Culture

On hearing that a ‘transgendered flag of remembrance’ was being flown by a government department for the first time (the Department of Education, on November 20th, the Transgender Day Of Remembrance) I was reminded of that old line about prison food – ‘It’s rubbish, and there’s not enough of it!’ It seems the height of duplicity that the sort of people who would mock a flag being flown to support our war dead (indeed, they might well use it as an excuse to break out the DIE TORY SCUM spray-paints) suddenly approve of running a bit of flimsy tat (which looks unpleasingly as if an Argie flag got put in

Actress Frances Barber has complained about her taxi driver after a night out in town, tweeting: https://twitter.com/francesbarber13/status/668598758473654272 The man had allegedly told her she was ‘disgustingly dressed’ and that ‘women should not be out at night’. This was after she had remarked about the weather being cold. That’s the problem with liberalising the taxi market to let any random person drive you around – it reduces the level of trust. As Rory Sutherland explained in this magazine a couple of years ago, trust is extremely important to capitalism and that’s why having hurdles such as the Knowledge is necessary: ‘Reciprocation, reputation and pre-commitment are the three big mechanisms which add

Andrew Neil is the best political interviewer in Britain. I am not just saying that because he is so high up here at The Spectator, although that helps. I am not saying it because he once bought me lunch, although he did his cause no harm there either. I am saying it because he is one of the few broadcasters who makes me stop what I am doing and listen. God help the interviewee who goes on his programme unprepared. If he or she has not thought through every flaw in their argument, they will find that Neil has done their thinking for them. He will expose their contradictions on

Watching the increasingly bleak and depressing Peep Show the other night I was pleased to note that my on-screen alter ego Mark Corrigan is a big fan of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, which is I think my all-time favourite documentary. To me Civilisation, and the then controller of BBC2 who commissioned it, David Attenborough, represent what the BBC should be, and is at its best: a strangely Freudian father figure to the nation, erudite, intelligent, open-minded and very British. The BBC was a product of a strong national culture, but it also helped to further cement it, making events like the Proms or FA Cup final part of our collective experience.

That students are becoming rather hardline about speakers they disagree with visiting their campuses is now well described. Brendan O’Neill first explained the ‘Stepford Student’ phenomenon in the Spectator, and in today’s Times David Aaronovitch described his own encounter with a student leader who believes speakers who may upset students should be banned from campuses. What was particularly interesting about Aaronovitch’s Newsnight discussion last week was that Toke Dahler, his opponent, seemed quite concerned that students shouldn’t suffer ‘trauma’ as a result of a speaker being on their premises. Aside from all the arguments about the importance of a clash of ideas, especially when some of those ideas are foolish

I spoke at a Guardian debate on free speech before an audience of students at King’s College London last night. I’ve argued with racists and Putinists in my time and – to put it as mildly as I can – these little bastions of academia were up there with them in their contempt for basic freedoms. Contempt is perhaps not quite the right word. Most simply did not understand what freedom was, and could not grasp the need for universal human rights. They could not see themselves as others saw them, or understand that by giving up on basic principles, because they are difficult to live with, they had left

One of the many delusions of the Right is the myth of conservative robustness. Conservatives don’t play the victim card, they say. They tell it like it is, and don’t care who knows it. They stand on their own two feet, and take it on the chin. They have guts and backbone too. It’s easy to mock the anatomical clichés, but middle-class leftists should worry. Millions of people are about to vote for Ukip, in part because they resent a modern version of Victorian prudery that has stopped robust debate, and allowed sharp-eared heresy hunters to patrol the nation’s language. If fellow citizens are prejudiced, then there is indeed a