Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
I’m currently sitting on top of a brownie point mountain. Caroline has departed for a two-week tennis freebie in Barbados, leaving me holding the fort. I have three teenage boys to take care of and a very small dog. That means getting them up for school every morning, emptying and loading the dishwasher, walking the
James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure of Mark Steyn from GB News following a bust-up over his contract. Mark has been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart
In a newspaper article five years ago, Michael Gove singled out the tax exemptions enjoyed by private schools thanks to their charitable status as one of the ‘burning injustices’ of our time. He took it for granted that scrapping these benefits would raise money and proposed spending it on children in care instead. ‘How can
Some readers will recall the furore five years ago about the Presidents Club charity dinner at the Dorchester. The Financial Times sent two undercover journalists to work as ‘hostesses’ at the annual fundraiser and their report made uncomfortable reading for the big hitters in attendance, including Nadhim Zahawi. It was not just a men-only event,
About six months ago I was contacted by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, and asked if I wanted to help with an investigation into the surveillance of critics of the government’s pandemic response by state agencies. Would I submit subject access requests to different Whitehall departments to see if I was among
Two and a half years ago, I wrote a column about how I’d started sleeping in my garden office. No, not because Caroline had kicked me out of the master bedroom, but because we were having the house rewired and the builders needed us to vacate our room at seven o’clock every morning. The move
About ten years ago I thought seriously about becoming a Conservative MP. I jumped through a series of hoops and managed to get myself on the candidates’ list. Had I taken the next step, I might have been selected to fight a marginal seat and, given the party’s success in 2019, could have been elected.
Last week, the Office for National Statistics published the data on gender identity in England and Wales, as revealed in the latest UK census. For the first time ever, the census included the following question: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ This was asked of those aged
This week: Stuart Ritchie asks whether we should worry about declining sperm counts (0:29). Mary Wakefield wants to end the term ‘making memories’. (9:00), and Toby Young shares his disastrous Airbnb winter break (15:10). Produced and presented by Natasha Feroze.
Caroline likes to rent somewhere on Airbnb between Christmas and new year to break up the winter holiday. No, not in Courchevel or Barbados, I’m afraid, but something a bit more affordable. Last year, we spent three days in Margate, which worked out quite well, save for the eggy smell on the seafront. This year,
When I imagine the perfect Christmas lunch, I think of the end of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge turns up unexpectedly at his nephew’s house and discovers a warm family gathering: ‘Nothing could be heartier… Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!’ I can picture myself as an old man, parked in front of
According to a quote in a recent article by the environment editor of the Times, I’m ‘the most prominent UK public figure’ whose posts on Twitter related to ‘climate scepticism’ are ‘heavily shared’. This was based on an analysis commissioned by the paper from two researchers at the University of London, Max Falkenberg and Andrea
Most football fans have had their attention riveted on Qatar for the past couple of weeks, but for those of us who support Queens Park Rangers there’s been an unwelcome distraction at home. Our manager Michael Beale, who’s only been in charge for 21 league games, announced on Monday that he’s leaving us for Rangers,
The new version of the Online Safety Bill seems, on the face of it, to be an improvement on the previous one. We’ll know more when it’s published – all we have to go on for now is a DCMS press release and some amendments moved by Michelle Donelan, the Digital Secretary and architect of
Winter is finally upon us and I’m relying on my usual array of tablets and powders to ward off seasonal viruses. Caroline and the children constantly ridicule me, saying I’ve been taken for a fool by snake-oil salesmen, but I tell myself these concoctions are responsible for my robust good health. I’ve tested positive for
Should England be participating in the Qatar World Cup? On the face of it, the case for a boycott is pretty compelling. Much of the infrastructure – including eight stadiums, an airport expansion, a new metro system and multiple hotels – has been built by migrant workers who are notoriously poorly treated by their Qatari
I was a little disappointed by Boris Johnson’s argument against Britain paying reparations for the damage done to developing countries by climate change. Yes, he acknowledged at Cop27, Britain was the first country to industrialise and, as a result, ‘people in the UK have put an awful lot of carbon into the atmosphere’. But we
Among people of a conservative disposition, it’s long been accepted that the Equality Act needs to be repealed. This legislation, passed in 2010 in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s premiership, was designed to embed Labour’s egalitarian ideology into the fabric of the British state, yet none of Brown’s successors have done anything about it.
Rishi Sunak’s victory is a testament to how much progress we have made on the equalities front. As recently as 25 years ago, someone with his characteristics could never have become prime minister. Yet in today’s Britain, being a member of an historically disadvantaged minority is no impediment to success. I’m thinking, of course, of
I had a bicycle accident last week. Not terrible, but not great either. Of the five I’ve had since I took up cycling more than 20 years ago, it ranked third. No stitches needed,unlike the worst, which required more than 50 and a night in hospital. I didn’t bother with A&E this time, in spite
