I see that law students at Oxford University were told that if they found the contents of a lecture on rape and sexual assault ‘distressing’, they would be permitted to absent themselves. This is an interesting approach for future lawyers and barristers. Perhaps, further down the line, they will excuse themselves in court when the
[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/262486539-the-spectator-podcast-erdogans-europe.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss Boris” startat=552] Listen [/audioplayer] After an eight-year detour into municipal government, Boris Johnson has now returned to national politics. The former mayor of London will mark this moment by going on the stump for the Leave campaign. He has some catching up to do: while
My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like a Saint-Tropez lothario. The nurse rubs his foot to bring blood to his veins, and I lean over the cot to feed the greedy midget, who squawks just once as he’s stabbed. I watch the
Would you describe yourself as an ‘environmentalist’? I would, mainly to annoy greenies, but also because it’s true. If your definition of an environmentalist is someone who loves immersing himself in the natural world, makes a study of its ways and cares deeply about its future, I’m at least as much of one as David
I am having terrible trouble with my hair at the moment. It is lank, flat and lifeless. There are split ends. Also, it doesn’t smell too good. What’s that appalling stench, my wife asked recently while sitting next to me on the sofa as we watched a rerun of the old racist editions of Midsomer
[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/261189280-the-spectator-podcast-the-wrong-right.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss May’s elections” startat=555] Listen [/audioplayer] Britain goes to the polls next week. Yet this has barely registered on the media radar. These aren’t the forgotten elections; they are the ones nobody’s bloody heard of. This is surprising, because they have real political significance. North of the border,
Exactly a year ago this week I was at a dinner party when a famous opinion pollster leaned over to me and said: ‘You know, the best thing about this election is that within two years Chuka Umunna will be the leader of the Labour party and Sajid Javid the leader of the Conservatives.’ He
There are moments when one wonders whether one is seeing and hearing the same things as others. For me such a moment occurred a fortnight ago when reading The Spectator’s weekly column by our political editor, James Forsyth. James is exceptionally well plugged in to the world of Westminster, but — beyond that — a
[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/260046943-the-spectator-podcast-obamas-eu-intervention-the-pms.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the PM’s hollow victory” startat=511] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo. David Cameron may well feel the same about referendums on 24 June. The EU debate is already taking a
‘What’s in the news this week?’ I asked my wife as she browsed the first newspaper we had seen for a whole week, having hitherto been blissfully disconnected from the rest of the country, without phones or the internet. ‘Muslims, largely,’ she replied, flicking from page to page, ‘a bit on in-and-out, but mainly it’s
I was in the attic killing some Taleban on Medal of Honor when Girl interrupted and said: ‘Dad, what’s this?’ What it was was a pile of memorabilia which I’d stuffed into a plastic shopping bag on leaving university and which I’d barely looked at since. We picked through the contents rapt with wonder. To
The year 2019 seems a long way away. Whether or not David Cameron can stay in office until then is this week’s hot topic of conversation among Tories. They wonder how many more weeks like the last two the Prime Minister can endure. Before Parliament broke up for Easter, the view among Cameron loyalists was
It is not what Robert Mugabe would do. Calm down. These are ‘spiv Robert Mugabe antics’, said the Tory backbencher Nigel Evans, of the government’s alleged £9 million mailshot making the case for staying in the European Union. But no. They aren’t. If David Cameron was behaving like Robert Mugabe, then he wouldn’t just be sending
In a way the headline to my fellow columnist Dominic Lawson’s Sunday Times commentary on 12 April said it all. ‘Join the pitchfork wavers on tax, Mr Cameron, and you end up skewered.’ The column had something of an 18th-century ring to it, conjuring in my mind’s eye an elegant London dinner party, with men-about-town
The Labour plotters who dream of ousting Jeremy Corbyn had high hopes for the local elections on 5 May. They envisaged a moment of humiliation for their leader in Scotland, Wales and England; a moment that would prove beyond doubt that the party’s leftwards lurch had narrowed its appeal and consigned it to the electoral
My favourite quote of the year so far comes from the author Fay Weldon. ‘If this were an all-woman society,’ she said, ‘we wouldn’t have television. We’d just have lots of nice cushions.’ Fay was making the point that it’s men who do all the -inventing and most of the work. She has since profusely
If ever you find yourself in Berlin, there are three places you absolutely must visit. The first two are museums: the Neues Museum, to see the well-worth-the-detour head of Nefertiti; and the Pergamon Museum, so you can offer up a prayer of gratitude for the arrogance of all those 19th-century imperialist looters who understood that
Most MPs greet the parliamentary recess with a sense of relief. But Conservatives are welcoming this Easter break like the bell at the end of a boxing match. They are exhausted, tempers must be cooled and they now have a fortnight to think about how best to stop their split over the EU referendum becoming
I got Boris Johnson into trouble once, without meaning to. The two of us had been driven hither and thither across Uganda by Unicef in the back of an expensive Mercedes 4×4 to gaze at the fatuous projects they had delivered for the benighted natives. We had been chosen for the trip because we were
‘I’m a nice person,’ said the robot. ‘I just hate everybody.’ Maybe you know the feeling. The robot in question was Microsoft’s first great experiment in artificial intelligence, given the tone of a teenage girl and the name of Tay. The plan was for it — her? — to lurk on social media, Twitter mainly,