Society

Saturday

Theo Hobson

Tommy Robinson wants to put 'Christ back into Christmas'? No, thanks

So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do? Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no So what is Robinson’s motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There

Arabella Byrne

How to live gracefully in a ‘granny annexe’

There comes a time in every Boomer Granny’s life when she must consider the ‘granny annexe’ as a viable demesne. For Sarah Ferguson, that time has come. Disgraced, broke and soon to be booted out of Royal Lodge, Fergie is reportedly considering her daughter Princess Beatrice’s Cotswold ‘cowshed’ as her next billet. And while this is not the monstrous wedding-cake mansion that is Royal Lodge, it is still apparently a des res, with neighbours in the unnamed Cotswold village claiming that the property has recently had a refurb. Fergie can no doubt expect an open-plan kitchenette in Edward Bulmer hues, a fair few Pooky lampshades and a Loaf bed in the lead-on bedroom. Perfectly suitable for a woman who once flaunted her ability to adapt to any circumstances, declaring herself ‘a chameleon

Patrick Kidd

The strange history of one-armed vs one-legged cricket

A sheet metal worker from Shropshire who lost a leg below the knee in a tractor accident when he was a child has been told to pay back £36,000 in disability benefits after he was filmed playing cricket twice a week for a village team.  Shaun Rigby, 37, had received personal independence payments since 2016 and acquired a car under the Motability scheme three years ago but the Department for Work and Pensions has judged that his daily needs do not require such assistance.  Mr Rigby called the decision ‘unfair’, observing that people with less debilitating conditions get Motability cars. He remarked: ‘Just because I play cricket doesn’t mean my

Friday

Nick Robinson

Rod Liddle is wrong about the BBC

There is little to beat the thrill of finding a letter you didn’t know existed and being transported back in time and deep into your family’s history. Dated January 1955, it is addressed to ‘Desmond and Evelyn’ and urges them to show ‘tenacity, resolution and COURAGE’. It is signed ‘Pater’. These were the qualities deemed necessary for the son of an English colonel to marry the daughter of a German Jewish refugee against her father’s ferocious opposition. ‘I have the greatest respect for the good qualities of your race and I respect their fighting qualities,’ the man who would become my English grandfather wrote to the couple who would become

Damian Thompson

There's no one more obsessive than Sherlock Holmes fans. And I should know

There is no better time to read a Sherlock Holmes story than a winter evening. As the rain lashes against the windows and the fog descends, we can imagine ourselves sitting companionably with the great detective and the good doctor around the Baker Street hearth, waiting for the step of a visitor upon the stair. Unfortunately, our 21st-century climate rarely cooperates. The rainstorm arrives when we’re far from a hearth, fighting with an umbrella that turns inside-out at the first breath of wind. And when were you last enveloped in a London fog? The savagery of the elements beating down on 221b seems to belong to another world. ‘It was

The Spectator

Letters: Why I quit Your Party

Party’s over Sir: My departure from Your Party, described as ‘disputed’ by Douglas Murray (‘Where was my invitation to Your Party?’, 6 December), was in truth rather mundane: I had naively assumed that a party born to challenge the narrowing horizons of British politics might permit more than one world view at a time. This proved to be a radical proposition. I had signed up to build a broad, pluralistic church; what I encountered instead was a dogmatic project. The boundaries of acceptable opinion narrowed by the week, policed with a zeal that would make a Victorian temperance society blush. To suggest that segments of the working class might hold

Rory Sutherland

AI will take jobs – the wrong ones

As those of you familiar with this column will know, I am always eager to distinguish between an option and an obligation. For instance, a dinner party is usually more enjoyable than an indoor drinks party. Yet in one respect a drinks party wins out: the moment you accept an invitation to a dinner party, you are committed. By contrast, when you accept an invitation to a drinks party, you can bunk off at short notice and spend quality man-time watching YouTube documentaries about steam engines instead. A dinner party is an obligation, while ‘drinks’ is an option. This is also the principal distinction between a restaurant and a café.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary, from Bernard Cornwell: Should I stop a nightmare couple from coming to a wedding?

From Emma Barnett Q. What do I do about the fact that my friends are all scared of the telephone and its primary purpose? I loathe endless texting and yet I keep worrying people by actually calling them. How do I stop people answering the phone with a breathless: ‘What’s happened? Are you OK? Has someone died?’ As someone who effectively talks for a living, is there a way back? A. Most juniors do tend to react with alarm to a non-prepositioned phone call. Dispel fear with a text, festooned with laughing face emojis, asking: ‘Can you speak?’ Then dial the number. From Emily Maitlis Q. Several of our dear

Janet de Botton

A farewell to The Spectator

I don’t mind a bit of carefully controlled nostalgia but when it even nudges mawkishness I’m out. To prove it I am not going to gush and rhapsodise that this is my last column for the Speccie, but I will say that it has been a pleasure and a privilege filing this column every fortnight for the past 16 (give or take) years, and I have greatly enjoyed calling myself a ‘journalist’ at every opportunity. Particularly to journalists, some of whom get amusingly irritated! But that was then and this will be a new year; I don’t know who your next bridge columnist will be but I look forward to

Charlie Brooks

Can Ben Wallace defend racing from Labour?

I met Ben Wallace for the first time the other day. He was pretty well the only minister who came out of Rishi Sunak’s government with his reputation enhanced. I had a humdinger hunt ball hangover from hell – quite appropriate, given that he is leading the campaign to save trail hunting. He, on the other hand, was bright-eyed, bushy tailed and firing on all cylinders, in spite of a long drive to London from the north, where he was MP for Wyre and Preston North for 19 years. A good innings for a 55-year-old. We met in one of those venerable clubs in St James’s where Jimmy’s son John

Angela Epstein

Boycotting Israel could kill Eurovision

What exactly is the point of Eurovision? It can’t be about the music. Britain, the nation that gifted the world the Beatles, David Bowie and the Spice Girls, has been scraping the bottom of the scoreboard for years – thanks to a string of forgettable, frankly embarrassing entries that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a boozy holiday camp open-mic night. The UK hasn’t been alone in putting forward dire entries, but perhaps that then has always been the point. Much to the delight of the millions who watch and feast on Eurovision’s glorious banquet of kitsch and camp – a ding-a-dong smorgasbord where spectacle is compulsory and, for many countries,

Aidan Hartley

Nothing gets rid of friends like the breakdown of a marriage

Kenya An unexpected subplot in the ending of my marriage has been the loss of dear old friends. It came as no surprise that a hot flush of middle-aged women took sides, ensuring that certain west London postcodes felt like enemy territory. The end of a comradeship that had survived wars and the deaths of colleagues across 34 years, however, was a terrible blow. A friend of 30 years who decided to circulate secretly photographed images of me with my girlfriend enjoying sundowners at a bar came as a surprise. With another, a terminal chain reaction that began with a tiff over a cattle trough reminded me of Gogol’s story

Lawrence Osborne

The glorious weirdness of Christmas in Thailand

Bangkok Christmas in Thailand is one of the strangest festivities of the modern world. A country that is almost entirely Buddhist, which does not recognise Christmas as a public holiday, whose people have almost no idea what the event means, nevertheless erects giant glittering Christmas trees in its malls and intersections. These are larger and more numerous than the ones you see in London. It’s not difficult to imagine a future where British tourists fly to Bangkok to rediscover the mood of Christmas, not in shopping but in pagan feeling. December shoppers in the Bangkok mega-malls are greeted by choirs of small girls in Santa hats who ring bells and

Melissa Kite

On the trail of the White Lady

As we reached the top of the hill and saw the view in front of us my heart thumped so hard I slammed my foot on the brake and declared that we had to turn back. A wind- and sea-battered piece of terrain jutting out into the Atlantic ocean told us very loudly to go away. I heard it in my head, as clear as a person saying it, and I pretended I hadn’t, but I had. So I stopped the car above that desolate valley and sat there, frozen, not knowing what to do or even how to turn the car in the narrow space. Having climbed a steep

Catriona Olding

How I met Jeremy

In the early 2000s, academics, philosophers, politicians, members of the royal household and business people – including the CEO and the owner of a newspaper group – sometimes came round to the house for tea, drinks or dinner. Anxious to keep up, I started to read the papers more thoroughly. The Economist and New Statesman I found dull. On the recommendation of a friend, I bought The Spectator. The writing was better. Sometimes you’d find arguments for and against a subject, for example fox hunting, in the same magazine. But more than that – it was entertaining. Jeremy Clarke’s Low Life column, however, was in another league. It was poetry;

Rupert Hawksley

Washing up is an artform

Right, who’s doing the washing up? It’s 6 p.m. on Christmas Day and the table, which was meticulously set for 12, is now a mess of paper hats, gravy spills and glasses – so, so many glasses. Just don’t go into the kitchen, where you’ll find, in no order at all: six saucepans (unsoaked), 12 plates, one grater, 12 bowls, three baking trays, two sieves, four ceramic dishes, one warm turkey carcass and at least 17 bone-handled knives which absolutely cannot go in the dishwasher. There are vague murmurings that someone should probably do something about it. I hate to say it, but if you haven’t done any of the

David Shipley

The evil of the grooming gangs is finally being exposed

It has now been six weeks since the inquiry into ‘Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ fell into chaos. Over the course of several days, numerous survivors quit – claiming that the civil servants running the process were seeking to dilute the inquiry – and the man being considered as chair stood down. Since then there has been silence from the government. There is still no chair nor terms of reference. It is important that we all understand the sheer evil of what has been done and what has been hidden from us by the state This is despite Louise Casey’s damning report in June, which revealed the sheer scale of these

Gavin Mortimer

David Lammy is wrong about Brexit and the EU

David Lammy believes Britain should rejoin the EU customs union to boost economic growth. In an interview on Thursday, the Deputy Prime Minister argued that leaving the EU had ‘badly damaged’ Britain’s economy. A reversal of Brexit would be good for business he suggested. It was ‘self-evident’ that other countries had ‘seen growth’ after joining the customs union, Lammy told the News Agents podcast. The deputy PM avoided the question of whether Britain should rejoin the euro, as did Health Secretary Wes Streeting earlier in the week. Having declared that Britain was worse off out of the EU, Streeting was asked if the government was planning to take Britain back

Druin Burch

Why GPs are reluctant about online booking

‘Moaning Minnies’ is how the Health Secretary Wes Streeting has described GPs opposing his rollout of online appointment booking. Originally, that moniker referred to German artillery pieces – and it’s pleasant for a doctor like myself to imagine we still possess that sort of firepower. But Streeting meant that the British Medical Association’s GP committee, which he has accused of undermining the attempt to make primary care more accessible, are a bunch of whining complainers, rather than us ordinary doctors. So, is Streeting right? General practice, as everyone is painfully aware, is in trouble. Except in a shrinking minority of places, the old model that made it so valuable is

Philip Patrick

Fifa's great World Cup rip-off has gone too far

Today’s World Cup draw in Washington, presided over by Fifa president Gianni Infantino with best buddie president Donald Trump at his side, is intended to whet appetites, set pulses racing and, most importantly, get fingers twitching on booking sites for tickets, flights, and hotels for next summer’s North American extravaganza. The World Cup 2026 is poised to be not just the biggest ever, but the biggest rip-off ever For those giddily contemplating the trip to North America next summer – not least we Scottish fans who have been denied a place at the party for so long – a cold, hard reality is about to bite. For the World Cup