Guardian

One should not speak ill of the dead, but if their flaws or vices are glossed over that is also problematic. George Michael was admirable in some ways, especially for his quiet charitable donations, but less so in others. I don’t see why his penchant for anonymous sexual encounters should be politely passed over, or treated as a harmless lifestyle choice. He ‘loved anonymous sex’, said Owen Jones in the Guardian – as if fondly recalling someone’s love for opera or snooker. Jones and others will doubtless say it is homophobic to moralise about this. So it must clearly be said that sexuality is irrelevant: whether it is homosexuals or heterosexuals

In the past year, the Guardian has declared tea-drinkers to possess ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism‘, HP sauce as the condiment of the establishment, street parties to be ‘a front for a middle-class nationalism that celebrates austerity’, and sunday roasts to ‘evoke received memories of oppression and an enslaved work force’. So, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the publication isn’t big on Christmas either. As the nation prepares to drink and eat its body weight in mulled wine, roast turkey and mince pies, over at the Grauniad hacks are adopting a Scrooge-esque tone with regards to yuletide. George Monbiot — a columnist for the paper — has

Now that post-Marxian vacuous liberalism is over, it is surely about time that we revived the vigorous writings of Thomas Carlyle and made him fashionable once again. He is too little read and admired these days, perhaps partly on account of his arguably controversial treatise ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’ (1849) — which, while well intentioned, may nonetheless these days ruffle one or two feathers on our university campuses, or within the BBC. But there was of course a lot more to Thomas Carlyle than simply a benign, if misguided, wish to abolish slavery while keeping a few blacks on as indentured house servants. He was very astringent on

The Guardian’s splash today looks like bad news for the PM. ‘Leaked recording shows Theresa May is ‘ignoring her own warnings’ on Brexit’, the paper says on its front page. The story centres around a recording of May giving a speech at Goldman Sachs in the run-up to the referendum. In the tape, which was recorded in May, the future PM tells bankers that:  ‘I think the economic arguments (of staying in the EU) are clear. I think being part of a 500 million population trading bloc is significant for us. I think one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because

Here is one of those stories that matters even though it preoccupies the Guardian.  Last week the celebrated novelist Lionel Shriver gave an address at the Brisbane book festival.  It was heralded as being about ‘community and belonging’ but ended up being about ‘fiction and identity politics’.  In particular Shriver (the author, most famously, of We Need to Talk About Kevin) addressed the issue of ‘cultural appropriation’.  As well as being a condemnatory term for wearing a sombrero or eating Thai food, this is also the current term for ‘making things up’ and ‘using your imagination’.  Surely this is something novelists ought to do, you ask? Apparently not.  Fiction – as well

Oh dear. First the Guardian declared tea drinkers to possess ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism‘ and HP sauce to be the condiment of the establishment. Then the paper’s food section took things up a gear by describing barbecues as simply borderline-racist and street parties to be ‘a front for a middle-class nationalism that celebrates austerity’. Now they have turned on their own. Yes, just as French scribe Jacques Mallet du Pan said, the revolution has devoured its children. In the latest bit of food advice from the Grauniad, the paper calls out hipsters for eating avocado toast, the trendy brunch staple. In a piece — titled ‘Can hipsters stomach the

Barely a week goes by without the Guardian declaring war on a seemingly harmless food type. According to the paper tea-drinkers possess ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism‘, HP sauce is the condiment of the establishment and barbecues are simply borderline-racist. Now they have a new enemy in their sights: street parties. Although tens of thousands happily gathered at the Mall today for a street party to mark the Queen’s official 90th birthday, according to the paper this is simply not a case of ‘harmless’ fun. Instead — in a piece entitled ‘The Queen’s birthday has unleashed a pernicious new patriotism’ for the Guardian — the writer Dawn Foster says such parties are ‘a

Last year the Guardian‘s food police deemed HP sauce to be the condiment of ‘the establishment’, barbecues to be borderline racist and roast dinners to be tinged with ‘received memories of oppression and an enslaved work force’. Now they have a new enemy in their sights — octopus. Yes, a writer by the name of Elle Hunt makes the argument that humans shouldn’t eat octopus because… they have more genes than you do: ‘They may be delicious and sure, there are lots of them, but next time you’re chomping down on your barbecued octopus, just remember they were the first intelligent beings on Earth and have more genes than you do.’

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian by Julian Baggini. Now that nearly half of Britons say that they have no religion, he observes, some believers are saying that atheism is also a sort of faith. Though an atheist, he is not of the Dick Dawkins school, and so does not respond with Dickish bluntness. He is not one of those ‘zealous’ atheists who sees religion ‘as an offence to human rationality.’ People like that do seem to have a sort of crusading faith, he says. Excessive trust in the power of reason can be dangerous, he adds. He admits that the ‘meaning and value’ that atheists find in life