No sacred cows

For me, one of the joys of going abroad is bargaining with the local sellers. They name an extortionate price; I make an insulting counteroffer; they threaten to walk away; I increase my offer by a fractional amount; they accuse me of not being serious, then name a price that’s fractionally lower than their opening bid, accompanied by elaborate hand gestures to indicate this is their absolute final offer; now it’s my turn to start walking away; and so on, until eventually we arrive at a mutually agreeable price that leaves us both feeling we’ve got the better of one another. In reality, of course, I’ve been ripped off, but I can tell myself I’ve struck a tremendous bargain. Unfortunately, Caroline takes a different view.

On Monday, a bill was passed by the National Assembly in France that will give courts the power to prevent parents posting pictures or videos of their kids online. The courts will decide, based on the child’s age and maturity, if the consent of both parents is needed, or whether the child’s approval is sufficient. In certain circumstances, if posting the image ‘seriously affects the child’s dignity or moral integrity’, not even the consent of both parents will be enough. The proposer of the bill, Bruno Studer, says the new law is intended to show young people that their parents don’t have an ‘absolute right’ over their image. I feel ambivalent about this.

On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to ‘migrant workers’ in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn’t committed a crime.

I was disappointed to learn that the authorities are planning to crack down on dockless bikes and electric scooters. Westminster City Council says it intends to fine the rental firms if vehicles are ‘abandoned’ on pavements, while the Department for Transport is planning to introduce a licensing scheme. This is partly in response to lobbying from disabilities charities, which claim the vehicles are a safety hazard. ‘They need to be stopped, docked and locked,’ a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind told MailOnline. I knew it couldn’t last.

I’m currently sitting on top of a brownie point mountain. Caroline has departed for a two-week tennis freebie in Barbados, leaving me holding the fort. I have three teenage boys to take care of and a very small dog. That means getting them up for school every morning, emptying and loading the dishwasher, walking the dog, doing quite unbelievable amounts of washing, and preparing endless meals. I don’t know how she does it! Mali spends her days watching the front door, hoping to see a suntanned woman with a tennis racket To be fair, she doesn’t do it all, because I usually do some of it. And while she has a job, it’s only part-time, whereas I spend at least 60 hours a week doing paid work. So having to combine that with being a house husband is killing me.

James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure of Mark Steyn from GB News following a bust-up over his contract. Mark has been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart attacks. When he was ready to return last month, GB News asked him to sign a contract which would have made his company liable for any fines imposed by Ofcom as a result of a ‘regulatory breach’ unless he and his producers agreed to ‘incorporate Ofcom regulatory input’ into the show. He refused and accused GB News of presenting him with a fait accompli that he couldn’t accept.

Some readers will recall the furore five years ago about the Presidents Club charity dinner at the Dorchester. The Financial Times sent two undercover journalists to work as ‘hostesses’ at the annual fundraiser and their report made uncomfortable reading for the big hitters in attendance, including Nadhim Zahawi. It was not just a men-only event, but the 130 hostesses were instructed to wear skimpy black outfits with matching underwear, and several were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned at a party following the dinner. In the ensuing scandal, the co-chairman resigned as a non-executive director of the Department for Education and one guest was removed from the Labour front bench in the Lords.

About six months ago I was contacted by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, and asked if I wanted to help with an investigation into the surveillance of critics of the government’s pandemic response by state agencies. Would I submit subject access requests to different Whitehall departments to see if I was among the critics of the government’s pandemic response who’d been monitored by the Counter Disinformation Unit, the Rapid Response Unit, the Intelligence and Communications Unit and the 77th Brigade? I thought it unlikely, but decided to play along and on Monday night Big Brother Watch published its report revealing that I was one of the dozens of journalists, scientists and MPs who’d been spied on in this way.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a column about how I’d started sleeping in my garden office. No, not because Caroline had kicked me out of the master bedroom, but because we were having the house rewired and the builders needed us to vacate our room at seven o’clock every morning. The move was supposed to be temporary, but I liked the arrangement so much it became permanent. Unfortunately it’s causing a few tensions in the marriage. Most wives who have had to put with their husband’s snoring for more than 20 years would welcome this set-up, but Caroline is a bit nonplussed. She doesn’t miss the nightly tug-of-war over the duvet, or me trying to sneak in without waking her after a night on the tiles (imagine a hippopotamus in a furniture showroom).

Last week, the Office for National Statistics published the data on gender identity in England and Wales, as revealed in the latest UK census. For the first time ever, the census included the following question: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ This was asked of those aged 16 and over and 45.7 million people, about 94 per cent of the total, answered. In total, 45.4 million (93.5 per cent) answered yes and 262,000 (0.5 per cent) answered no. The lobby group Stonewall welcomed the news. ‘It’s incredible to see the true size of the LGBTQ+ community,’ it tweeted. But it must have come as something of a blow, since Stonewall had previously said the size of the country’s trans and non-binary population is 600,000.

Caroline likes to rent somewhere on Airbnb between Christmas and new year to break up the winter holiday. No, not in Courchevel or Barbados, I’m afraid, but something a bit more affordable. Last year, we spent three days in Margate, which worked out quite well, save for the eggy smell on the seafront. This year, she decided to rent a house in Cardiff. It was not a success. On arrival at the Airbnb, the first thing we noticed was howcold it was The reason for choosing that particular city is that QPR were playing Cardiff at 5.15 p.m. on Boxing Day. The plan was to embark on the drive after lunch, drop the bags off, then head to the stadium. We’d stay in Cardiff until 29 December, at which point we’d drive back to London in time for our home game against Luton.

When I imagine the perfect Christmas lunch, I think of the end of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge turns up unexpectedly at his nephew’s house and discovers a warm family gathering: ‘Nothing could be heartier… Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!’ I can picture myself as an old man, parked in front of the telly wearing a Christmas hat, as Caroline creeps out to the neighbours’ drinks Back in my youth, the Christmas lunches hosted by my father, while not exactly hearty, were opportunities to get together with my extended family – my three half-siblings, my mother and sister, my grandmother Edith, an old friend of my father’s called Vincent.

According to a quote in a recent article by the environment editor of the Times, I’m ‘the most prominent UK public figure’ whose posts on Twitter related to ‘climate scepticism’ are ‘heavily shared’. This was based on an analysis commissioned by the paper from two researchers at the University of London, Max Falkenberg and Andrea Baronchelli. Apparently, ten Twitter handles account for 25 per cent of the most widely shared sceptical tweets – and mine is one of them! Why are the people who sign up to the green agenda so quick to label those who don’t as ‘deniers’?

Most football fans have had their attention riveted on Qatar for the past couple of weeks, but for those of us who support Queens Park Rangers there’s been an unwelcome distraction at home. Our manager Michael Beale, who’s only been in charge for 21 league games, announced on Monday that he’s leaving us for Rangers, the Glaswegian football club. Having spent a huge amount of time and effort recruiting a manager in the summer – and seemingly picking a winner – QPR’s top brass will have to start again. Beale was one of the few people in authority (me included) who hadn’t disappointed my children Such behaviour isn’t particularly unusual in the modern game.

Winter is finally upon us and I’m relying on my usual array of tablets and powders to ward off seasonal viruses. Caroline and the children constantly ridicule me, saying I’ve been taken for a fool by snake-oil salesmen, but I tell myself these concoctions are responsible for my robust good health. I’ve tested positive for Covid twice and usually get two or three colds a year. But I haven’t taken a day off due to illness since 1987. My basic daily intake consists of a multi-vitamin tablet, 1,000iu of vitamin E, 1,000µg of vitamin B12 and 4,000iu of vitamin D3, all washed down with 1,000mg of vitamin C.

Should England be participating in the Qatar World Cup? On the face of it, the case for a boycott is pretty compelling. Much of the infrastructure – including eight stadiums, an airport expansion, a new metro system and multiple hotels – has been built by migrant workers who are notoriously poorly treated by their Qatari employers. Women still have to obtain permission from their male guardians to marry, study abroad on state scholarships and receive certain reproductive health care. Muslim women who have sex outside marriage can be sentenced to flogging. Homosexuality is against the law and punishable by imprisonment. Freedom of expression and of the press leave a lot to be desired. The list goes on.

I was a little disappointed by Boris Johnson’s argument against Britain paying reparations for the damage done to developing countries by climate change. Yes, he acknowledged at Cop27, Britain was the first country to industrialise and, as a result, ‘people in the UK have put an awful lot of carbon into the atmosphere’. But we simply don’t have the financial re-sources to pay compensation for all the harm caused by the industrial revolution. The economic model pioneered by Britain in the 18th century has lifted billions out of poverty Hmmm. I can think of several better arguments against climate change reparations.

Among people of a conservative disposition, it’s long been accepted that the Equality Act needs to be repealed. This legislation, passed in 2010 in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s premiership, was designed to embed Labour’s egalitarian ideology into the fabric of the British state, yet none of Brown’s successors have done anything about it. In July, Rishi Sunak told a group of Conservative party members at a leadership hustings in West Sussex that he would ‘review’ it if he became prime minister, but don’t expect major surgery. The most we can hope for is a bit of light cosmetic work. One thing about the Equality Act not widely understood is that it didn’t create much in the way of new law.