Crime

The furore over the parole granted to John Worboys, the rapist taxi driver, misses the point entirely — that the system of parole is disgraceful in theory and irredeemably unwork-able in practice. The only thing that it is good for is the employment of large numbers of officials engaged in pointless or fatuous tasks who might other-wise be unemployed. The system is predicated on the ability of experts to predict the future conduct of convicted prisoners. Will they or will they not repeat their crimes if let out early? It is true that, using a few simple statistical measures, such as numbers of past convictions and age, you can predict

It’s just a few metres from Bartholomew Court, EC1, where a young man was one of four stabbed to death over the New Year, to trendy Hoxton, famous for its cereal bars and hirsute hipsters. It would be easy to say these two worlds – those of the trendy media types lampooned by ‘Nathan Barley’ and ‘Its Grim up North London’ and the large nearby estates – are separated by an unbridgeable gulf, but it would also be inaccurate. Areas like Hoxton became popular in part because of this edginess, this picturesque urban decay, where drugs can be bought cheaply from local youths and consumed in the safety of the

Do you believe Chloe Ayling? She is the 20-year-old glamour model whose dramatic story has been all over the newspapers throughout August. She claims to have been lured to a fake photoshoot in Italy, injected with ketamine, stuffed inside a suitcase and shoved into the boot of a car. So far, so just about credible. But the story becomes ever more bizarre. Ayling says she was then driven to a farmhouse, where she was threatened with being sold via an online auction as a sex slave to a man in the Middle East, who – we must assume – has a taste for busty blonde British babes. Not only was

This spring I wrote in the magazine about how sheep attacks were on the rise, as wayward dogs were becoming an increasing problem for farmers. Sadly, since I wrote the piece in March, the problem hasn’t got any better. Pictures of sheep that have been either mauled or killed by family pets still appear constantly on my social media feeds, and over the summer numerous dogs have had to be shot by farmers to stop them attacking their livestock. Things have got so bad in some places that in Wiltshire, for example, the National Trust has been forced to ban dogs from some of the areas it looks after close to Stonehenge. It’s

I’m a member of a small and weird minority, the conservative urbanophiles. Obviously cities are nests of degeneracy and, even worse, the false faith of progressivism – my postcode voted 82 per cent Remain and the Tories finished fourth in 2015 – but nevertheless urbanisation is glorious, the best thing our species ever did. City life means socialising, culture and prosperity.  But the English-speaking world forgot two important things about city life in the 20th century, lessons that have been painfully half re-learned: that cities should be beautiful and cities need to be civilised. The story of American urban decline in the late 20th century is especially tragic, hollowed out

The baby, unbothered by diesel fumes, enjoys an outing down the main road through London N1. Each passing bus is marked by a fat and pointing finger: ‘There!’ On the way to our local park last Thursday, we had just begun to cross the road, pointing up at the green ‘walk’ man, when a scooter tore straight through a red light and cut across in front of the pram. ‘What the hell?!’ I shouted and raised an angry hand. To my surprise, instead of speeding off, the driver jammed on his brakes and skidded round to face me. He was a boy of about 15 or 16, black, slight, and

Life in Britain has become much cruder, meaner and more spiteful practically everywhere. It can be seen in people’s behaviour on the street; in those abominable neighbours from hell; in companies piling up the profits with no care whatsoever for the degree to which they are sweating their workers on terms that, until quite recently, would have been unimaginable. The incivility of one to another can be seen most sharply and poignantly in the degree of cruelty to children which, at the beginning of my working life, would have had every alarm bell ringing wildly. Children have to be almost on the point of being murdered before they are taken

Life in Britain has become much cruder, meaner and more spiteful practically everywhere. It can be seen in people’s behaviour on the street; in those abominable neighbours from hell; in companies piling up the profits with no care whatsoever for the degree to which they are sweating their workers on terms that, until quite recently, would have been unimaginable. The incivility of one to another can be seen most sharply and poignantly in the degree of cruelty to children which, at the beginning of my working life, would have had every alarm bell ringing wildly. Children have to be almost on the point of being murdered before they are taken