power dynamics in these situations can be complex
People may scoff at this. She was a slight woman. I stood a foot taller than her. How could I feel uncomfortable or threatened? But she was a prison officer and I a prisoner. Although the officer never threatened me, she held power over me and could make my life much worse if she wanted. And so I stayed silent. Perhaps part of what made it so difficult for me was how unfamiliar the sensation of a woman having more physical power than I did was. This dynamic rarely exists outside of prisons and secure environments.
My experience at Wandsworth isn’t unique. Although only a handful of officers are disciplined every year; almost every former prisoner I know has stories of similar behaviour. I spoke with a man who served time at a Category C prison in Southern England. He described ‘several incidents…where an officer was having sexual relations with a prisoner [who] provided her with protection on the wing’, while ‘female officers would talk to or observe prisoners in the showers, making comments about their bodies’, all of which created a ‘sexually charged environment’.
Power dynamics in these situations can be complex. Many frontline prison officers are very young and often new to the job, while many prisoners may be experienced, sophisticated groomers and manipulators. As Sobanan Narenthiran, a former prisoner, told me, ‘prison officers… disconnected from the outside world, must deal with the most traumatic circumstances: suicide, self-harm, violence, emotional abuse and intimidation. I observed many incidents that would’ve led up to or were the consequence of intimate relations between officers and prisoners – whether that was sharing personal details (e.g social media) or more inappropriate physical contact.’
Deborah Murphy, an occupational therapist who worked in prisons and secure environments for fifteen years often observed inappropriate relationships between prisoners and staff. She thinks the shared trauma of the prison environment can be to blame. ‘A bond forms over such shared traumas…it is not difficult to see how in environments where you shut off from the outside world in a place…that few people will ever understand that…you can end up feeling you have more in common with the prisoners than many people in the outside world.’
As is often the case across our prison system, understaffing is partly to blame. Wings are often staffed with only a handful of officers for hundreds of prisoners and they are often inexperienced. Half of frontline prison officers have been in the role for four years or fewer, and over 34 per cent have been in the service for no more than one year. In these circumstances, young, inexperienced staff may be more vulnerable to manipulation.
Recruitment and training play a role too. Potential prison officers are required to undergo ‘security vetting as part of their application process’ including reviewing the applicant’s social media. However, that vetting sometimes seems to miss important, easily available information. Linda De Sousa Abreu, who recently pled guilty to having sex with an inmate at HMP Wandsworth, had a live OnlyFans account and had appeared on a Channel 4 programme about swingers, Open House.
Of course, almost all officers do not pursue inappropriate relationships with inmates. The Ministry of Justice promises it is ‘bolstering our counter-corruption unit and strengthening our vetting processes’. I hope these changes work because those who do form inappropriate relationships with prisoners can cause significant harm to themselves, to inmates and to trust in the system. Whether coercing prisoners into sexual activity, or themselves being groomed and coerced, inappropriate relationships like these make our prison system even more corrupt and lawless.
Where is Keir Starmer’s joy?
‘Thank you for bringing back the joy’. So effused Tim Walz to Kamala Harris whose new-found position as Democratic nominee for the US presidency has turned the race for the White House upside down.
You might expect Walz, Harris’s pick for vice president, to say nice things to his boss. But in terms of crowd numbers, their enthusiasm and the polls, Harris – the dancing, laughing, Happy Warrior – really has made a striking impact on the American public, much to Donald Trump’s consternation.
Starmer finds it hard to communicate anything more uplifting than stolid competence
The contrast to when Joe Biden was the Democrats’ presumptive candidate is remarkable. Of course, there were concerns about Biden’s age. But that wasn’t the party’s main problem: it was that, as Robert Reich put it, ‘so many Americans believe the economy is bad when in fact it’s damn good’.
The Biden administration’s massive investment in infrastructure and green technologies has paid off across almost all metrics, most notably producing 15 million more jobs. Yet, encouraged by Trump’s wild claims about impending economic disaster and a nation in crisis, most Americans were pessimistic about the future and intended to vote Republican. With Biden as their figurehead, Democrats were glum and defensive but now, partly thanks to Walz himself, they are on the front foot, mocking Trump and his running mate JD Vance as ‘weird and creepy’. The real state of the US economy has however not altered: what a difference ‘joy’ can make.
Which brings us to the new Labour government: where is the joy there?
Despite its huge Commons majority, Labour was elected on the thinnest of electoral margins. And while Keir Starmer promised ‘change’, most voters were unclear what that meant, being happy to kick out the Conservatives, just as Americans turned to Biden in 2020 to be rid of Trump.
Like Biden, Starmer promised to be a leader who would move the country on from the craziness of the previous regime and back to normality. Reform’s four million votes at the election and the recent riots suggest that might be easier said than done. Even so, again like Biden, Starmer hopes to kick-start an ailing economy by investing in dynamic industries. He is especially intent on making Britain a clean energy superpower – although with significantly less capital than that mobilised by the US president.
Whether Labour achieves its primary aim of securing the ‘highest sustained growth in the G7’ by the time of the next election is to be decided. But as the Biden presidency suggests, something more than material progress is needed to secure re-election. Certainly, Starmer’s opponents on the populist right will, whatever the real state of affairs, likely regurgitate powerful Trumpian tropes of a country in decline and under siege from waves of immigrants. Where is the joy that might offset such attacks?
Just now it is hard to find. Labour presents a dour face to the public while Starmer finds it hard to communicate anything more uplifting than stolid competence. During the election campaign, Labour argued it had to secure the economic foundations as the basis for a ‘decade of national renewal’ organised around its five ‘missions’. This might be worthy and necessary; but in making its case the party talked the language of technocrats and policy geeks – not of ordinary voters.
This alienating and elitist rhetoric has been only reinforced by the kind of gloomy ‘doomsterism’ once mocked by Boris Johnson. Rachel Reeves’ August statement which laid the ground for the autumn Budget was groaning with warnings about ‘difficult decisions’ and of a yawning ‘black hole’ that needed filling, partly by stopping pensioners’ automatic winter fuel payments. Killing off the old folk at Christmas for lack of warmth is nobody’s idea of comfort and joy, but it seems Britons are being prepared for a long and grinding slog towards a hoped-for prosperity.
Labour ministers would argue that this dreariness is due to the Conservative legacy. But the roots of Starmer’s miserable road to socialism go much deeper and can be found in Clement Attlee’s 1945 government. If they transformed Britain, Attlee and colleagues were also bleakly utilitarian – and only lasted six years in office. The government helped the economy transition from war- to peace-time production but purposely limited individual consumption through rationing to shift resources to revenue-earning export industries.
All too late, Labour sponsored a Festival of Britain to cheer up the public albeit with the kind of enforced frivolity associated with trendy vicars at parish discos. This neglect of joy allowed the Conservatives to exploit popular frustrations by promising happier times and so slip back into power in 1951.
Throughout its history, Labour has believed that plans and policies were enough. Too few of its adherents recognised the power of something as irrational as emotions like joy and so the need to appeal to them. In contrast, it has been the Conservatives who have (until recently at least) exploited emotions with alacrity and great success. Kamala Harris might be an accidental candidate but even if at the last she fails to laugh all the way to the White House, Labour needs to learn how to inject some joy into its government – or by the time of the next election Starmer could be crying.
In defence of breakdancer Raygun
How annoying must it be to win an Olympic title but be totally eclipsed by a competitor who failed to win a single contest? Such has been the fate of Ami Yuasa of Japan who defeated Dominika Banevič, the reigning World and European Champion, to win the Breaking gold medal at the recent Olympic Games. Her Olympic glory was totally overshadowed by 36-year-old Australian, Rachael Gunn (known competitively as Raygun) whose performance went viral despite losing each of her three preliminary battles, including a contest against Banevič (known as Nicka).
Raygun may have been comprehensively defeated on the cypher (the circle in which the battle takes place) but her performance easily rivalled the profile of any gold medallist, although mostly in ridicule through Tik Tok memes and disparaging (even hateful) commentary. A deeper dive revealed a tiny undercurrent of praise for her Antipodean originality; an important trait in a sport that requires breakers to improvise movement in 60-second rounds, to random music chosen by the event DJs.
On 15 August, the Australian Olympic Committee issued a statement asserting the legitimacy of Raygun’s qualification and rebutting a number of allegations made against her. They made clear that neither Dr Gunn nor her husband (Samuel Free) held any official positions relating to qualification for the Olympics or any responsibility for funding decisions. Raygun released a poignant reel on the same day describing the ‘hate’ on social media as ‘devastating’ and making it clear that she took the event seriously: ‘I worked my butt off, and I gave my all, truly,’ she said.
The truth is that Raygun earned her Olympic place by winning the Oceanic Qualifying competition, against a field of competitors from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji, adjudicated by a panel of nine independent judges led by Katsu One, a legendary breaker from Japan. Some have argued that Molly Chapman (known as Holy Molly), the Australian Raygun defeated to claim the Olympic spot, was the better breaker. Chapman’s style is more in keeping with the popular expectation of breaking, but judges score on five criteria, including originality and musicality, and – as a dance critic – I could see that Raygun’s performance across all categories was sufficient to take the top spot. It wasn’t a surprise: in the 2023 World Championships Gunn had placed 64th and Chapman 79th. Contrary to the misinformed view that Raygun is a relative newcomer to breaking, this was her third world championships, and she had placed in the top three in Australian breaking contests for much of the last decade.
On the evidence of filmed snippets that were shared after the event, Raygun’s performance in Paris seemed peculiar. She omitted traditional power moves (spins, flares, and floats) and did not possess the speed and athleticism of a top b-girl. Instead, she perfomed a number of ‘goofy’ dance moves, such as the now infamous ‘kangaroo hop’.
It is now not possible to access her six routines in the preliminaries, but I was able to see them before their online presence disappeared and those much-shared memes don’t do justice to her range. As a former Olympic Team manager, I can understand the sporting mentality of adjusting her performance to compete against the reigning world champion and two other better b-girls. Raygun couldn’t hope to beat them in terms of athleticism and technique, so she went for originality.
Much online criticism refers to the fact that she didn’t win a point. But there are no points in breaking. A panel of nine judges makes comparisons between the two breakers across each category and seven judges determined that Raygun outperformed her opponents (six times in originality and once for vocabulary). Even against Nicka, the world champion and eventual silver medallist, Raygun took the originality category on the first-round scorecards of the Spanish and German judges (with the Brazilian judge awarding a draw).
Given all the misinformation concerning Raygun’s performance, it might be surprising to learn that she didn’t finish last. There were 17 entries for the contest (not 16 as many reports have stated) which necessitated a pre-qualifier battle between Manizha Talash of the Refugee Olympic Team and India Sardjoe of the Netherlands. Having lost this opening battle, Talash was subsequently disqualified for displaying a ‘Free Afghan Women’ slogan. Since Gunn was automatically advanced to the last 16, Talash was placed last.
Another nonsense to come from the Raygun affair is the suggestion, repeated many times on social media, that the decision to exclude breaking from the 2028 Olympic Games had something to do with her performance despite the fact that this decision was made many months ago. Whether breaking ever regains a place in the Olympics should have nothing to do with Raygun but it will take a long time for this misplaced furore to die down.
Now Sue Gray’s son is in the firing line
It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is to blame for the government’s ails, now it is the turn of her son to face the wrath of Fleet Street. Liam Conlon, who was elected last month as the MP for Beckenham and Penge, has quickly been earmarked as one to watch. Within days of his election, he was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. Talk about a rapid rise: perhaps he knows someone at the top?
Unfortunately for Conlon, his new appointment has landed him in a spot of bother with the Mail on Sunday. For the newspaper points out today that the ministerial aide accepted a £4,000 donation from Britain’s biggest train drivers’ union – just months before his department offered it an inflation-busting pay rise. On Friday the Aslef union announced a wave of fresh strikes – less than 48 hours after it was offered a pay deal that would boost the average driver’s salary by 14 per cent to £69,000. A few hours later, the first register of MPs’ interests for the new parliament was published, showing that the newly-elected MP had declared the £4,000 donation in his first ever entry. It is understood the donation was made to Conlon soon after he was selected as a Labour candidate for the constituency at the end of last year.
Given his mother’s high profile, Steerpike suspects Conlon’s entries will be one to watch…
Near the Russian border, Ukrainians are delighted about the Kursk attack
The road from the Ukrainian city of Sumy to the Russian border gave just a foretaste of the fighting 20 miles ahead. We passed tanks on transporters, armoured vehicles, and occasionally an olive-green ambulance with flashing lights speeding the Ukrainian wounded away from the battlefield.
In dusty half-deserted villages, stray dogs roamed and a few locals still moved around on Soviet-era bicycles. But mostly we saw 4x4s emblazoned with the white triangle that is the mark of troops taking part in Ukraine’s attack on the Russian region of Kursk.
There was almost unanimous support for the first attack on mainland Russia since the second world war
It is a little over a week since Kyiv’s units – among them some of the most battle-hardened in this war-torn country – smashed through the Russian border just south of the small town of Sudzha and fanned out, eventually seizing several hundred square kilometres of land. It was a gambit that was so unexpected that some of Moscow’s soldiers were killed while they were sipping coffee in the open air.
Though unlikely to presage a decisive military shift, the attack on Russia proper has dramatically changed the narrative in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and, by all accounts, seriously embarrassed Vladimir Putin.
In the last few days news has come from both sides of the frontline that the Ukrainian advance is beginning to slow. Volodymyr Syrsky, head of the Ukrainian military, said his soldiers were only adding one or two kilometres a day to their advance as Russian resistance increased. He added that Ukrainian troops had captured an additional 100 Russian prisoners of war, to add to the hundreds taken during the initial stages of the fighting.
Whatever the military algebra, for Ukrainians I spoke to who have lived in the shadow of Moscow’s guns since February 2022 there was almost unanimous support for the first attack on mainland Russia since the second world war.
Sveta, who runs a café and shop in Pysarivka about half way between Sumy and the border, said: ‘They have been bombing us without thought for two and a half years. They are even bombing us today. Am I happy that we are now fighting on Russian soil? I am delighted.’
Outside Sveta’s café, five Ukrainian soldiers who were part of the initial attack were smoking cigarettes and chatting. They said they had been given a few days off to rest. My colleague and I had been turned back at the Ukrainian army checkpoint just north of the village – the Ukrainians are keeping tight control on access to the combat zone – and took the opportunity to gauge the mood among Kyiv’s troops.
I asked Lesha, a fit 28-year-old with bulging muscles from the Zhytomyr region of western Ukraine, what he felt when he first crossed into Russia. ‘I’m finding it difficult to find the words,’ he said. ‘It’s almost indescribable, difficult to believe. We were were digging trenches and laughing as we were doing it.’
Afonya, 35, like Lesha, has been fighting almost non-stop since the beginning of the war. As we chatted, he reached into his pocket and, with a grin, pulled out a Russian 50 ruble note. He wrote the words ‘Victory to Ukraine’ on it and handed it to me. Then the Ukrainian soldiers began to show us Russian patches and flashes and other trophies of war.
A few hundred yards away there was less jubilation. In the early hours of the morning a Russian bomber had dropped a KAB – a glide bomb – badly damaging four houses.Judging by the twisted metal and broken axle still on the verge, the bomb had also hit a Ukrainian military vehicle. There would almost certainly have been casualties.
Just 20 yards from where the bomb fell, Haluna, 66, her daughter, Svetlana, 38, and her granddaughter Taya, 18, had been sleeping in the front rooms of their home. The bomb had shredded the trees in their front garden and blown in the front windows and some of the house’s structure. Haluna, Svetlana and Taya were all injured and taken to a hospital in Sumy. They were expected to survive.
When we visited the scene, Oleksandr, Haluna’s son, and her daughter-in-law, Natasha, were collecting rubble and sweeping up glass. ‘It’s an absolute miracle they’re not dead,’ Natasha, 47, said. As we talked there were several large explosions in the distance and then bursts of anti-aircraft fire. Outside a work crew continued to fix overhead cables downed by the bomb.
I asked Natasha what she thought about the Ukrainian incursion into Russia. After all her family was paying a price. ‘It is terrible what has happened here,’ she said gesturing to the debris strewn over the living room of the house. ‘And winter will come soon. But we had to do this. We can’t just keep fighting on our own land.’
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘Maybe it will even help bring peace. When the Russians feel war on their own skin maybe they will change their tune.’
Lesha, the muscular soldier at the cafe, was less sure. I asked if he thought the incursion might speed the end of the war and push Moscow into negotiations. ‘We know they will respond,’ Lesha said. ‘In fact they will try and pummel us with everything they’ve got. But it was the right move. We had to do something.’
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How was the Stonehenge Altar Stone moved from Scotland?
I’ve had a keen interest in Stonehenge since I directed my first excavation there more than 40 years ago. A personal highlight was identifying a skeleton in London’s Natural History Museum, which archaeologists thought had been destroyed in the Blitz, and which turned out to be the remains of an Anglo-Saxon man beheaded beside the stone circle. Claims are made weekly, it seems, for some new insight into Stonehenge’s meaning, history or construction – and not all of them are mad. But I cannot remember an occasion when a single discovery changed the way I think about Stonehenge as much as the one announced this week.
I cannot remember an occasion when a single discovery changed the way I think about Stonehenge as much as the one announced this week.
A Nature study has found that Stonehenge’s Altar Stone was quarried in the far north-east of Scotland. Which means – depending on the route – it was carried as far as 800 miles before it was finally laid in Salisbury plain. The impressive study – which involved electron microscopes, lasers, and the geological aging of individual mineral grains in rock samples – could not be more clear cut. And geologists are convinced the stone was carried, rather than moved by an ancient glacier. It was Neolithic people who travelled all the way from the top of Scotland to the site of Stonehenge.
How did they do it? And why?
Let’s start at Stonehenge. What we call the Altar Stone was named in the 1620s by the architect Inigo Jones, who saw that it lay flat at the centre of Stonehenge, at the back of an arc formed by the tallest megaliths. In the 2020s we focus on how the midwinter sun sets between the tallest of these tall stones, casting its darkening light over the Altar Stone – or at least it would, if the stone was not largely buried, and further covered by two stones which fell and broke it on some distant, unrecorded day.
Archaeologists have tended to group Stonehenge’s megaliths into two categories. There are the really big ones, which are made of an extremely hard, local sandstone known as sarsen, which we think came from around 20 miles to the north; and there are the bluestones. Over decades, a determined team of British geologists, led by Richard Bevins at Aberystwyth University and Rob Ixer at UCL, has traced almost all the bluestones to various outcrops in south-west Wales, in a few cases to suspected Neolithic quarries. The origin of one bluestone, however, stumped them: the Altar Stone. Unlike the other bluestones, the Altar Stone is made of sandstone. Academics gradually eliminated all potential Welsh sources, until last year they proposed an origin in northern England or Scotland. This latest Nature study came about when an Aberystwyth colleague, Nick Pearce, responded to a request for some Welsh samples from an Australian PhD, and sent him two Altar Stone slides.
How did the Altar Stone travel all this distance? Weighing around six tons, it is a little heavier than the other bluestones, but it is lighter than most of the sarsens, which weigh as much as 40 tons. The latter can only have reached the site over land. So whatever mechanisms they used, Neolithic people would have had no trouble shifting the Altar Stone by land if they wanted to. A popular idea is that log rollers were used, as shown by a full-scale model at the Stonehenge visitor centre. They don’t work: rollers are impossible to control. I think people would have used the sophisticated technology of boat building to create strong sledges, which could be dragged with ropes and slid over loose branches to prevent sinking into the ground. For the very large sarsens, fixed timber tracks must be a real possibility.
The sea remains an option. They had the boats – their ancestors crossed the English Channel with cattle, sheep and pigs. Many pundits believe the Altar Stone was taken by sea, but for me the land route is the more credible option.
The clue is in the geography. Neolithic people didn’t travel as far as north-east Scotland to fetch a stone for Stonehenge: there were plenty of similar stones much, much closer. They went to make a point. The longer the journey took, and the more people who gave their labour to the project, the more successful it was. They went because it was so far. Because by doing so, they could meet other, distant communities. And because they wanted everyone to know what they were doing with Stonehenge. By moving the stone over land, you could get people involved. To have them see the stone go through their villages, to lean on the ropes as it did so, to mark the moment with feasting and celebrations.
This is what’s new about this Stonehenge revelation. This journey that reached right across the British Isles implies there was direct, physical communication between Neolithic communities across Britain. These were complex, networked societies in ways we are just beginning to understand.
How neurodiversity took over the Edinburgh Fringe
At this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, the new thing, the hot ticket, is being neurodiverse. Across comedy, stand up, magic and the spoken word it’s not so much Lady Macbeth as My Mental Health.
Standing out in the chaos of the 3,000 plus shows of Edinburgh Fringe by being ‘different’ has always been the number one prerequisite for gathering any kind of audience. And this year it seems like show after show is doing that by focusing on the psychological compulsions of the performers themselves.
‘Lady ADHD’, ‘Hyperactivity Disorder’, ‘Naughty or Neurodiverse: Magic from another planet’, ‘Baby Belle: Young, Dumb and full of Autism’, ‘River Time’, and ‘Unstuck’ are just some of the smorgasbord of shows transmuting psychiatric conditions into supposed public entertainment.
According to Blaire Postman, or Lady ADHD, ‘I just want to tell the world that ADHD folks have a lot to offer – some of those skills really do change the world – so we have to stop trying to put ADHD into a box’.
There are shows about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism, Dyscalculia (difficulty with numbers) and even a show exploring, rather dangerously for any Fringe performer, Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (feelings of failure and rejection).
There is even an official Fringe neurodiverse classification to help would-be show-goers pick out the preferred compulsion of their choice.
Often these shows are a strange amalgam of US medical jargon, purported comedy and intimate pharmaceutical detail about daily Ritalin doses. It can feel like you have stumbled into a painful American Pathologies Anonymous therapy session rather than a confessional comedy. For the audience too it can be hard to discern where the therapy stops, the show begins and who is performing for whom.
As mental health professionals warn, Edinburgh is not the place to work your own mental health problems out. ‘Because there is a lot less stigma around mental health – which is a good thing – more people are now defining themselves in terms of their own mental health conditions. But there are some people at Edinburgh who are putting themselves into a very vulnerable position by performing on stage, something they should not really be doing,’ says Andrew Eaton-Lewis, an arts programmer with Mental Health, a charity which sponsors an award for the best show about mental health at the Fringe.
The allure of performing at the Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, still compels many. In Unstuck, US comic Olivia Levine details her OCD fixations on public masturbation and fears that her own vaginal germs would kill her parents. ‘To share yourself is to share your disorders and share the possibility of being crazy – which I am not,’ says Levine.
Unstuck is polished, precise and after as Levine recounts, decades of psychological intervention since childhood from at least eight therapists, including an OCD specialist, a professionally funny and insightful comedic routine.
Other shows, Hyperactivity Disorder or Lady ADHD, border on the pedagogic. A generally baffled UK audience are introduced to an alien world of childhood American pharma concoctions and the creative ‘superpowers’ of how an OCD diagnosis shapes the mind. ‘I wanna say – it’s okay if your brain works in a different way. It’s not a downer it’s a disability. And I want people to understand that better,’ says Arielle Dundas of her own Hyperactivity Disorder show.
For some medical critics what is unfolding at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe is far from funny. By expanding our definition of mental illness we end up trivialising serious medial disorders.
There has been explosion since the pandemic of adult patients across the NHS demanding their lives are redefined by some hitherto undefined mental health diagnosis, such as autism, OCD or ADHD. ‘Autism is a very serious illness, a terrible illness, the inability to read other people’s mental states. When I was a junior psychiatrist the idea that someone with autism would be doing stand-up comedy at Edinburgh would just have been ridiculous. But now it’s common place,’ says Professor Sir Simon Wessely, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
‘It’s not to do with medicine, it’s a cultural shift. We are getting rid of the old classifications we used, bookish, nerdy, gauche, socially awkward and replacing them with some mental health label. These patients don’t want treatment just a validation for something else in their lives, a failed marriage, or their career gone wrong. The trouble is that this huge demand overwhelms the NHS’s limited resources and it now takes 24 months before anyone, even serious cases, can get an assessment.’
Andy Warhol claimed we would all get to be famous for 15 mins. Now at Edinburgh we can all get to be neurodiverse too if it helps us on the road to fame.
Did the Prime Minister have an affair with a woman half his age?
As a connoisseur of British political scandals I have long puzzled over one of the most intriguing of all such affairs: did Edwardian Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith have sex with Venetia Stanley, a woman young enough to be his daughter? She certainly took up huge amounts of his time and attention in August 1914 when he should have been exclusively focused on the conflict that became the first world war.
There is no doubt that the veteran PM was a ladies’ man who was notoriously ‘unsafe in taxis
The same question has now engaged the talents of the bestselling thriller writer Robert Harris, whose latest novel Precipice – out later this month – hones in on those vital summer days when Britain hovered on the brink of war, before plunging into the abyss that arguably destroyed European civilisation.
Harris examines the crisis through the prism of Asquith’s relationship with young Venetia, the aristocratic daughter of a Liberal peer, who caught the priapic premier’s eye when he became besotted with her during a Mediterranean cruise in 1912. They had first met two years before when the PM was 54 and Venetia was just 19.
Harris’s book is not out yet, but I understand that he takes the view – contrary to more cautious historians – that Asquith did indeed have a full physical affair with Venetia.
There is no doubt that the veteran PM – as well as being a virtual alcoholic nicknamed ‘Squiffy’ – was a ladies’ man who was notoriously ‘unsafe in taxis’. According to the cattily camp literary critic Lytton Strachey, he was in the habit of taking the hands of young ladies and guiding them to his groin.
After that momentous Mediterranean cruise, Asquith, despite the 35-year age gap between them, bombarded Venetia with love letters – sometimes as many as four a day – filled with political gossip and doggerel poetry declaring his deathless passion for her. His infatuation was at its height in the fatal summer of 1914 when almost continuous cabinet meetings debated whether Britain should take the plunge and join the war brewing between the major European powers.
Historians have reason to be grateful to Asquith for his unwise passion, as the letters he was scribbling to Venetia during those very meetings (when his cabinet colleagues assumed he was taking notes on their views) are often our only source about the vital decisions on peace and war that his government was taking.
Even when his brilliant eldest son Raymond was leaving for the front, Asquith forswore a farewell meeting with him so that he could go instead to the London Hospital to see Venetia in her newly acquired nurses’ uniform. Raymond was later killed in the Somme.
Unsurprisingly, the course of love between the heartsick PM and the cool young lady did not run smoothly. One problem was that another member of his family – his daughter Violet – had conceived a Sapphic crush on her friend Venetia and was also wooing her with love letters.
Perhaps more seriously, another guest on that fateful 1912 cruise had also fallen for Venetia’s charms. This was Edwin Montagu, a protege of the PM he had just promoted to become a minister. Unknown to Asquith, Montagu too began to besiege Venetia with love letters and pleas to marry. There were two problems with Montagu’s amorous suit. Firstly, he was universally seen as being not only dull but repulsively ugly. With a shudder of disgust Venetia talked of his ‘Over-sized head and pock marked face’ and told a jealous Violet that she couldn’t bear to kiss him.
Secondly, Montagu was a wealthy Jew, and his father had threatened to disinherit him if he married outside the faith. Nevertheless, he continued to pursue Venetia relentlessly as the war began, and although she turned down his marriage proposal at first, she became alarmed by the PM’s increasingly frenzied parallel pursuit of her. In 1915, in the midst of an existential government crisis, she told Asquith that she would after all wed Montagu and convert to Judaism in order to secure his inheritance.
Though Asquith told Venetia that her news had ‘broken my heart’ he quickly recovered and even forgave Montagu, promoting him to the cabinet. Indeed, true to form , the PM was soon in erotic correspondence with a new love interest: none other than Venetia’s younger sister Sylvia. Asquith’s long suffering second wife Margot – who had borne the PM five children – was well used to her husband’s extra-marital proclivities, and spoke tolerantly of the ‘little harem’ he had gathered.
Sylvia was married to an officer at the front who (almost needless to say) was also enjoying a correspondence with Venetia. Well aware of Asquith’s reputation as a groper, the younger sister was careful to keep him at a safe distance whenever they were alone.
The Montagu marriage was not destined to prosper. Whether or not Venetia was a virgin bride when she walked down the aisle, she certainly enjoyed a healthy love life thereafter. The only child from her marriage, Judy, later a close friend of Princess Margaret, was almost certainly not fathered by Montagu, but by one of her legion of lovers.
The ill matched pair brought a magnificent Tudor mansion, Breccles Hall in Norfolk , and used more Montagu money in commissioning the renowned architect Edwin Lutyens to modernise the house and gardens. Winston Churchill, a close friend of the couple, was a frequent visitor and painted a charming view of the interior.
In 1916, exasperated by his chief’s half-hearted conduct of the war, the dynamic David Lloyd George outmanoeuvred Asquith and overthrew him, forming a new coalition with the Tories. The Liberals bitterly split into Asquithian and Lloyd George factions, and would never form a one party government again. Montagu betrayed Asquith and joined Lloyd George’s government as Secretary of State for India.
In 1924, he fell victim to a mysterious malady, died aged only 45, and was buried on the Breccles estate. Venetia became a very merry widow and enjoyed affairs with many men including the press baron Lord Beaverbrook and the immensely rich scientist, spy and polymath Victor Rothschild. In middle age she took up flying, and romanced the young pilot who flew with her around the world.
Just before his death in 1928, Asquith made a long car journey to Breccles for a sentimental final meeting with Venetia . In the second world war she was a regular guest of the Churchills. She died of cancer aged 60 in August 1948, and despite their differences, her ashes were buried with Montagu at Breccles, leaving an enigma behind: did she or didn’t she have an affair with old ‘Squiffy’?
Does such ancient tittle tattle matter? I would argue that it did matter very much that as government and nation were fatally divided about whether or not to join the war, the Prime Minister was distracted from his duties and more interested in sharing military secrets with his lady love than his own cabinet.
Asquith’s conduct, whether he seduced Venetia or not, was foolish, reprehensible, and irresponsible. In our #MeToo age of social media it would be impossible to hide, but in that deferential era he got away with it.
Will the SNP allow debate on Gaza?
Every now and then, I find myself in the strange position of trying to convince Scottish nationalists not to train their pitchforks on SNP MSP John Mason, who is known for his mercurial pronouncements. This time he has been suspended from the party whip for disputing the assertion that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. In a post on Twitter, Mason said: ‘If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they would have killed ten times as many.’ This was a response to a sharply worded post from former colleague Sandra White. White, who served as a nationalist MSP between 1999 and 2021, apologised in 2015 after reposting an anti-Semitic meme on Twitter, claiming to have done so inadvertently. The image, as described by the BBC, showed ‘six piglets suckling at a sow with the word “Rothschild” and the Star of David on it’.
Mason’s suspension could set a precedent that the SNP will find difficult to maintain
Mason’s post is said to be callous, to insinuate incorrectly that attempted genocide requires a certain volume of casualties, and to downplay Palestinian death and suffering. I can see why reasonable people might read it that way. It’s not the most elegant or nuanced sentence, though this is Twitter we’re talking about. However, the whip hasn’t been withdrawn because of anything reasonable people have said. It’s been withdrawn because pro-Palestinian – or, more accurately, anti-Israel – ideologues have gone splenetic over the post. And the party leadership is desperate to appease such people after they went splenetic over a recent meeting between SNP minister Angus Robertson and an Israeli diplomat. I’ve written about that here.
To my eyes, Mason’s suspension looks not so much like an overreaction as a tactical chunk of red meat tossed to the braying jackals. A party spokesman says: ‘To flippantly dismiss the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians is completely unacceptable. There can be no room in the SNP for this kind of intolerance.’ Flippancy is debatable but, unless there are other posts that have informed this decision, it’s not clear where Mason displayed ‘intolerance’ or who or what he displayed it to. Could he have expressed himself more clearly, thoughtfully and sensitively? Yes, but if the SNP is going to suspend the whip every time one of its MSPs tweets with insufficient nuance it’ll go from government to minor opposition party within a day or two.
Mason has responded by saying ‘too many’ had died in the conflict and that many felt Israel has crossed the line from ‘self-defence to seeking revenge’. However, he added, ‘I personally do not believe that Israel has tried to commit, has committed, or is committing genocide. They certainly have the ability to kill many more Palestinians than they have done. That is not to say that the loss of life already is not too many.’
That is certainly how I read his tweet: if Israel had genocidal designs, it could have achieved them already. Of course, there is no numerical threshold for genocide. Article II of the Convention says the crime is committed when a perpetrator intends to ‘destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’ and does so by 1) killing members of said group; 2) causing them serious physical or psychological injury; 3) deliberately imposing living conditions ‘calculated to bring about… physical destruction in whole or in part; 4) attempting to reduce natality; or 5) ‘forcibly’ transferring the children of one group to another. The International Criminal Court further specifies that genocide takes place ‘in the context of a manifest pattern of similar conduct’ and that it covers the killing of ‘one or more persons’.
So the implication that the death toll in Gaza, as yet unconfirmed, disproves charges of genocide is seemingly at odds with the terms of international law. However, Mason is not a lawyer (neither am I) and he is speaking in lay terms in a political debate rather than giving a legal analysis. That can hardly be cause for the whip to be suspended. Nor can disputing the accusation of genocide, which remains just that – an accusation. As I’ve written about here, key organs of international law, including the International Court of Justice, have shredded their credibility when it comes to Israel by abandoning institutional and judicial objectivity in favour of political activism.
But let’s set that to one side and pretend Israel will or ever could get a fair hearing on allegations of genocide. No international court has found it guilty of that crime. In the current case South Africa vs. Israel, the ICJ has made a provisional order instructing Israel to ‘take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II’. But as Julia Sebutinde, vice president of the Court, stated in her dissent:
‘[T]he reader of the present Order must be cautious not to assume or conclude that, by indicating provisional measures, the Court has already made a determination that the State of Israel (“Israel”) has actually violated its obligations under the Genocide Convention. This is certainly not the case at this stage of the proceedings, since such a finding could only be made at the stage of the examination of the merits in this case.’
So while some might believe Israel’s actions amount to genocide, the question has not been decided by the ICJ or a similar court. That makes this a matter for debate, which it will likely still be no matter which way the Court rules. Depriving Mason of the whip for taking one side in a prominent debate in which many reasonable politicians, activists, lawyers and commentators disagree seems egregious at best. Unless, of course, there are additional posts or statements which the party has taken into consideration. If there aren’t, and this comes down to giving the impression of flippancy or expressing an unpopular view, Mason’s suspension could set a precedent that the SNP will find difficult to maintain.
Reginald D. Hunter and the cowardice of the comedy class
The brave clown who speaks the truth and shames the devil is a showbiz tradition, from Charlie Chaplin to Lenny Bruce. The comedian more than any other creative is best-placed to play the role of the cheeky urchin who points out that the Emperor has no clothes. But in recent years, drolls have ceased to be outlaws – and have become lapdogs of the liberal establishment at best and boot-boy bullies of Jews at their very worst.
The apparent antipathy towards the Jewish people on the comedy circuit is noticeably greater than that in, say, music or acting. Does it stem – as so much anti-Semitism does – from envy, as ‘Jewish humour’ is such a thing, and Jews have been so historically successful in the comedy racket? To the kind of men who are drawn to comedy – often driven by the kind of suppressed rage which comes from being socially awkward (many comedians say that they became clowns to avoid being picked on) and not physically attractive even when young – I imagine this must be very galling.
In comedy as in so many other professions, Gaza has been just the excuse
In comedy as in so many other professions, Gaza has been just the excuse. In February the Soho Theatre banned the comedian Paul Currie after he displayed a Palestinian flag onstage and the venue said that Jews were ‘subjected to verbal abuse’ and alleged that Currie ‘aggressively demanded’ that they leave. (Currie appears to disagree with the theatre’s account of what happened and vehemently denies that his conduct was anti-Semitic.)
In May the comedian Dane Baptiste told an unidentified female ‘Zionist’ on Instagram: ‘I want you to sit down with your husband and kids and imagine what their lives will be without you, because north London is a quick trip to make… Ask about and comedians will tell you I will be at your literal doorstep. Your agent won’t keep you safe. Your act is dumb but don’t be a dumb woman. I will sit in prison while your family sit at the cemetery.’ (Afterwards, Baptiste said he had ‘no ill intention towards the Jewish community and never have’.)
This month at Edinburgh, the Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish wrote under the headline ‘This was the ugliest Fringe moment I’ve ever witnessed’ of a show by Reginald D Hunter:
‘This came down to five minutes midway in when a theatre full of people erupted in vocal animosity at an Israeli couple who had briefly heckled Hunter… where he said a Channel 5 documentary containing a scene about an abusive wife herself accusing her husband of abuse made him think, “It’s like being married to Israel.” There was audience laughter in response, but not from the couple on the front row, who shouted “not funny”. The pair, who said they were from Israel, then endured their fellow audience members shouting expletives (“f— off” among them), and telling them to go – with slow-hand claps, boos and cries of “genocidal maniac”, “you’re not welcome” and “free Palestine” part of the toxic mix. But here he gave an object lesson in how not to pick on people in the front row. Instead of tolerating the couple’s joint heckle, he doubled down with a sinister air of beaming bellicosity: “I’ve been waiting for you all summer, where the f— you been?” He continued: “You can say it’s not funny to you, but if you say it to a room full of people who laughed, you look foolish. Look at you making everyone love Israel even more,” he jeered, after the woman remonstrated with the audience. “That tells me that I still got voltage,” he purred, with satisfaction, after the pair left, slowly (it turned out that the man was disabled, not that this caused a flicker of restraint in the host, who openly laughed at them). He then related a remark that his female partner had made at the time of the Holocaust controversy about accessing the Jewish Chronicle’s website: “Typical f—ing Jews, they won’t tell you anything unless you subscribe.” “It’s just a joke,” he added.’
Afterwards, Hunter commented: ‘There was an unfortunate incident in my new show Fluffy Fluffy Beavers. As a comedian I do push boundaries in creating humour, it’s part of my job. This inevitably creates divided opinions but I am staunchly anti-war and anti-bully. I regret any stress caused to the audience and venue staff members.’
As Cavendish points out, Hunter also was making money from the oldest hatred long before the war in Gaza, having been accused of anti-Semitism at the 2006 Fringe for joking about Holocaust denial (Hunter later defended himself by saying ‘the joke isn’t about the Jews, it is about freedom of thought and freedom of expression.’)
And of course the ugliest – in every way – man in comedy, Frankie Boyle, deserves a dishonourable mention here. Way back in 2010, the BBC Trust was forced to apologise over his hideous 2008 routine in which he compared Palestine to a cake being ‘punched to pieces by a very angry Jew…I’m actually studying that Israeli army martial arts. And I know 16 ways to kick a Palestinian woman in the back.’
This was aired on that bastion of civilisation Radio 4, the comedy output of which in recent years has declined from woefully limp to malign circle jerk. It’s received wisdom that Radio 4 is losing so many listeners because of its political output, but I’d bet that the alleged comedy has a lot to answer for too. The flip side of the virulence displayed by the likes of Boyle and Hunter is the castration of comedy. The Radio 4 panel shows sniggering about Tories and Terfs are very much playing the Bully’s Best Friend role.
It’s fair to say that the most craven and conformist people in entertainment are now comedians – they make actors look like flaming anarchists – as they glide bovinely on that conveyor belt from uni to the Fringe to the BBC, state-sanctioned battery hens laying eggs loudly on hand-outs extorted from the forced licence fee. The women are no better; a bunch of tame Transmaids who never dare comment on the funniest phenomenon of the 21st century – men pretending to be women. I love Radio 4 Extra but when their Comedy Club section starts at 10 p.m., the heart-breaking humourlessness of the modern comics who introduce it makes me think ‘Is this a joke?’ That’s about the only time I do think it.
So it’s a choice the blandness of the panel-show herd or the beastliness of the bully-boys when it comes to comedy these days. It’s telling that Reginald Hunter, like Boyle, isn’t averse to making jokes about women. Hunter has joked, ‘Apparently rape is the worst thing to do to a woman. I disagree. The worst thing to do to a woman is rape her, then call her fat.’ Jews and women are the two groups comedians can vilify with impunity these days, with no fear that they’ll be the subject of death-threats or backdoor blasphemy laws.
Both groups are ceaselessly gaslighted; the Israeli couple at Hunter’s Edinburgh show represented their country perfectly that night, surrounded by hostile enemies attacking them from all sides whilst claiming that they, the Israelis, were the aggressors. The award-winning comic writer Caroline Gold says, ‘This time the hate is just for the Jews, so all of the spite, all of the disgust, is distilled into that. The old Jewish jokes never had the hate; they were stereotypical but not savage. This new breed – it’s bierkeller stuff, not Northern working-men’s club.’
Comedy has become the most smug and authoritarian milieu of all the entertainments; while waving the woke flag, it zeros in on the most perennially persecuted people in history with added relish. I can’t help but think of the terrific, terrifying play by Trevor Griffiths, Comedians, written in 1975, in which a comedian who is ostensibly a decent man turns out to have had a very unpredictable reaction to visiting the site of an extermination camp.
It’s a fact that anti-Semitism some time ago – during the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn – shook off its dowdy old right-wing duds and became one of the coolest non-binary clubs in town. This, added to the specific envy of the success of Jews in comedy, makes me reflect yet again that a future full of fun and laughter is not coming anytime soon – onstage or off.
The controversial truth about China’s new gas field
The news was seemingly big but the announcement curiously low key. Earlier this month, China declared that it had discovered what it described as the world’s first large-scale gas field in ultra deep waters and not far beneath the seabed. Lingshui 36-1 contained 100 billion cubic metres of gas, said the China national offshore oil corporation (CNOOC), and the data and plans to extract it had been approved by the ‘relevant government authorities’. It did not give a timescale or the precise location of the field – which it merely described as ‘southeast of Hainan’, China’s southernmost island province.
It is easy to see why maritime borders matter to Vietnam
The reticence is because the gas isn’t China’s – at least not legally. It almost certainly lies in disputed waters close to islands claimed by Vietnam, which was violently expelled from the territory by China in 1974. Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea – an area of more than 1.25 million square miles, 13 times the size of the United Kingdom, as its own. Its claim is encompassed within a vast U-shaped line (the ‘nine-dash line’ as it is often called), which has been likened to a giant cow’s tongue. Within it, Beijing has asserted its ‘historic’ claim with increased aggression, militarising islands and intimidating rival claimants, who also include the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Territorial expansion by imperial powers is usually associated with land-based armies on the march, but China’s assertion of sovereignty over such a vast area still represents a territorial grab on a scale not seen since the second world war. In 2015, Manila successfully challenged Beijing’s claims under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS), which both countries had ratified. Not only has China ignored the ruling, but it has used its coastguard, which is equipped better than the navies of most countries, to routinely harasses rival ships surveying for oil and gas. That will make this month’s announcement from the CNOOC a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
Vietnam, with whom China also fought a brief border war in 1979, is the most militarily formidable of the rival claimants. The coastal city of Da Nang is the closest Vietnamese city to the disputed Paracel Islands, a string of 130 islands, rocks and reefs, which sits around 230 miles to the west. They have been heavily fortified since Beijing seized them. The Lingshui 36-1 gas field is believed to be close to here. Further to the south are the Spratly Islands, where Vietnam and China also have conflicting claims. It was here in 1988 that Chinese soldiers mowed down dozens of Vietnamese troops standing on Johnson South Reef, water up to their knees – a grizzly video of which was filmed from a Chinese ship and still circulates widely online.
I visited Da Nang while researching for my new book, Vampire State: the Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy. Vietnamese animosity towards China is deep-seated, going back centuries, and Da Nang provided an ideal spot from where to view its more recent twists and turns. On landing at the small airport, it was easy to spot the fighter jets in their hardened shelters, their noses protruding like crouching attack dogs. A three-floor Paracel Island museum sits on the waterfront looking out towards the islands and stacked with documents to support Hanoi’s claim. On a plinth outside the museum sits a salvaged fishing boat, an ugly gash in its side, which in 2020 was rammed and sunk by a far bigger steel-hulled Chinese ‘fishing boat’ – part of a Chinese marine militia. Da Nang also hosts a Paracel government in exile.
It is easy to see why maritime borders matter to Vietnam and why Hanoi feels most threatened by Beijing’s assertion of ownership to all the resources above, in and under the sea. Vietnam has a 2,000-mile coastline, some one-third of the country’s population live along the coast and half the country’s GDP still comes from marine activities.
Last year, a Chinese survey vessel and multiple coastguard ships – possibly part of the operation that discovered the Lingshui 36-1 field – operated for several weeks in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, only leaving after soaring tensions and repeated warnings from the Vietnamese government. In May 2014, China’s deployment of an oil rig into an area claimed by Hanoi resulted in a tense stand-off at sea, which triggered deadly anti-Chinese riots and arson attacks across Vietnam. The rioters targeted Chinese-owned factories and businesses in 22 provinces, left more than twenty people dead and scores injured. Beijing evacuated 3,000 of its nationals. Shortly after my visit, Vietnam banned the release of the movie Barbie because of a scene that apparently showed the nine-dash line, such is the sensitivity.
Vietnam has also responded to China’s creeping aggression by strengthening ties with India, Japan and the United States. A few days after my visit, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, visited Da Nang – a potent symbol of the changing power dynamics. Soon after, President Joe Biden himself made a state visit, announcing a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ with America’s former enemy. In December last year, China’s president XI Jinping visited Vietnam for the first time in six years (and Vietnam’s new communist party chief will be in Beijing next week).
This complex geopolitics might explain why the announcement of the Lingshui 36-1 was so low key. Beijing has traditionally treated rival South China Sea claimants with ill-disguised contempt – and mostly still does. It is more wary of Vietnam, which gave the People’s Liberation Army a bloody nose in the 1979 border war and has been rapidly modernising its own navy. But it is hard to see how extracting gas on a vast scale from disputed waters will be seen in Hanoi as anything other than the latest provocation from what generations of Vietnamese have been brought up to regard as the ‘northern invader’.
Male violence does not take place in a vacuum
There have been lots of reasons to be optimistic this summer: the glorious spectacle of the Olympics; the (relatively) good weather; the Bank of England finally cutting interest rates amid falling inflation. Yet this summer has also seen a pernicious epidemic of violence, hate and prejudice. I’m not talking about the right-wing riots, but the numerous acts of violence against women and girls. Over the last month or so, we have witnessed too many chilling reminders that we have a problem with men who hate women, and that politicians have no idea what to do about this.
It started in July: Carol Hunt and her daughters Hannah and Louise were brutally murdered in their home, execution-style with a crossbow. In the initial hours, before a suspect was named, many speculated on social media about the potential motive and perpetrator, but to many women the answer was far too obvious: the first suspect is always a jilted partner. Louise’s ex-boyfriend Kyle Clifford has since been arrested on suspicion of murder. The government’s response? A crackdown on crossbows.
How can we possibly start to tackle this epidemic unless we can address it in the first place?
That same week, Gavin Plumb was also jailed for plotting to kidnap, rape and murder TV presenter Holly Willoughby. Plumb was only discovered after a US undercover police officer infiltrated an online group called Abduct Lovers, and became concerned after he shared a video of his ‘kidnap kit’, which included 400 metal cable ties, a lock-picking set, bottles of chloroform, handcuffs and rope.
Two weeks later, a 17-year-old boy was charged in relation to the stabbing of eleven little girls and two female teachers at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. A week after that, three Taylor Swift concerts – again, with primarily female audiences – were cancelled in Vienna after police uncovered a terror plot with links to Islamic State. The plot was eerily reminiscent of the attack at Ariana Grande’s concert at Manchester Arena in 2022, a venue also packed with girls and their mothers, who made up 17 out of the 22 fatalities.
Then just this week, an 11-year-old girl was stabbed eleven times in broad daylight in Leicester Square, suffering wounds to her face, wrist, shoulder and neck.
These are just the high-profile cases. In the last month, over half a dozen other women have been murdered by men without making front-page news: 26-year-old Courtney Mitchell, mother of three; Olivia Wood, 29; Rebecca Simkin, 31; Anala Odysseos, who was pregnant, 32; Laura Robson, 37; Jenny Sharp, 80; and Sophie Evans, 30.
The horrific frequency of female homicides – around 140 a year, a number that has remained stubbornly high since 2009 – means that too often these deaths are not treated as newsworthy. When they are, the misogyny that underlies them is underplayed, and the same tired platitudes are perpetuated. For example, there is the ‘nice guy narrative’, where the suspect’s seeming normality is highlighted. This was the case with Kyle Clifford, who apparently never seemed ‘odd or aggressive.’
Alternatively, the media focuses on the ‘missed opportunities’ and ‘overlooked red flags’, like the fact the Vienna terror suspect was allegedly frequently violent towards female students and groped girls while attending business school. Not enough was perhaps made about Gavin Plumb’s criminal record: in 2006 he received two convictions for attempting to kidnap two air hostesses, and only received a suspended sentence. Likely emboldened by his lack of punishment, he then tied two 16-year-olds up in the store room of a shop in 2008, but one of the girls luckily managed to escape and sound the alarm. When will we learn that male violence does not take place in a vacuum?
At worst, the gendered nature of this violence is ignored altogether. In the wake of the Southport murders and the riots that followed, many political issues have been discussed: immigration; multiculturalism; the poverty and alienation of the working class; relationships between police and local communities; Islamophobia; fake news; mental health; whether we should protect the identity of those under 18. In doing so, we have overlooked the very specific demographic of the victims whose deaths triggered the riots in the first place: this was not just an attack on children, but on girls.
Yet how can we possibly start to tackle this epidemic unless we can address it in the first place? We have to be able to acknowledge the fact that these crimes are very specifically acts of violence against women and girls, and not worry that by doing so, we rekindle the old ‘not all men’ debate. Of course it’s not all men – let’s not forget the bravery of Jonathan Hayes, a passerby who was also stabbed by the Southport attacker after trying to intervene, or the security guard who disarmed the Leicester Square knifeman and gave the girl first aid until the emergency services arrived.
The sad reality though is that it is enough men, and too many men, and that over the last month the media has been too reluctant to dwell on the sex of the victims in all of these past and potential tragedies. We have therefore ended up with a situation where the government wants to appear tough on crime by jailing people for Facebook posts, but has almost nothing to say about a much more pressing national emergency.
Ukraine could deliver a killer ideological blow to Putin
As I write, four brigades of the Ukrainian army are advancing into the territory of the Russian Federation, and are establishing what looks like a bridgehead for further operations. They crossed the frontier from the Sumy Oblast, to the north of Kharkhiv six days ago, overpowered the Chechen frontier guards, and have been rolling to the East ever since. They occupied the town of Sudzha and are supported by air-defence, tanks, artillery, mine-clearers and heavy engineering equipment. Their activities are being called an ‘incursion’, although nothing to date suggests a short-lived raid for reconnaissance or hit-and-run purposes. By now, the Ukrainian-occupied area has passed the 1,000 km squared mark.
Anyone in the happy position of giving advice to Ukrainian commanders, would strongly advise them to target this place
The reaction of the Russian authorities has been chaotic. They were definitely caught by surprise and had no coherent defensive measures in place. Vladimir Putin called it an ‘important terrorist provocation’ and ordered a state of emergency in the Kursk Province. The mayor of Kursk has stated that so far 120,000 people have been evacuated. A number of villages in the line of the Ukrainian advance, like Lgov, have been cleared. Huge reinforcements have been promised, but at least one major military column has been ambushed and destroyed, reportedly by Ukrainian artillery using American Himar rocket launchers. Russian warplanes are flying low, clearly fearing anti-aircraft fire. Most interestingly, hints of political trouble are circulating. This week, a rumour surfaced about a bounty of one million dollars placed on the head of General Gerasimov by the new head of the Wagner Group, Pavel Prigozhin, son of the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died mysteriously last year in an air crash.
Intense speculation surrounds the unstated objectives of the Ukrainian operation. As usual, the Ukrainian command is saying little, but almost all commentators agree that the first aim is to relieve pressure on hard-pressed Ukrainian defenders in the Donetsk region and on the approaches to Kharkhiv. In recent months, Russian assault forces, whilst sustaining disproportionate losses, have made numerous local gains, and Russian missiles, often fired from across the border, have constantly rained down on Kharkiv, which lies a mere 40 km from the frontier. So the more Russian resources the incursion draws away from the frontline the better for Ukraine.
Yet it is highly unlikely that the Ukrainian leadership is unaware of other benefits, both general and specific, which the incursion could produce, not least:
1. It could break the impasse of the last two years, and open up the possibility of striking a decisive blow. If the Russians withdraw crack units from the frontline further south, they will leave gaps which Ukrainian assault brigades could exploit in ways not practical during last year’s counter-offensive. The world will begin to talk again of Ukraine taking the Crimean Isthmus and Melitopol.
2. Prolonged fighting on Russian territory is bound to cause political trouble in Russia for both Putin and the army command. Humiliation, even on a local scale, will blow a hole in their empty assurances that ‘all is going to plan’. It will have to be followed by radical changes, first in the army leadership and later in the Kremlin.
3. Success on the battlefield will stop Ukraine’s western allies from wavering and will put an end to the western media’s tendency to overstate Russian gains and to underestimate Ukraine’s powers of resistance. An extended war of attrition undoubtedly favours long-term forecasts of a Russian victory, whilst Ukraine’s ability to manoeuvre and outwit its aggressors will greatly increase the chances of David defeating Goliath.
4. Cynical Russian sources have already suggested that Kiev’s main aim is to capture territory for bargaining purposes. This may be so, but all depends on Ukraine’s uncertain ability to hold on to its territorial gains until negotiations begin.
5. Early reports say that Ukrainian units have already gained control of the terminal at Sudzha of a Gazprom pipeline, that sends gas across Ukraine to Hungary and Austria. So far, Kyiv has chosen not to destroy that pipeline, but the ability to turn the taps on and off at will may discourage people like Victor Orban from continuing to court the Kremlin.
6. Pictures on the internet, taken from the roadside of the E38 between Kursk and Rylsk reveal that Russian mechanical diggers are already building a defensive trench line around the Nuclear Power Station at Kurchatov. Should the Ukrainians penetrate that line, they would hold an important chip for countering Russia’ earlier capture of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
7. The Ukrainians undoubtedly hope to cut the strategic railway line which runs from Kursk to Belgorod and which carries vital supplies from Moscow to Russian occupation forces in eastern and southern Ukraine.
All these objectives are plausible. But there is another, which is rapidly coming into the Ukrainians’ sights, but which the western media have not yet cottoned on to. It is an object, which every Russian and Ukrainian officer will have studied in their training, and which every Russian and Ukrainian child will have heard of at school. Anyone in the happy position of giving advice to Ukrainian commanders, would strongly advise them to target this place.
Today, Prokhorovsky Field near Kursk is the site of an enormous museum. Officially named ‘The Third Battlefield of Russia Museum of Military Glory’ it was completed in 2010 and lies beside the E105 arterial road south of Kursk. It is filled with gigantic monuments, memorials and display halls. Its elegant, gold-domed, belfry tower can be seen for miles around, and its exhibits are visited by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, every year. It marks the site of the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, which is (wrongly) billed as ‘the largest tank battle in world history’, but which, unquestionably, crippled the ability of Hitler’s Wehrmacht to mount further major offensives.
Prokhorovka is the centrepiece of Putin’s phoney historical theories, which underly his invasion of Ukraine. As part of this thesis, the ‘Great Stalin’ was deserving of eternal praise; Russia won the ‘Great Patriotic War’ singlehanded; Putin’s rag-tag army is a worthy successor to Stalin’s victorious war machine; and ‘fascist’ invaders will always be repelled from Russia’s sacred land. What Putin fails to emphasise is the fact that Stalin was the leader not of ‘Russia’ but of the Soviet Union, and that millions of Ukrainian soldiers fought and died in Soviet ranks in the First Ukrainian Front of 1943-45. Ukrainians have as much a reason to take pride in the ‘Battle of Kursk’ as Russians do.
Before his invasion of Ukraine, Putin distributed a pseudo-historical essay to his troops, the essence of which misappropriates to Russia the legacy of everything from Kievan Rus to the Great Patriotic War. Instead of sharing that legacy with other Slavic nations, it denies Ukraine a right to exist. It would be like a German leader arguing that England should not exist because the Anglo-Saxons came from Germany.
Even so, ever since Tsarist times, the western public has been regularly subjected to similar waves of Russian propaganda, that are hard to refute. Anyone who continues to conflate ‘Russia’ with the USSR or with ancient Rus are following in the steps of the ‘useful idiots’, whose services Stalin much appreciated.
A simple photograph showing a party of smiling Ukrainian soldiers in front of the museum belltower at Prokhorovka, would send shock waves round Russia. It would be endlessly multiplied on social media, and would be particularly effective if the soldiers were pictured shaking hands with their Russian counterparts or with the museum’s staff. It would be worth any number of cruise missiles or Himar shells, proving for all to see that Ukrainians are not ‘fascists’ and want nothing more than for Russia to be a good neighbour. It might even sow the seeds of Putin’s demise.
Do we now have proof Ukraine blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?
When three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany were destroyed by unknown saboteurs in September 2022, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhailo Podolyak described the bombing as ‘a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU.’ The attack – which knocked out the route through which Germany had previously received 30 per cent of its gas supplies – was designed to ‘destabilise the economic situation in Europe and cause panic before winter,’ Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
But there was one crucial detail that Podolyak failed to mention: compelling evidence is emerging that it was not Russia, but Ukraine that organised the ‘terrorist’ attack. Moreover, according to a major investigation by the Wall Street Journal(WSJ) published this week, US intelligence was forewarned about the operation and attempted to prevent it – only to be ignored by the Ukrainians.
The picture that is emerging is of a small, highly professional group of civilian and military saboteurs operating with the support and direction of the Ukrainian military and the sanction of Volodymyr Zelensky himself – but funded privately and operating independently. The carefully planned attack on the seabed pipeline destroyed €20 billion of investment and at a stroke broke Russia’s ability to subject European countries supporting Kyiv to energy blackmail. The attack also crashed Gazprom, a mainstay not only of Russia’s economy but also of the Kremlin’s coercive gas diplomacy.
But at the same time, the destruction of Nord Stream was also an act of war against critical Nato energy infrastructure. ‘An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defence clause of Nato,’ a senior German official familiar with the ongoing investigation told the WSJ. ‘But our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash.’ The definitive removal of cheap Russian gas also played a key role in transforming Germany’s economy from one of Europe’s most dynamic to its most stagnant, with growth forecasts now at just 0.1 per cent for 2024. As such, the Nord Stream attack ranks as one of the most successful and strategically consequential covert operations in the history of warfare. And the information that the strike was in fact masterminded by Ukraine has been held as an explosive and closely guarded secret for fear of triggering an anti-Kyiv backlash among the German public – though The Spectator published a detailed report on the swirling rumours as early as March 2023. But it was only this summer that German prosecutors issued their first arrest warrant for one of the suspects – effectively the first time any western government has officially accused Kyiv of involvement – and even that warrant was confidential before details were revealed this week by the WSJ.
The idea of attacking the Nord Stream pipeline was hatched by a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen over a dinner in Kyiv in May 2022, according to multiple Ukrainian sources with direct knowledge of the plan interviewed by the WSJ. The operation would be funded by private individuals but overseen by a serving Ukrainian general with experience in special operations in an arrangement that one participant described as a ‘public-private partnership.’ According to the Journal’s sources, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky approved the plan on the grounds that the Gazprom-owned pipeline was a legitimate military target. However, destroying Nord Stream would also constitute a direct attack on the critical infrastructure of Germany – a key ally of Ukraine in its deadly struggle to repel Russian invaders. The operation, therefore, would have to be conducted at arm’s length and in total secrecy.
By the end of June 2022, however, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD had got wind of the Nord Stream sabotage plan. Since 2014 the Dutch had developed a large network of agents in Russia and Ukraine in their quest for information on the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the eastern Donbas region, which killed all 298 passengers and crew on board, including 193 Dutch citizens. Among their contacts was Roman Chervinsky, a decorated Ukrainian colonel who had previously served in Ukraine’s main security service, the SBU. Chervinsky was, by his own admission, involved in ‘planning and implementing’ operations to ‘abduct a witness’ who could corroborate Russia’s role in the MH17 tragedy – and was also, according to a detailed investigation by the Washington Post and Der Spiegel in November 2023, a key organiser of the Nord Stream clandestine mission. (Chervinsky himself formally denied involvement in the Nord Stream attack, though praised its effectiveness.)
The Dutch immediately warned their colleagues in the US’s Central Intelligence Agency, according to sources in the MIVD and the CIA cited by the Journal. The US in turn urgently demanded that Zelensky call off the mission. Ukraine’s president reportedly agreed and ordered his then army chief General Valery Zaluzhny to stop the saboteurs – only to be told, according to the Journal’s sources, that the group was already out of contact and could not be recalled.
What happened next has been documented in forensic detail by German law enforcement. On 6 September 2022 the 15.57-metre, 11-berth German-flagged Bavaria Cruiser 50 motor yacht Andromeda set sail from the Hohe Düne marina in the Baltic port of Rostock. She had been hired from Mola Yachting GmbH for 2,998 euros (£2,600) a week by a Polish company owned by two Ukrainians. At least six passengers were on board – all of whom were carrying forged passports, one of them Bulgarian. The yacht was not, because of its size, required to carry an AIS (Automatic Identification System) – but OSINT sleuths combed through marina security camera footage and docking records and found the Andromeda at Sandhamn then Christiansom and Wiek on the island of Rügen on the days before and after the explosions. Undersea cameras found that three of the 2.8 cm-thick steel pipelines lying at a depth of 80 to 90 metres on the Baltic seabed had been breached by explosive charges and then catastrophically exploded under the 120-bar pressure of the gas contained inside them. In January 2023 the Andromeda was searched and the German public prosecutor’s office confirmed that traces of explosives had been found aboard.
In June 2024 German Federal Public Prosecutor Jens Rommel issued a confidential arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen and professional diver who allegedly masterminded the operation. The suspect was thought to be in hiding in Poland – but Polish authorities made no arrests, and to the intense frustration of the German police the suspect is believed to have since returned to Ukraine, people familiar with the investigation told the WSJ. Indeed in the wake of the failed arrest the former chief of German intelligence agency BND August Hanning has publicly accused the Polish government of complicity in the Nord Stream attacks. ‘Pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged,’ Hanning told the German ARD broadcaster this week. ‘These are decisions that were made at the highest political level. And I think that there was an arrangement between Zelensky and [Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda to carry out this attack.’ Henning also accused Poland of tipping off the suspects rather than cooperating with German police.
Many commentators have rushed to justify and defend the Nord Stream operation. ‘Ukraine’s destruction of Nord Stream 2 is entirely justified,’ wrote Professor Luis Garicano of the London School of Economics. ‘The country is fighting for its existence! Europe should grow some guts and some understanding of what is at stake. And Germany needs to lay off this ridiculous criminal procedure.’ But in truth the revelations come at a bad time for Zelensky. German public opinion has been steadily shifting towards backing peace in Ukraine, and limiting the use to which German-supplied missiles and rockets can be put. The right-wing AfD wants to repair the Nord Stream pipelines and reopen the one surviving line as soon as possible, while left-wing BSW party has called for the immediate halting of all weapon deliveries to Kyiv ‘in view of the Zelensky disclosures.’
Though the German criminal investigation has revealed many forensic details of the operation, there are still many uncomfortable unanswered questions in the narrative presented by the WSJ’s sources. One is Germany’s reluctance to admit that it came under a terror attack by a country it helps fight a war. Another is Hanning’s sensational accusation that Poland is not only shielding suspects and stalling investigation but also could have played an active role in the bomb plot. The story of Zaluzhny’s disobedience which helpfully helps cover Zelensky’s backside is also a little hard to believe – especially as Zaluzhny has since been fired. And perhaps strangest of all is the idea that Ukraine would have proceeded with a sabotage plan of such extraordinary recklessness apparently against the will of the United States and beyond the control of the CIA.
The story of the Nord Stream plot, already extraordinary, promises to yield more revelations soon.
The desecration of Canterbury cathedral
According to canon 1220 of the Catholic church’s code of canon law, ‘all those responsible are to take care that in churches such cleanliness and beauty are preserved as befit a house of God and that whatever is inappropriate to the holiness of the place is excluded’. So, if Canterbury cathedral were still Catholic, as it was for 900 years before the discordant event of the Reformation, it is fair to say that the ghost of Thomas Becket would not have been disturbed by the rave in the nave which took place last night and is repeated tonight.
People wanting to visit the cathedral – and just possibly say their prayers there, which is the entire purpose of the building – yesterday encountered a notice saying: ‘Please note: the cathedral precincts will be closed to visitors from 17:00 today in preparation for the silent disco’.
The event is in fact a repeat of the grisly silent disco held there in February which brought Britney and Eminem into the cathedral. For the event tonight, the playlist is outlined on the cathedral’s website:
Dance to hits by Kylie, Madonna, Prince and many other artists of the 80s, in the magnificent, illuminated nave of Canterbury cathedral. Following the success of February’s 90s-inspired event – which saw hundreds of visitors joyously share a unique night out in support of a truly special location – we are bringing disco back this August with an 80s event!”
The desecration, and I mean that exactly, of the cathedral was explained back in February by the Dean of Canterbury, the Very Rev. David Monteith, thus:
Whilst dancing of all different kinds has happened in the Cathedral over the centuries, there are many different views on the secular and the sacred. Our 90s-themed silent disco will be appropriate to and respectful of the Cathedral – it is categorically not a ‘rave in the nave’ – but I appreciate that some will never agree that dancing and pop music have a place within cathedrals.
Dr Monteith added: ‘Cathedrals have always been part of community life in a way much wider than their prime focus as centres of Christian worship.’
Well, it’s not exactly David dancing before the Ark, is it? Come to that, Our Lord had words to say about those who turn a house of prayer into a den of thieves. Cathedrals have indeed been ‘part of community life’ for centuries – if you want an idea of what that involved, look no further than Nicholas Orme’s excellent Going to Church in Medieval England. But at no point, ever, did it entail the God-free exuberant secular funfest with glowsticks that you can see on the cathedral website. This event is not a gathering where the mind and heart are lifted to God – which is the purpose of the cathedral; the spirits of those in attendance are entirely moved by what’s happening on their headphones, elevated by drink, with the nave of the cathedral a numinous backdrop to the rave.
The Dean should have been sacked after the last event rather than presiding over this repeat of the sacrilege. You have to ask: where is Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose seat this is meant to be? He was quick off the mark to scold rioters for ‘un-British’ behaviour but on the scandalous abuse of a cathedral established by St Augustine, whose successor he professes to be, he is uncharacteristically silent. He’s a nice man, but you can carry tolerance too far, and this is where tolerance has its limits.
I don’t care if the raves raise thousands of pounds for the upkeep of this historic building; what’s the National Lottery for? I’d rather the rain came in through the roof than the cathedral be profaned. And I can with absolute confidence say that this would be the view of its founder.
Canterbury cathedral was, courtesy of the martyrdom of Becket, the second most important pilgrimage site in Europe. It was a Catholic cathedral longer than it’s been a Protestant one. As I said on this subject before, if the CofE can’t look after it properly, can we have it back?
Prison officer probes soar amid bonking craze
Prison is supposedly a place for wrongdoers to repent and reform – but it seems that even the staff inside are no angels themselves. After a female Wandsworth prison guard was suspended in July for a viral video of her, er, engaging with an inmate, Mr S did some digging into how widespread this phenomenon this really is. And Steerpike can reveal that dozens of prison officers have faced disciplinary action for ‘inappropriate relations’ with inmates or ex-offenders – with 65 probed since 2018 alone. Talk about the screws, eh?
This figure was provided by the Ministry of Justice in respond to a Freedom of Information request by The Spectator and includes prison officers, supervising officers, and custodial managers on salary bands 3-5. Five years ago, 12 staffers faced sanctions – but in the last few years the figure has risen, with 14 officers penalised in 2021-22 while 16 were disciplined 2022-23. It’s a rather poor indictment of the prison guard hiring process – perhaps they were envisioning different types of whips and chains…
Swooping in to defend those prison guards that did manage to restrain themselves, the Ministry of Justice is adamant that ‘the overwhelming majority of Prison Service staff are hardworking and honest’, noting: ‘It would be wrong to question their expertise and professionalism as a direct result of the small number who aren’t.’ A spokesman added: ‘Misconduct in office is not tolerated and we are doing more than ever to catch the minority who break the rules including bolstering our Counter-Corruption Unit and strengthening our vetting processes.’ Mr S looks forward to checking in on next year’s figures…
Although the Wandsworth officer was swiftly arrested, her videoed misdemeanour earned her global internet fame. So much so that a pornstar duo decided to decided to recreate the rather unpalatable act – and went viral too. Let’s just hope the government can crack down on the unsavoury business before it catches on any further…
Scottish Tory leadership candidates call for race to halt
All is not well in the Scottish Tory party. Now four of the six candidates have released a statement calling for the leadership race to be paused until they receive assurances on the contest’s ‘transparency and fairness’. The letter, signed by Murdo Fraser, Jamie Greene, Liam Kerr and Brian Whittle, is addressed to the party’s management board and comes in light of ‘disturbing claims’ about outgoing leader Douglas Ross. Oh dear…
The Telegraph reported this morning that according to senior sources in the party, Ross wanted to ditch the leadership role over a year ago and coronate the current frontrunner Russell Findlay. Ross – who at the time was both an MP and MSP – previously insisted that he wanted to step down as a Member of Parliament at the 2024 general election. Yet party insiders say the Scottish Tory leader approached his consistency’s prospective Conservative candidate, Kathleen Robertson, in July 2023 to ask her to stand aside so he could be selected. Ross reportedly told Robertson he would quit as leader immediately if she agreed, and said she would chosen for the equivalent Holyrood seat instead as ‘his heart was in Westminster, not Holyrood’. Robertson ultimately declined the offer.
For her part Robertson has confirmed the conversation did indeed take place. Meanwhile the Scottish Conservative party has admitted: ‘Some months later, Kathleen Robertson separately informed the chairman and the party director about this meeting and said she wished this matter to remain confidential and required them to do nothing further.’ How curious…
Meanwhile Findlay’s allies insist there is ‘not a shred of evidence’ to back up any kind of establishment plot to bag him the top job. But two-thirds of the leadership contenders are adamant that they are ‘deeply concerned’ about the revelations while a fifth candidate, Meghan Gallacher, has resigned from her post as deputy leader of the Scottish Tories over the ‘concerning allegations’. Their letter contains eight questions for their party management, including queries about the Robertson-Ross conversation, information about the decision to oust Westminster candidate David Duguid for Ross and whether the ongoing contest has been affected ‘in terms of fairness, scrutiny and transparency’. Crikey. It’s shaping up to be quite the competition…
SNP in civil war over Israel deputy ambassador meet
It’s a day that ends in ‘y’ so the nationalists are fighting amongst themselves again. This time it’s over a controversial meeting between the Scottish government’s Culture Secretary Angus Robertson and Daniela Grudsky, the deputy ambassador of Israel to the UK. As Mr S revealed this week, certain Nats were rather upset about the encounter, in which discussions about energy, culture and the Middle East took place. Aberdeen Central MSP Kevin Stewart writing that: ‘I hope Angus Robertson also demanded an immediate ceasefire’ while his colleague Elena Whitham tweeted out, um, a sad face emoji. You can always rely on the SNP for serious politics, eh?
The SNP’s National Secretary Lorna Finn has taken to Twitter to rage about her ‘disappointment‘ and has called for ‘much soul searching’ over the meeting. Meanwhile the SNP Friends of Palestine group – of which Humza Yousaf’s wife Nadia El-Nakla was recently convenor – has posted six-tweet thread about how it was ‘shocked and angered‘ about the encounter.
And now, as reported by the Holyrood magazine, the Westminster group has waded into the argument. Brendan O’Hara, MP for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber, has penned a lengthy two-page rant to the Scottish Culture Secretary questioning why his party thought it ‘politically…or morally…appropriate to engage in discussion’ with the deputy ambassador. Going on, the SNP’s former defence spokesperson fumed:
I simply cannot fathom why, with such well-documented breaches of International Humanitarian Law and with an ongoing investigation by the ICC [International Criminal Court] into crime of genocide against Israel, that the Scottish Government thought it politically…or morally…appropriate to engage in discussion about future cooperation in the fields of technology, culture, and renewable energy with a representative of this regime. In my opinion, no such discussions should be taking place with a government who is responsible for causing such unfathomable pain and suffering.
Crikey. Accompanying the backlash are suggestions that Robertson – a long-time Nicola Sturgeon ally – is coming under significant pressure to stand down. But First Minister John Swinney, who is also rather chummy with the Culture Secretary, has rushed to the defence of his cabinet minister. In a statement this week, Swinney said the meet was ‘necessary to outline our long-standing position on an immediate ceasefire directly, and explicitly, to one of Israel’s representatives in the UK’, but it’s not stopped his own politicians from blasting the move. And now SNP MSP John Mason has swooped in, revealing that he too met with Israel’s deputy ambassador last week – to torrents of criticism. Will they ever stop fighting like Nats in a sack?