Society

Friday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

Sunday

Saturday

Wednesday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Sunday

Thursday

Bryan Matthews

‘Walking football’ is in a super league of its own

As a footballer, I’m elderly not elite, meaning that I’m one of 60,000 or so 50- to 92-year-olds (yep, 92!) in England who enjoy a more pedestrian version of the sport than the Premier League’s whippersnappers. A survey last year revealed that for many of us ‘walking footballers’, the sport is our most significant social interaction of the week. So while the Premier League continued through the winter, I was — to use footballer lingo — sick as a parrot when we somewhat older, rather slower players were red-carded by the government. Conversely, I was over the moon at the end of last month when we were allowed to return

Lionel Shriver

The case against reparations for slavery

Last week, a bill cleared the US House Judiciary Committee that would establish a 13-person commission to consider federal reparations for slavery. Although similar legislation has been introduced in every Congress since 1989, this is the closest such a bill has ever advanced towards a full vote in the House. The President’s support for this pet far-left project is unsurprising. A reparations commission featured in Joe Biden’s campaign platform. Advocating the establishment of this commission is a hop, skip and a jump from advocating reparations, full stop. The UK’s proliferating parliamentary inquiries often function to kick sensitive subjects into the long grass. But an American panel convened to address such

Julie Burchill

The problem with ‘role models’

Watching the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh at the weekend — that Land Rover, that lack of eulogy — I felt an alien emotion steal over me. Shortly after the last blast of the bagpipes faded away, I realised what it was: I’d like to be like that. Amusingly, the only person this working-class radical feminist has ever felt this emotion towards was a reactionary prince. Somehow, the very incongruity made perfect sense; I can’t think of anything drearier than having a ‘role model’ who was in any way like me. There are quite a few modern phrases which annoy the heck out of me. ‘Reaching out’ should only

Wednesday

Debbie Hayton

How Richard Dawkins fell victim to the transgender thought police

Richard Dawkins – the biologist, humanist, and author – is a well-known critic of religious faith. As he once put it, ‘Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.’ Traditional religion may have loosened its grip on society, certainly in the United Kingdom, but new quasi-religious ideologies are taking root in spaces that the churches have vacated. Earlier this month, Dawkins upset the transgender brigade by questioning their core beliefs. He Tweeted, ‘In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women,