Iram Ramzan is a journalist and commentator. Her Substack is iramramzan.substack.com
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It’s the end of the working day on a Friday, and punters are steadily beginning to fill up Sparkhill’s last remaining pub. Landlord Mark McDwyer pulls another pint of Guinness (only £4.60), our conversation punctuated by the thwack of pool balls from the table behind us. ‘This is the headquarters of the Birmingham Pool League,’
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Kemi Badenoch, I can feel your pain. Nope, not the feeling of being knifed by a former colleague –but having your name mangled beyond recognition. The Tory leader has pointed out, with admirable restraint, that ‘there’s no ‘bad’ in my name’ There is a particular kind of silence that arrives just before someone mispronounces your
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For the past fortnight, Rozita (not her real name) has been out on the streets of Tehran, calling for an end to the Islamic Republic. The 37-year-old witnessed the anti-riot police shooting indiscriminately at her fellow citizens. ‘They don’t think about who or where they are shooting. I’ve been beaten up by them many times before,’
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Mahsa Amini was killed by Iran’s morality police on 16 September 2022. Her only ‘crime’ was wearing ‘improper hijab’. The 22-year-old Kurdish woman’s death galvanised the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests that shook the Iranian regime. Three years on, the anger behind the protests remains. On the anniversary of Amini’s death, residents of Tehran chanted ‘Death
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It’s not even 10am, but already the Galilee sun is prickling the back of my neck. I’m standing outside a war room set up in the community centre of the village of Julis, watching a delegation of 200 Druze men arrive. One by one, they make their way up the steep path – most dressed in their
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First: Nigel Farage is winning over women Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun to change’.
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It’s humiliating to admit that at 37, I can’t swim. I’ve spent most of my life embarrassed about not having a skill familiar to most children. It’s not as though I can blame never having had lessons. I did. Each week, with my nine-year-old classmates, I would trundle off to our local leisure centre in
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Petroc Trelawny reads his diary for the week (1:14); Gareth Roberts wants us to make book jackets nasty again (6:22); Tom Lee writes in defence of benzodiazepines (13:44); Leyla Sanai reflects on unethical practices within psychiatry, as she reviews Jon Stock’s The Sleep Room (19:41); and, Iram Ramzan provides her notes on
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This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind? ‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a
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There’s a joke that does the rounds about a Pakistani couple who get a divorce. After their union is dissolved, one of them says to the other: ‘Well, at least we’re still cousins!’ I feel slightly guilty whenever I laugh, yet there is some truth to it. I remember at my secondary school how Pakistani
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An estimated 600 children were withdrawn for the day from a primary school in Birmingham last week. A rather disturbing video has since been circulating on social media, showing scores of Muslim parents with their young children in Birmingham, shouting “shame, shame, shame”. What has caused such a reaction? Parkfield, a primary school in Saltley, teaches a programme called
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Saif ul-Malook greets me in the hallway of his daughter’s home. Pakistani hospitality dictates that a guest should not go hungry, so there are plates of samosas, kebabs and biscuits. I am also of Pakistani heritage, so know that etiquette dictates that I must politely refuse a few times — or until I can no
