Culture

For some reason, possibly homophobic, the media just now is refusing to give any coverage to David Furnish, the spouse of Sir Elton John. I think they are trying to suppress an important argument that Mr Furnish made recently. He pointed out how discriminatory it was that, unlike the wife of a titled man, he derives no title from his knighted spouse. He was too modest to say what title he should be given — and I must say I cannot think of a solution, since ‘Lady John’ would make him sound like the wife of the younger son of a duke — but it is the principle of the thing which matters. Actually, Mr Furnish’s point goes wider than he recognises: the problem also afflicts the male spouses of titled women, such as Prince Philip.

'Amid the cobbled passageways and tumbling tenements of the Italian city of Perugia, it’s possible to daydream you are in the middle ages. You are surrounded by medieval art and architecture. And then you think: hold on, what happened to the Renaissance?’ So begins Paul Mason's article for the Guardian on Monday about the Panama Papers, in which he makes the case that because Perugia's wealthy citizens did not pay their taxes, the city fell into decline. 'We want to be the Florence, Bruges or Amsterdam of the coming century, not the Perugia,' he adds. Renaissance Florence may be intoxicating and I don’t doubt that its citizens were possibly better at paying their taxes than Perugia’s.

However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax havens and see if they really want it. The prime reason that tax havens exist is that taxes in most countries are too high. If they did not exist, the competitive element would be reduced, and taxes would go up even more. The EU constantly complains about ‘unfair tax competition’, by which it really means just tax competition itself. Tax avoidance is what most of us try to do. Resentment about it is largely because the rich find it easier to achieve than the rest of us. This is an extract from Charles Moore's Notes. The full article can be found here.

The state pension has just risen by the highest amount in 15 years, and the Tory Party boasts that this is a result of the ‘difficult decisions’ it has taken. This is odd, because no one else is being told about dividends from such decisions. In fact, Osborne’s deficit is still massive so he can’t afford any other giveaways. As I say in my Daily Telegraph column, it’s just the latest clear sign of a kind of generational apartheid in the government’s fiscal policy: the cuts are being focused exclusively on the working age. And this is why Iain Duncan Smith resigned: not due to cuts to disability benefit (which he supported) but because he couldn’t justify writing ever-larger cheques to pensioners, while making ever-deeper cuts to welfare.

Although you might not think so, female genital mutilation is a welcome subject to many on the left, because it is one of the few areas in which they can be rude about what they would never, in other contexts, dare to call ‘backward’ cultures. In their hierarchy of virtue, women’s rights trump even those of people oppressed by post-colonialism. Though I am not on the left, I’m against FGM too. But there are a couple of points to think about. One is that FGM is not an inexplicable primitive oddity: it is part of a wider culture which sees sexual relations in a completely different way from the choice-and pleasure-based principles of the modern West — as part of tribal relations, family, gender and religious duties and the care of children.

It’s a red-letter day here at 22 Old Queen St: Miles Goslett’s exposé of Kids Company has just been named Scoop of the Year. The awards, by the London Press Club, differ from the others in that you can’t nominate and you can’t pay to enter: the shortlist is drawn by a distinguished judging panel. It’s a huge credit to Miles that he won, and an even bigger compliment considering who he beat: the Sunday Times' Insight investigation into athletics doping, the Sun’s exposé of Lord Sewel’s cocaine habit, and the Daily Mirror’s scoop about how the diamond heist thieves got away with it.

The RSPCA have been in a fair pickle for a while now. It had been without a CEO for two years – after their last one, Gavin Grant, stepped down citing health reasons – until two weeks ago when they announced that Jeremy Cooper, (formerly chief executive of the charity’s ethical food label) would be taking on the role. This comes after reports at the end of last year that three candidates had pulled out, apparently due to concerns over finances, and the fact anyone in the job would be accountable to the charity’s council. Two trustees have also stepped down since September over concerns about the governance of the charity.

I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm. But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch by students of the Right2Debate campaign, which seeks to make universities live up to their principles and respect the right to speak and dispute, they have collected accounts from atheists and secularists of the wretched state of higher education. I should pause to explain that last sentence to the confused. You might have assumed that universities would be the last institutions in the country to censor.

On the radio this morning the subject of high-rise housing was being discussed, the hook being the new film adaptation of JG Ballard’s High-Rise. Tower blocks are widely considered to be a disaster today; they took largely working-class populations out of often sub-standard (but potentially very nice) terraced houses into technically better housing that was in reality often isolated and unsafe. Yet, despite this hindsight, I feel we’re making something of the same mistake again, with the current rush for skyscrapers across the city – with some 435 high-rise buildings now approved. Some of those being proposed and planned, such as the Paddington Pole and the new tower in Notting Hill Gate, lack any sympathy with the surrounding buildings.

The toughest causes to campaign for are those which are not fashionable. To fight racism in the 1950s or stand up for gay rights in the 1980s took guts - and the progress made today is largely down to those who took up the cause before it became a form of virtue signalling. International Women's Day should be a chance to remember the billions of women who are treated appallingly in developing countries - but when it comes to Britain, the battle has pretty much been won. The pay gap is a problem for women born before 1975, but not after. The problem is sorting itself out. For the under-40s, there is a negative pay gap: i.e., men are paid marginally less.

Of all the frankly riveting stuff in the Daily Mail’s serial of what it calls 'The Unknown Queen' -- nicely timed for the Queen’s 90th birthday -- is there anything less surprising than the revelation she was/is opposed to gay marriage? Is the head of the Church of England a Christian? Well, it seems so. ‘There is,' say Richard Kay (a friend of the late Princess Diana) and Geoffrey Levy, 'one area of social policy where Her Majesty holds more traditional views…same sex marriage.' Talking about the issue in the home of a close friend around the time the legislation was being passed by Parliament, the Queen is said to have expressed her frustration and unease.