Politics

So farewell then, Ayatollah Khamenei. I’m put in mind of Private Eye’s cover on the death of Hendrik Verwoerd. “A Nation Mourns” read the headline, under a photograph of four black Africans in ceremonial dress leaping joyfully in the air in a traditional dance. Nobody’s going to be sorry he’s gone. The received wisdom tends to skirt the possibility that some senior Nazis may have been quite cultured But reading his obituary, I confess to surprise and dismay. What was to be found there was not, at least at first, an austere and viciously power-hungry religious monomaniac. Here, from what we know, was somebody who at least in his younger years was disciplined, modest, intellectually curious, and artistically inclined. “He was said to live an austere, ascetic existence and enjoy gardening,” the Sunday Times reports. “As a young man he loved Persian poetry and

Our public morality has two parts. Part A: people are free to do what they want, even if they do things that most people disapprove of, like getting drunk a lot, or sleeping around. Unless you harm others in some tangible way, you can do what you want. This is good, in my opinion. Andy and Mandy are scapegoats. We condemn them with special force, in order to reassert the moral code that unites us Despite this, our culture is not amoral. Part B: we value some forms of life over others. We value people who help others, who are trustworthy, faithful to their spouses – people who are not

Those like me who live with Tourette’s Syndrome look up to John Davidson. The actor and activist’s biopic, I Swear, has shed some much-needed light on the condition. Unfortunately, the backlash against his appearance at the BAFTAs ceremony last weekend shows that plenty of people remain ignorant about Tourette’s. Davidson should never have felt the need to apologise in the days after the ceremony During the awards ceremony, Davidson shouted a tic while the two stars of Sinners, Michael B. Jordan and Delray Lindo, were on stage. The word he used was deeply offensive. But here’s the thing: Davidson didn’t mean what he said, and he couldn’t help it. Yet