Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
My son Ludo celebrated his sixth birthday last week and one of his friends gave him a miniature air-hockey game. It’s like the ones you see in amusement arcades, with two pushers, a puck and a goal at either end, but no bigger than a box of Cornflakes. When it was my turn to get
For critics of state education, locked in combat with the teaching unions, it is easy to overlook the fact that some comprehensives do an outstanding job. One example in my neck of the woods is Cardinal Vaughan, a Roman Catholic boys’ school. Last year, 90 per cent of its pupils got five good GCSEs, making
I find it hard not to feel sorry for the Duke of York. Being asked to denounce one’s friends, however unsavoury, can’t be much fun. It must be particularly galling when the politicians insisting on this act of obeisance were themselves hobnobbing with Hosni Mubarak, Zine-al-Abidine and Colonel Gaddafi until about a week ago. In
One of the most important milestones in the course of setting up a taxpayer-funded school is the funding agreement. This is a contract between the Secretary of State for Education and the trustees of the school setting out the terms on which he agrees to finance the school. He can terminate the agreement in certain
You have to take your hat off to Michael Gove. In spite of the Herculean task he has saddled himself with — saving the state education system of this country — he has managed to find time to produce a brilliant piece of satire. I’m referring to a blog on the Local Schools Network entitled
Since the coalition came to power, a consensus seems to have sprung up on the left that tax avoidance is wrong. Not tax evasion — which everyone agrees is wrong — but avoidance. A campaigning organisation called UK Uncut has sprung up that uses social media to organise sit-ins in high street branches of Top
What’s the right analogy to describe the parallel careers of Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown? The hare and the tortoise? All About Eve? Alien vs Predator? Nothing quite works, not least because the race isn’t over. But there’s little doubt that with the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, Arianna has
As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. It comes with the territory and after 25 years I’ve developed quite a thick skin. But ever since I started leading the efforts of a group of parents and teachers to set up a free school in
Like many of my colleagues in the media, I’m shocked by the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. As the list of those targeted by the newspaper grows longer and longer, my sense of outrage deepens. What were the papers’ executives thinking? Did it not even occur to them to tap my phone? OK, OK,
As promised, here is an extended version of an article from the skills supplement in this week’s issue of the Spectator. On the face of it, encouraging children to learn Latin doesn’t seem like the solution to our current skills crisis. Why waste valuable curriculum time on a dead language when children could be learning one that’s
Fantastic news about The King’s Speech. Its 12 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay, mean it’s just two short of the all-time record. The film has also been a box-office smash, taking over $57 million in America and over £18 million in
I appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week as a token male chauvinist pig. The issue under discussion was the government’s proposal to make it possible for fathers to take up to six months’ paternity leave. I argued this was bad news for dads since it means we’ll no longer have a much-needed
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. A month of industrial action is due to begin at the end of March, culminating in a series of demonstrations to coincide with
Like many people, I’ve been following the saga of Joanna Yeates’s murder with rapt attention. Unfortunately, I’m not at all confident that her killer will ever be caught. The Avon and Somerset Police just don’t seem up to the job. To begin with, they neglected to intercept her rubbish and that of her neighbours before
In the current issue of GQ, the writer Michael Wolff has rather an amusing piece about his predilection for feuding with his friends. ‘My longest feud was 15 years,’ he writes. ‘At that point, I met my feuding companion on Madison Avenue and we immediately took up where we left off. Feuds are, in a
My father was a big believer in Christmas. That is to say, he liked the idea of it. My sister and I were the products of his second marriage and he would usually invite the children of his first marriage to our house for lunch. It could be quite tense, with undercurrents of rivalry and
I’ve been spending a lot of time writing jokes recently. Have you heard the one about the next wave of Irish immigrants? Luckily, they’ll be coming by Ryanair so they’ll be indefinitely delayed. Okay, it probably wouldn’t pass muster on Have I Got News For You, but it’s the best I can do. At this
One of my tasks as an employee of Vanity Fair back in the mid-1990s was to compose weekly memos to my boss, Graydon Carter. These were supposed to be ‘intelligence briefings’ on the topics dominating the headlines, but I quickly discovered that he had no interest in news and current affairs. The only thing that
You have to admire the marketing savvy of Paramount Pictures UK. It has picked the perfect moment to release Waiting for Superman, a 111-minute documentary about the crisis in American education. It comes out this Friday, following hot on the heels of the government’s White Paper on education and Ofsted’s report on Labour’s education record.
As a journalist, I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Freedom of Information Act. It seemed like a powerful tool for holding our political masters to account. However, now that I’m trying to set up a free school the boot is on the other foot. By common consent, the point at which the school becomes