Culture

One of David Cameron’s last acts as Prime Minister was to approve an application by Ashlawn School in Rugby to set up a new free school in the city. It’s not surprising that Ashlawn’s application was approved. Not only has it been ranked ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted, but last year 74 per cent of its pupils got five GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths (a metric known as ‘5A*–CEM’). Even more impressive, 65 per cent of its pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds met that same target. However, before Ashlawn can open its new school in 2017 it has to overcome an obstacle. Ashlawn is one of England’s three

Let’s turn our attention to ‘tidal lagoons’: you may have heard that phrase in discussion of alternatives to Hinkley Point and wondered what it means. It refers to a £1 billion project, awaiting ministerial approval, to build a walled lagoon in Swansea Bay that would generate (through largely British-built turbines) electricity on the ebb and flood of every tide, 14 hours a day for a project lifetime of 120 years. It could be brought into operation within five years — but to make that happen it requires subsidy at levels comparable to offshore wind or new nuclear generation; it also requires millions of tonnes of concrete and aggregates from quarries

Pokémon Go makes me wonder about Generation Y, which will surely be remembered as one of the most childish collectives of all time. I am part of this contingent of people born in the 1980s and 1990s – the offspring of the baby boomers – characterised as a digitally-savvy cohort, among other things. We have been an incredibly lucky lot, thrust into a technological renaissance of sorts – where computing breakthroughs take place all the time. But in spite of this evolution, young people have slowed down. We have become self-indulgent, silly and reluctant to grow up. We are the Peter Pan Generation. At least, that’s what the mobile game Pokémon Go

It keeps being said that racist ‘hate crime’ has increased as a result of the referendum. One must bear in mind how the public authorities define these things, as confirmed this week by Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Macpherson report on Stephen Lawrence set the current rule. It defined a racist incident as ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’. The police are instructed to log all such incidents as racist incidents. So you only have to have more people reporting what they see as racist incidents for an exactly corresponding rise in the number of recorded racist incidents.

The Spectator’s podcasts – our weekly one, and our ad-hoc Coffee House shots, are now both in the iTunes Top Ten. We’re rather proud of this: many of our rivals have things like studios and producers. We don’t: we have a few microphones, iPhones and boundless enthusiasm. If a major story breaks, you can expect proper analysis on Coffee House Shots within the hour. You can subscribe to the podcasts for free: click here to sign up to the weekly Spectator Podcast, and click here to sign up to Coffee House shots. And our rivals? A list below. PS Keep at it, Seb, you’ll get there one day 😉  

Six weeks ago I was one of the 1.3 million Londoners who voted for Sadiq Khan as mayor. Boy do I regret it now. Because he’s just shown what he really thinks of us inhabitants of the capital: that we’re so mentally fragile, so pathetic, so vulnerable to the wicked charms of advertisers, that he must censor allegedly sexist ads on our behalf and protect us from offence. In proposing a blanket ban on bus and Tube ads that make people feel bad about their bodies, Sadiq has revealed his authoritarian, paternalistic contempt for the people who swept him to power. I’m amazed there isn’t more fury about his extraordinary

Let me start by putting my podgy little hand up – the one not ferreting fervently through a big box of Belgian chocs, that is. Starting out positively sylph-like, I’ve reached a size 18 at the age of 56 solely through lack of discipline and love of pleasure. I have no time for people (except those with proven medical conditions) who pretend that it is generally otherwise. Nevertheless, I’m not attached to my flab in any way but the most obvious.  I despise the Righteous Fat. (The Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around, sweating and smelling, and somehow believing that it means something.) Though I could afford any