Culture

Christmas is three days away, those heading off to relatives are starting to pack. Booze, books – and, I’d like to propose, one other item: the Spectator’s books podcast. Tis the season for finding a podcast, falling in love with it and downloading several episodes to listen to during a long drive (or lazy afternoons). Advances in technology mean you don’t have to listen to whatever nonsense might be on the radio. A good podcast can take you straight into conversations you’d love to have - which is what The Spectator's books podcast does. Each week Sam Leith, our brilliant literary editor, talks to authors about their ideas, approaches to their work, about maths, poems, science, the joy of museums and whether Roald Dahl was a hero or a turd.

Since my blog about the new threat to press freedom yesterday, and the notorious Section 40 being consulted on by the government, responses have been coming in thick and fast. A few of you have copied me in to emails sent to Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, many of them rather brilliant. More importantly, I've been contacted by a software designer who has agreed to make a form that we can use to send a template response to the government's consultation. This leaves us with one question: what form of words? One form has been created, here. But all you really need to do is mention Section 40 and a new Leveson report and officials are obliged to record your response. Here are three responses.

Despite my 'difficult' reputation, I am a cheery cove in real life, all the more so as I get older. But in true Dorian Grey style, I only stay this way by letting my intolerant side rule the roost on Facebook. Every morning my hot little hands positively itch to unfollow, defriend and block: a day which passes without binning a few dim bulbs is a day wasted. I’ve had an especially good run of it this year, as two things in particular have acted as cracking prompts for my 'negging' narrative. One has been the showing of bad attitude on the part of many Remain-supporting mates. I don’t expect everyone to be a bold Brexiteer like me, but I do expect people to be good losers.

When we redesigned The Spectator six years ago, we spent months working on the launch issue and there was one name we wanted on the cover more than anyone else’s: AA Gill. These six letters could make you smile all on their own. They were a guarantee of wonderfully entertaining writing, gorgeous, unusual turns of phrase and, always, originality and spark. He was rather expensive; we couldn’t afford him very often. But always worth the money, when we had it. It surprised me, at first, to see that he'd phone in his copy, and dictate it. He had written it down, he’d tell me, but it would make no sense to anyone: he was dyslexic, which made the whole process harder. I always thought that this also helped explain why his writing flowed with such gorgeous distinction.

In yesterday's Guardian Giles Fraser dismisses Louise Casey’s report on social division. Its desire to ‘integrate’ communities is serving liberal capitalist ‘hegemony’. And he dismisses Sajid Javid’s call for all Britons to affirm ‘the shared values that make Britain great.’ This, says Fraser, ‘is actually another way of saying that all must be obliged to pay homage to the real god: the economy.’ Thank goodness there are communities that dissent from ‘the dominant model of middle-of-the-road liberal secular capitalism'. He concludes that Muslims should be thanked for maintaining ‘their religious convictions and way of life. They refuse all that nonsense about religion being a private matter.

‘Are you Charles Moore of The Spectator?’ I answered to that description. ‘Well,’ said my questioner, ‘I am worried that you’re becoming very right-wing.’ We were sitting by the fire in a charming, smoky hut with no electric light and lots to eat and drink. It was a shooting lunch, the sort of occasion where one is seldom held to account for anything. I could have tried to laugh the question off, but my interrogator exhibited high intelligence and class confidence, so I sensed she wouldn’t let me get away with that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to answer her. I am not offended by being called right-wing, because I don’t agree with the left-wing view that right-wingery is a mark of personal turpitude.

Sometimes a combination of news stories crop up that so perfectly sum up the spirit of the age, its absurdities and hypocrisies, that there ought to be a name for it. This week, for instance, I learned that the Home Office had barred three Iraqi and Syrian bishops from entering the country, the same department that quite merrily welcomes some of the most unpleasant hate preachers from the Islamic world. Elsewhere, there was also a report about racial and religious segregation in schools and the need to teach something called 'British values' to children to help them integrate. And finally, the winner of the country's most prestigious art award was announced, beating competition from the other shortlisted works, which included a gigantic anus.

On the few occasions when something I have written has directly affected a person, I have usually regretted it. During the row about the hunting ban, I got furious with Rod Liddle, then the editor of the Today programme, because he wrote an article attacking people who hunt. I composed a thunderous leader in the Daily Telegraph about his shocking lack of impartiality and called for his sacking. Amazingly, the BBC obliged. I was dismayed, because Rod (though indeed preposterous on that particular subject) was one of the few subversive spirits ever to rise to an important editorial position in the corporation. My guilt was only partially assuaged by his finding his metier as a columnist on this paper instead.

The Twitch-hunters, those antsy, intolerant guardians of what it’s permissible to say on Twitter, have claimed another scalp. Eric Bristow’s. The former darts champion, lovably known as the Crafty Cockney, will now probably be better known as hate-speaker thanks to the offence-taking army that took umbrage at his tweets about child abuse. For this quarrelsome mob has the power to destroy reputations, and it looks like it has successfully destroyed Bristow’s. Bristow’s speechcrime, or tweet-crime, was to gruffly express his views on the child-abuse scandal rocking football right now.

I was interested to read that police recorded more shoplifting offences in the year ending in March than they have since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in 2003. The trend was unique among other diminishing types of hands-on thieving, single-handedly driving up the number of ‘property crimes’ reported in England and Wales, according to a study published by the Office for National Statistics. For a blissful moment, I was back in the heady days of Pop Sox and Labour landslides - the light-fingered calf-country of my 1970s provincial working-class girlhood - and as if surprised in adolescent self-abuse, I felt a blush creep up my ears and my heart skip a beat, as I recalled the splendid, sordid thrill of it all.