Matthew Parris is a columnist for The Spectator and The Times.
Something dangerous is brewing beneath the surface in our country, and it worries me that warning lights are not flashing in the minds of many of those I respect most. After the discrediting of anti-Semitism, after the discrediting of discrimination against black people, after the discrediting of prejudice towards the Irish, I hadn’t expected to
Two recent preoccupations have led me to the same reflection. The first is a Channel 4 programme on the effects of the super-strength cannabis known as ‘skunk’, in which I’ve been participating: about to be broadcast as I write. The second is the artist inmate of Dachau, Zoran Mušic, whose life my guest for one
‘Oh, I’m an owl,’ said my friend Nick. ‘You’re probably a lark.’ I raised an eyebrow. He explained. Apparently all human beings are either owls or larks, being genetically predisposed to stay up late or get up early, and to be at their best after sundown or dawn. Nonsense, of course, complete nonsense. Nick just
‘Let’s make the rich pay more.’ Does that sound so right-wing? To me it has a positively socialist ring. It should appeal to egalitarians: to those who call themselves socially concerned and seek new ways to redistribute wealth. So why not apply it for the NHS? Let’s make the rich pay more for health care.
‘Let’s make the rich pay more.’ Does that sound so right-wing? To me it has a positively socialist ring. It should appeal to egalitarians: to those who call themselves socially concerned and seek new ways to redistribute wealth. So why not apply it for the NHS? Let’s make the rich pay more for health care.
I watched the video with some trepidation. Stonewall (the campaigning gay and lesbian equality organisation) had just sent me the YouTube link. This was to a short film of the dinner that Stonewall’s founders attended last year to celebrate the quarter-century anniversary of our existence; and most of us had been there. Now we were
There’s a danger that in what follows your columnist may seem to be recommending an attitude. Please don’t think that. It’s true that I would never shop a friend for drink-driving — but frankly I doubt I’d shop a friend for murder. This column isn’t about what we should do if we know a friend
Among the gifts that have come my way this Christmas season, none has given me pleasure more immediate or more lasting than Kenneth Baker’s new commonplace book, More Rags of Time. I dislike the title. It sounds precious, as does Lord Wavell’s famous and wonderful poetry anthology Other Men’s Flowers; or Palgrave’s Golden Treasury. Perhaps
Are we heading for a new barbarism? Is this the return of the 18th-century mob? Here are more questions than answers. I ask because when all the fuss about Emily Thornberry and her photo tweet from Rochester has died down, we shall be left with something more disturbing than whatever sin she may or may
As the year unwinds I’m rebuked by hints all around me that a book I comprehensively panned in Literary Review is basically true. The Establishment and How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones (Allen Lane, £16.99) is an intellectual mess, paranoid, partial and partisan; and its central thesis — that we are unwitting slaves of a grand,
Liverpool airport is a curiously unreal place in the half-light before dawn on a cold November morning. Out across the Mersey at high tide, raindrops turn the silver to lead, and at the easyJet departures gate people in tracksuit bottoms brush against the occasional tweed and Remembrance Day poppy. Intending stag-weekenders, and the set who
When the White Queen told Alice she had sometimes believed as many as six contradictory things before breakfast, she spoke for us all. But our irrationality goes further than a simple after-the-event report. Even while we’re believing it, we can know that something we’re believing contradicts something else we believe. Take, in my case, addiction.
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Lord Pearson and Damian Green discuss Ukip and the Tories” startat=81] Listen [/audioplayer]Like many, I’ve always been a bit baffled by the story of the rise of Nazism. The Germans I’ve met have appeared to be human beings like any other: in no signal way a different breed from my own countrymen. Yet
Jesse Norman was permitted three minutes for his speech to the Commons in last Friday’s debate. But the contribution from the Conservative MP for Hereford & South Herefordshire was one of the more important backbench interventions — and no less important for being wide of the debate’s focus. The House was being invited to support British
I doubt I’m alone among English readers of this magazine in having felt uncomfortable with our last issue. ‘Please stay with us’ was a plea I found faintly offensive to us English. Not only did it have a plaintive ring, but there seemed to be something grovelling, almost self-abasing, in the pitch. Why beg? A
I doubt I’m alone among English readers of this magazine in having felt uncomfortable with our last issue. ‘Please stay with us’ was a plea I found faintly offensive to us English. Not only did it have a plaintive ring, but there seemed to be something grovelling, almost self-abasing, in the pitch. Why beg? A
When Mary Jane Mowat remarked recently that rape conviction statistics would not improve ‘until women stop getting so drunk,’ the retired Crown Court judge knew there would be a row. It followed. The judge, knowing that only 60 per cent of rape charges that reach court end in conviction, was making a narrow point. There
Having written (for a Times diary) a few sentences about consciousness in robots, I settled back to study readers’ responses in the online commentary section. They added little. I was claiming there had been no progress since Descartes and Berkeley in the classic philosophical debate about how we know ‘Other Minds’ exist; and that there
There’s a little bit of a fascist in all of us. For some, the tragedy of human want may provoke an impatient urge to expropriate and centralise for the more efficient use of economic resources. Others, alarmed at the world’s exploding population, may be attracted by calls for a programme of mass compulsory sterilisation. But
Ross Clark is a columnist I try to read because he is never trite. So I was sorry to miss performances of his musical play staged earlier this month. Shot at Dawn is about a sister’s quest for a recognition (after his death) of her brother, Harry Briggs, a soldier in the Great War who
