Culture

Even by the low standards of English lawyers, the men and women who run the Law Society have behaved like shameless hypocrites. Instead of confining themselves to offering professional advice, they set themselves up as Islamic theologians. In a practice note on Sharia-compliant wills, the Law Society advised the 125,000 solicitors in England and Wales to urge Muslim clients to discriminate against women, non-Muslims, adopted and 'illegitimate' children. 'Male heirs [should] in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir,' it said, and 'non-Muslims may not inherit at all'. Likewise 'illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs' and should not be left a penny.

People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can 'celebrate diversity' and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a principled choice. Then, whether they admit it or not, they find that they can believe in equality or they can believe in diversity, but they cannot believe in both. If this sounds like the start of a patient exploration of a delicate philosophical distinction, don't be deceived. There is nothing difficult to understand, and my patience with the double standards of multi-culturalism snapped long ago.

Ruth Richards, head of communications at Mind, has written a response to my criticism of the pointlessness of politically correct descriptions of the mentally ill and handicapped. As you would expect it is worth reading in full, but I am afraid it left me unconvinced. She thinks that the effort to reshape language is worthwhile, and cannot see how today’s polite discourse will become tomorrow’s insults. 'I don’t agree that in however many years’ time the terms we use today will become offensive in their own right. “Person with mental health problems” is just far too clunky to be shouted in the playground.' So it is. But 'mental' is already an insult, and other attempts to change the world merely by twiddling with language have been equally futile.

If you write about the mentally ill – people who suffer a short breakdown, maybe, or long periods of crippling stress – or say that those who must cope with autism, depression or schizophrenia all their lives are “handicapped”, you will be hammered. But not by the state and its supporters, or by members of the public with deep and prejudiced fears about mental illness. You can say the health service is impoverishing care for the mentally ill because its administrators know they are an unpopular minority, who can be hit without a political cost. You can write about how the criminal justice system is imprisoning vast numbers of minor offenders whose sicknesses ought to be treated in hospital.

Well, how worried should we be about racism? The British Social Attitudes Survey says 3 in 10 Brits describe themselves as “a little “ or “a lot” prejudiced against people of other races. It wasn’t just white people either. This brings us back to levels in the Eighties, though to be honest it’s only five per cent above the all-time low of 25 per cent in 2001. Not particularly surprisingly those most likely to admit to racial prejudice were male manual workers, though there was a rise in the numbers of male professionals in the category. Young people were less likely to admit to being racist – a quarter, by comparison with 36 per cent for the over-55s.

There was only one topic of discussion at the launch of Nadine Dorries’s novel Four Streets last night - will Maria Miller survive? The conversation was particularly pointed because Ed Vaizey and Helen Grant — Miller’s now former colleagues at the Department of Culture Media and Sport — were both present. They at least tried not to gossip. Vaizey was invited to speak by Dorries in his ‘capacity as a Culture Minister and a friend’. He gave a comedy turn; lavishing Nadine with praise for her ‘brilliant, brilliant book which I have not yet read.’ He continued: ‘I asked Nadine for a copy and she said you can buy it off Amazon — it costs the equivalent of about 18 and a half pints of milk, not that you would know, posh boy.

From today, The Spectator's gift for online enlightenment and trouble-making will now extend into the world of culture. Our aim is take the insurgent spirit of Toby Young's Modern Review, and apply it to the digital world -- that is, to provide low culture for highbrows, and high culture for lowbrows  Culture House Daily will be a deference-free, one-stop shop for the latest news and sharpest views on the arts. Unveiling a steady stream of fresh content each day, Culture House Daily will present a mixture of news, overnight reviews and opinion, alongside plenty of lovely images. It will be the perfect space to help you navigate the shifting sands of contemporary culture.

Who would ever have thought it, but I have become quite fond of Milton Keynes. Although I live slightly closer to the ancient city of Northampton than to this widely mocked ‘new town’ of the 1960s, I definitely prefer the latter. Northampton is a fine example of the ruination of an English market town by misguided post-war planners; Milton Keynes an example of the fulfilment of their utopian dreams. It is no utopia, of course.

Must say, I felt a bit defensive when I looked at the tables of origin for immigrants to Britain for the decades to 2011, helpfully set out in  The Daily Mail. The real gist of the thing was the numbers – an increase from just under 2 million in the decade to 1951 to 7.5 million in the decade to 2011. But what was riveting was the immigrants’ countries of origin. For most of the time, the Irish led the field, with about half a million a year arriving in the course of each decade, give or take 100,000. In the last decade though, we were knocked right off our perch. At the top was India from which almost 700,000 people came during the ten years to 2011, followed by nearly 600,000 Poles and nearly half a million from Pakistan.

The latest adaptation of one of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh's books is Filth  - a film so filthy that Deborah Ross had to ‘endure’ the film ‘from behind her hands’. But, somewhere amongst the ‘enduring’, she became ‘strangely hooked’, as Bruce Robertson (aka James McAvoy) led her through Edinburgh’s ‘dark underbelly of general horridness’. Filth may be ‘ghastly and unpleasant, but also kind of brilliant’, says Ross. Here’s the trailer: Breaking Bad started off with mixed reviews and an ‘uncertain future’, as it ‘dumbfounded viewers and critics alike’ – at least according to the economics professor Steffen Huck.