Society

Monday

The Spectator

Who’s up to the challenge of restoring Britain's prosperity?

In 1956, Malta held a referendum on joining the United Kingdom. Since the islands were economically reliant on the Royal Navy, it was unsurprising that three-quarters of those voting believed their future lay in integrating with their colonial masters. But after a lukewarm response from the British government, the referendum result was never implemented and Malta instead hastened towards independence. Seven decades on, it seems the Maltese had a lucky escape. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has declared that Malta’s living standards will overtake Britain’s by 2035. It cites Malta’s low taxes and pro-enterprise culture, which are especially attractive for the wealthy Britons fleeing a country that

Andrew Gimson

Heroes have faults too

The chief function of the prime minister is to take the blame, and Sir Keir Starmer can no more escape this rule than his predecessors did. Having met him occasionally when he was my local MP, before he moved from Kentish Town to Downing Street, I feel a twinge of sympathy with him. He took trouble with unimportant people, could not have been more genial when I bumped into him at the Pineapple, his local pub, and on one occasion even asked if I could explain the attraction of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. I feared this task would be beyond my powers of exposition, and perhaps also his powers

Rod Liddle

David Walliams deserves to be cancelled

A traditional British Christmas is not complete until we have all enjoyed the seasonal cancellation of a celebrity, under the mistletoe. Excitement mounts during Advent as to who the luckless sap might be this year and then, on cue, the little cardboard door is at last opened and we all gather around the tree for a joyous hatefest. I was fairly happy with this year’s choice, the comedian and children’s author David Walliams, as there is something about his manner and that weird shiny moonface which has always slightly irritated me. He has been dropped by his publisher, HarperCollins, and the BBC has announced it has no plans to work

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Farm tax backdown, trail hunting crackdown and anti-misogyny courses for 11-year-olds

Home The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced plans to criminalise trail hunting ‘amid concerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting’; another part of the new animal welfare strategy will make it a crime to boil a live lobster. The government revised the threshold below which, from April, agricultural assets may be handed down without incurring inheritance tax, from a planned £1 million to £2.5 million. Downing Street cancelled regular afternoon lobby briefings and said it would hold more morning press conferences with limited questions from selected journalists. The government ‘should look at every option for our relationship with the European Union, up to and

Toby Young

I've been duped by the Toby hoaxers

Going to see QPR on Boxing Day has become a tradition in the Young household – and not because we hold out much hope of winning. The Hoops have only won 19 of the 71 Boxing Day fixtures we’ve played since 1882, when the club was founded. The last time was in 2018, when we beat Ipswich 3-0 at home, and we haven’t won away since 1967. But going to watch our team, however poorly we play, beats festering at home in that fallow period between Christmas Day and 1 January, so my three sons and I piled into the car for the 150-mile round-trip to Fratton Road in Portsmouth.

Rory Sutherland

Where are you on the tightwad scale?

I once stood in a queue behind a Scotsman checking out of a hotel in Germany. After he had finished scrutinising his bill in agonising detail, he demanded that it be reprinted, this time removing the €1 discretionary charge which had been added in support of the local homeless. More recently some friends of my daughter’s met a Yorkshire-born Spectator writer at a local fête. They mentioned the connection, expecting some mild pleasantries. Not so. ‘’Appen that reminds me: he still owes me for a taxi.’ When I heard this, I was bemused. Then I remembered I had indeed shared a taxi with the Yorkshireman in question, requesting a minor

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do we stop our generous host putting us in the worst room?

Q. Around this time of year a successful friend likes to rent an expensive ski chalet with cook and fill it with friends. Guests pay for nothing except air fares and tips and he invariably invites me and my partner to join the house party. Regrettably, one thing does mar our enjoyment. Without exception, he always puts my partner and me in the worst room. We think he reasons that, since most of his guests are used to luxury and we are not, we will mind the worst room the least. But the fact is we love luxury too and would really enjoy an upgrade. We can’t think how to

Declan Lyons

There's nothing to fear from Madeira

Perhaps because of the Flanders and Swann song in which a louche older gentleman tries to lure a younger lady to bed with Madeira wine, the drink has unfairly acquired a fusty image. While port and sherry have experienced a resurgence, Madeira remains underappreciated despite the fact it stands as a proud monument to the grand old Anglo-Portuguese alliance. One man, Jamie Allsopp, is intent on fighting a noble battle to promote the virtues of Madeira. And so to the Blue Stoops, Allsopp Brewery’s newish pub on Kensington Church Street, for their second annual Game and Madeira Dinner, named after the site in Burton-on-Trent where Jamie’s ancestors first brewed Allsopp’s

Dot Wordsworth

Is 'bloody' still offensive?

Everyone has been declaring which words are too rude to utter in public. Shortly after breakfast, Radio 4 happily discussed by name the book by Cory Doctorow called Enshittification. But on Radio 4’s Feedback it proved impossible to say the word that shocked some listeners when they heard it on a dramatisation of a work by Doris Lessing on Rhodesia in the 1940s. It had to be called the N-word. One formerly taboo word still does sterling service as an intensifier. Kate Winslet, on Desert Island Discs last month, said: ‘You lot who were in my year at school, you were bloody horrible to me.’ Bloody, said the OED when

Melissa Kite

The 'lovely boy' who's ruining our lives

We spent an hour in the Garda station trying to explain ourselves to a flame-haired police lady. She sat with her pen poised over a statement pad on the desk in the interview room. Her uniform was extremely smart and emblazoned with gold emblems. At least the police dress nicely here, I thought. The builder boyfriend shifted uncomfortably in his seat in the claustrophobic room and started explaining that he really didn’t want to press charges. But many weeks on from a crash in which a young driver crossed a solid white line to speed down the wrong side of the road and plough into the BB’s truck head on,

Nicholas Farrell

Could our chicken-killing dog sniff out a fortune?

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna Maria, the boisterous new vizsla who gives the old one, Rocco, such a hard time, was in big trouble. She had killed one of our seven chickens, Gertrude, by biting her head off. Two of our six children – Caterina (22) and Rita (16) – wanted to dump Maria for good at the dog rescue centre immediately, or else take her back to the breeder we’d got her from in the hills. Giovanni Maria (14), who is able to identify each chicken and lets Giulia, his favourite, sit on his shoulder like a parrot, buried the dead Gertrude near where the tortoises used to live. He was

Lucy Dunn

Make mine a BuzzBallz

There are always new ways for drinks companies to make alcohol seem even more exciting. Smirnoff has added gold leaf to some of its vodkas (apparently it’s both real and edible); cans of Dragon Soop and Four Loko deliver heart attack-inducing combinations of sugar, caffeine and alcohol; and the appropriately named Aftershock is rumoured to crystallise in your stomach for a few hours before reverting back to liquid form to release a second wave of alcohol into your bloodstream. (This is almost certainly an urban myth, but Aftershock drinkers remain convinced.) The latest fad was created during one woman’s postgraduate degree – and has since transformed the experience of partygoers

Ralph Jones

The march of lazy children's books

There’s a myth that lots of us fall for/ ‘Kids’ books are so easy to write’/ And you can see why we might think so/ As so many of them are shite. Little poem by me there. As the dad of a six-year-old and a three-year-old, I have spent perhaps 100 hours reading some wonderful books, and hearing gorgeous books read to me. But parents everywhere will know what I mean when I say: Christ there’s a lot of dross out there. Why are so many children’s books so bad? Children learn through books. If they read lazy poetry, they’ll become lazy writers and lazy thinkers While looking for kids’

Katherine Pangonis

Brigitte Bardot's rejection of fame was her most radical act

In 1956, Brigitte Bardot was invited to the Royal Command Film Performance in London, where she would be presented to Queen Elizabeth II. She was thrilled – not only to meet our queen, but the other one too: Marilyn Monroe would also be present. Bardot later recalled the evening with a mixture of awe and amusement. Monroe, she insisted, was the real star: radiant, charming, fragile. This brief encounter between the two most famous blondes in cinema history captured, in miniature, a fork in the road between two kinds of fame. Six years later, Monroe would be dead. She was found nude in her Los Angeles home, killed by a drug overdose, aged just 36. Even

Theo Hobson

At 53, I'm training to be a priest

I have recently begun training for holy orders in the Church of England. I know, they’re getting desperate. My motivation for wanting to be a priest is selfish. I want more joy in my life. You might feel that joy is to be found in extreme sports, or pop concerts, or snorting coke from the midriffs of hookers. But I think you mean pleasure. Joy is deeper, linked to a sense of the goodness of existence. It seems to me that joy is to be found in doing cultural things. I don’t mean going to plays or art galleries; I mean cultural things that are very participatory and democratic. Things

Andrew Watts

Christmas with my soon-to-be-ex-wife

I didn’t force any hyacinths this Christmas. Most years I plant a dozen bulbs at the end of September and hide them in a dark corner so they’re ready for Christmas Day – they never are, of course, but they usually arrive shortly after the Wise Men on Epiphany. But last September I took out the wooden planters – oak boxes stamped with the date of our wedding, a gift for our fourth wedding anniversary (wood) – and they fell apart in my hands, the wood split and rotten. I always thought the Christmases Yet to Come after my wife and I separated would be sad and un-Christmassy. I saw

Lionel Shriver

‘Islamist’ is a dishonest confection

Convicted last month of plotting what could have proved the worst terrorist attack in British history, Walid Saadaoui had hoped to murder at least 50 people in Prestwich, because ‘Prestwich is full of Jews’. He was caught purchasing four AK-47s, two handguns and 1,200 rounds of ammunition. For Saadaoui’s fires of righteousness on social media had earlier drawn the eye of British law enforcement. ‘Avenge your religion Oh Muslims in Europe,’ he posted. ‘I pray to you not to catch me until I break my thirst with Jews, Christians and their proxies’ blood.’ Thus Saadaoui instructed an undercover officer: ‘Grab a Jewish person and slaughter him and remove his head,

Peter Jones

How the ancients anticipated the apocalypse

What with the threat of global warming and nuclear war, the new year might start with a big bang. The Greeks were preoccupied with this possibility as well and called it the apocalypse (apokalupsis), meaning ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’. It has a long history behind it. The Greek farmer-poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) introduced the idea of a sequence of five ages – golden, silver, bronze, heroic, iron, each worse than the other – repeated five times and ending in total destruction. In his magnificent On the Nature of the Universe, the Roman poet Lucretius (d. c. 55 BC), who was an atomist, described how a world made of atoms would

Ed West

Keep children out of politics

In Citizens, his account of the French Revolution, Simon Schama wrote how the Jacobins recruited children into ‘relentless displays of public virtues’. These youth affiliates, the ‘Young Friends of the Constitution’, encouraged children to attend sessions at the group’s headquarters in Paris, while ‘throughout France, “Battalions of Hope”, consisting of boys between the ages of seven and 12, were uniformed and taught to drill, recite passages from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and parade before the -citizen-parents in miniature versions of the uniform of the National Guard’. In Lille, a ‘children’s federation’ was formed, two of whose members, César Lachapelle, aged eight, and Narcisse