Society

Thursday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Lines of beauty

For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly. In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. You wear your insides on the out Like knickers over jeans – Your architect’s a gadabout On art’s amphetamines – You’re lost inside each scaffold-tube Each Quadro-coloured duct As garish as a cheap Galoob For us to deconstruct But how I love your bold and brash Riposte to

Melissa Kite

The unexpected aftermath of the BB’s car crash

The garage owner came at me with an angry expression as I pulled on to his forecourt, which was the last thing I was expecting. His employee had just crashed head on into the builder boyfriend while driving a sales car and, in my naivety, I was expecting the garage owner to cover the cost of the removal of the resulting wreckage – the written-off pick-up truck belonging to the BB and the totalled car driven down the wrong side of the road by the garage worker. But for some strange reason, which I hoped would become clear, he had let me pick up the bill for the recovery. I

Rod Liddle

The obvious truth about BBC bias

For quite a few members of the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee, the answer to the claims of left-wing bias against the BBC could be annulled by the simple expediency of firing the only supposedly right-of-centre person within the corporation, Robbie Gibb. It is a curious logic that the left employs. This is especially true in the case of Labour’s Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton (which, I am told, is in London), who believes that people can only be ‘black’ if they subscribe to the same idiotic world view as herself. Ol’ Rupa has twice been in trouble for racism: once when she

Aidan Hartley

Somali charity scams have come at a high price

Kenya Here’s why house-hunting in Nairobi, where I can’t afford to buy even a bedsit these days, gives me flashbacks of a famine in Somalia long ago. It’s dawn in 1992 and I’m on a Red Cross lorry touring the camps of Baidoa, collecting the 400 corpses of those who died overnight. The body truck tours Baidoa every dawn. I take notes and hope my Reuters dispatches will stir people to help end this catastrophe in a faraway African war. Months later, I accompany a food convoy out of Baidoa, escorted by US Marines in armoured vehicles. After the Americans and TV cameras depart with this feel-good story, Somali militias

Pabulum

2731: Knots

‘4D!/18A/3D!’ (four words in total) is a quotation from a tale by the author of 9D (three words). Remaining unclued lights give the names of the two protagonists of the tale and that of the 24A in which it was told. Across 1 Hot wind from Honduras dogging opponent … (5) 6 … in the middle of game nursing chocolate bar (7) 11    Not a Good Friday rite the New Testament pushed hard (10) 13    Earl so rotund cooking thick beef fillet (9) 15    Computer component, quartz in the centre (4) 16    Flowers strike children with wonder, we hear (7) 17    Argonaut, say, having only

Nicholas Wade

The scientific case for marriage

‘Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ With this stern admonition, the Church has long been a fervent defender of marriage. But as religion has faded as a social force, so too has marriage. The annual number of marriages in the UK has halved since 1970, with a similar decline in the rate in the US. Does it much matter if people choose to shack up together instead of tying the knot? What is lost if some men are incels or if women decide a husband is a bothersome surplus to their needs? The problem is that all lifestyles alternative to marriage serve to undermine it.

Madeline Grant

Marriage is the real rebellion

Jonathan Swift had a suitably unromantic attitude to holy matrimony. Once, when sheltering under a tree during a storm near Lichfield, he was asked to marry a heavily pregnant bride to a rather guilty-looking groom. Asked to provide evidence that he had performed the shotgun wedding, Swift found a piece of paper and wrote: Under an oak, in stormy weather,I joined this rogue and whore together;And none but he who rules the thunderCan put this rogue and whore asunder. Despite his cynicism, even Dean Swift would lament the marginalisation of one of our foundational institutions. Marriage is undergoing a seemingly inexorable decline. In the 1970s, almost three quarters of the

Lara Brown

Are you too cool for marriage?

The term ‘spinster’ doesn’t seem to scare young women like it once might have. In fact, it is rarely heard nowadays. Instead, women are declaring themselves ‘alpha singles’ and eschewing dating altogether. Influencers are keeping their relationships quiet, for fear that simply posting photos of a new amour can lead to an exodus of followers. Vogue has declared boyfriends to be unfashionable. Women, it seems, are swapping engagement rings for solo travel, matcha lattes and nights spent at home with an LED face mask. Is marriage suddenly uncool? There are certainly plenty of women pushing this idea. Elle McNamara, a beauty influencer who goes by the name ‘Bambi Does Beauty’,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul  

Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time high of 38 per cent of GDP in 2030-31. She froze tax thresholds until the end of 2030-31 and introduced a council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2 million from 2028. She scrapped the two-child benefit cap. She froze fuel duty for only another five months but brought in a tax of 3p per mile on electric vehicles. The amount that can be added annually tax-free to a cash Isa was reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 (except for over-65s)

Wednesday

Rosie Lewis

The pointlessness of removing the two-child benefit cap

If the leaks are correct, Rachel Reeves will use today’s Budget to abolish the two-child benefit cap. Another £3.4 billion a year will flow to larger families. On paper, half a million children will be lifted out of poverty. Labour backbenchers will congratulate themselves on a job well done, and columnists on the left will cheer that compassion has been restored. Forgive me for not joining in with the applause. Addiction, chaos, and learned helplessness don’t vanish because the monthly bank transfer gets a little fatter For 20 years I’ve been a foster carer working closely with underprivileged families, and what I’ve learned is that simply giving parents more cash won’t

Tuesday

Michael Day

The BBC’s new Civilisations treats us like idiots

Everyone’s moaning about political bias at the BBC. They have done for years. And they’ll continue to. The right’s accusations that the BBC is anti-Trump and anti-Israeli are mirrored by the left’s accusations that the BBC is pro-Israel and reluctant to criticise Brexit. This indicates the difficulty of the broadcaster’s role, and suggests it’s probably doing something right. The bigger issue with the BBC is that it is dumbing down its output, a process that it’s half confessed to with its vow to make ‘lighter’ content for ‘C2DE’ audiences, whatever they are. If you want an example of this condescension, look no further than the BBC’s latest blockbuster series, Civilisations: Rise and Fall,

Joanna Williams

Trigger warnings are out of control at the University of Essex

You don’t need a PhD to see that censorship thrives in universities. In the past few weeks alone, a professor has been banned from the University of Manchester and described as a ‘potential risk to colleagues’ for having allegedly used ‘the n-word’ in a disciplinary meeting; a sociology lecturer at Abertay University has been subjected to a smear campaign for inviting a speaker critical of Scotland’s rape laws; and pro-Palestinian student activists at City, University of London have called for the dismissal of a Jewish professor because he completed compulsory military service in Israel during the 1980s. Professors at this august institution have placed trigger warnings on essays discussing free speech

Arabella Byrne

Children should be banned from pubs

Before I begin, let me say this: I like children. To my amazement, I even have two of my own. But do I think they should be allowed in pubs? Absolutely not. Increasingly, this is the view taken by London’s publicans, some of whom have decided to introduce a ban on children in pubs after 7 p.m. Egil Johansen, owner of the Kenton pub in Hackney – which operates a 5 p.m. curfew on children – was quoted yesterday lambasting ‘entitled parents’ who ‘come in, sit down, drink and don’t care what their children are doing’. Other London pubs are reported to be considering banning children altogether. The William the Fourth pub in Leyton will now operate a 7 p.m. curfew for children,

Gareth Roberts

The problem with funky vicars

The Reverend Kate Bottley, the celebrity vicar who came to fame on Gogglebox, has a message for the nation. ‘The woman who goes skinny-dipping for charity and posts the pictures on social media is far removed from the cultural archetype of the meek and stuffy vicar,’ the Telegraph breathlessly tells us. ‘I don’t know who these stuffy vicars are,’ says Bottley. ‘All my vicar friends watch The Traitors and shout at their kids and have sex – all the normal things that are part of being a human being. Like the rest of society, we’ve moved on quite a lot.’ The information that Anglican vicars are permitted to have sex

Lee Cohen

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should ignore Congress

As an American who respects the constitutional role and historical continuity of the British Crown, I view the recent congressional request to interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with disgust. In early November, several of the most progressive Democratic members of the US Congress sent a letter asking him to participate in a ‘transcribed interview’ regarding his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, with a response deadline of 20 November. No congressional body has the power to compel testimony from a British citizen living on British soil While Congress is free to seek information, the request carries no compulsory authority over a foreign national residing in the United Kingdom. In this context, the decision

Lawrence Goldman

David Olusoga's Empire exposes the BBC's history problem

While the BBC’s mis-editing of Donald Trump’s words has dominated the headlines, less attention has been paid to another example of the corporation’s bias: its coverage of history. The BBC’s latest blockbuster history series, Empire, fronted by David Olusoga, shows the extent of the problem. This slanted and biased version of history is nothing new No one watching these three programmes, which were broadcast this month, could be in any doubt that a negative view of British history pervades everything. The series is not a balanced history of the empire, but rather a collection of some of its most controversial and violent episodes. When Olusoga himself isn’t telling us what

Monday

William Atkinson

William Atkinson, Andreas Roth, Philip Womack, Mary Wakefield & Muriel Zagha

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: William Atkinson reveals his teenage brush with a micropenis; Andreas Roth bemoans the dumbing down of German education; Philip Womack wonders how the hyphen turned political; Mary Wakefield questions the latest AI horror story – digitising dead relatives; and, Muriel Zagha celebrates Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Danny Shaw

How Shabana Mahmood can fix the police

By the standards Shabana Mahmood has set for herself, the speech she made to police leaders at their annual conference in Westminster last week was not the most gripping. The Home Secretary’s delivery was stilted, awkward even, as she stuck closely to the script on the lectern in front of her. She left the stage as soon as she had finished without taking any questions. But there were two sections in Mahmood’s 20-minute address that stood out, sparking speculation that a once-in-a-generation overhaul of policing is on the way. She told the chief constables and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) assembled at the QE II Centre that she would be

Liz Walsh

Britain's asylum crackdown is making Ireland panic

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s asylum shake-up has sent the Irish government into something approaching panic mode. The profound new measures, including penalties for those exploiting the system, a 20-year wait for settlement, and returning refugees if their native country is deemed safe, are deeply problematic for Ireland. The government correctly predicts a sharp surge in the number of asylum seekers opting to claim asylum in Ireland, rather than the UK, if these measures become law. It does not take a genius to guess where failed UK asylum applicants will go. Not to mention those who reckon they stand a far greater chance of success in pushover Ireland and decide to