Joanna Rossiter

It’s heartening to hear that while it’s curtains for the economy, our domestic lives are on the up. In Wuhan there was a spike in divorce rates, and in Japan, wives have been sending their husbands away to hostels. But here in Britain, there’s love in lockdown. Sales of engagement rings have risen significantly since we were all told to stay at home and couples have found creative ways to pop the question in their living rooms and local parks. For those who have been married for longer, working, eating and sleeping at home together 24/7 for weeks on end has been a strange novelty — an odd throwback to a time when the relationship was new.

Institutional racism is rife at Cambridge university – that was the assumption behind the university’s ‘reverse-mentoring’ scheme which was launched to much fanfare last summer. The idea was simple enough: senior academics who were white would be educated about racism by their BAME colleagues. But the news that the scheme may be scrapped after its short pilot is hardly a surprise. As I wrote back in July, the singling out of white colleagues for mentoring is flawed on many counts. Worst of all, it embraces the increasingly popular belief that racism is an unconscious state of being that is inexorably inherent in some (but not all) racial groups. This is not, however, the reason why the scheme might be shelved.

In the new That’s Life podcast, comedian Simon Evans joins journalist Benedict Spence and Spectator Life contributor Andy Shaw to give you a sideways look at the events, people, words and ideas that shape the news agenda. Andy and Benedict talk to Simon about cancel culture, Boris’s hospital debacle and why Guy Verhofstadt is his unlikely hero (or villain) of the week. Simon has performed stand-up comedy at Live at the Apollo and the Edinburgh Fringe. He also hosts and writes Radio 4’s Simon Evans goes to Market. As well as writing for Spectator Life, Andy is the co-founder of London's free-thinking comedy club Comedy Unleashed. Benedict is a regular contributor for Spectator Life, Sky News and the Telegraph.

Greta Thunberg’s yacht, the Malizia II, has delivered her to the UN climate conference in New York – two weeks after she first set sail from Europe. The transatlantic trip was a masterstroke in PR, with every major media outlet broadcasting updates on the journey and detailing the hardships Thunberg has endured – no toilet, no shower and sea sickness. The accusations of hypocrisy have also rolled in thick and fast, criticising everything from the plastic water bottles used by the crew, to the long-haul flights taken by the sailors responsible for returning the yacht to Europe.

Prince Harry’s revelation that he intends to only have two children for the sake of the planet is woke politics at its worst. As his critics have readily pointed out, if he truly believes that having fewer children will save the planet then why not stop at one child? As much as Harry might like us to believe that his decision comes at a great personal cost, he has simply adopted an ethical stance that best suits his lifestyle. This made-to-measure approach to morality is everywhere these days: from so-called ‘flexi-veganism’ to the long-haul flights enjoyed by some supporters of Extinction Rebellion. It enables people to signal virtue without having to change very much about the way they live.

Who on earth would want to be an academic in 2019? This is the question anyone with a modicum of intellectual curiosity must now be asking themselves. When a PhD student left Cambridge University last week on the grounds that a non-white lecturer 'had repeatedly read out the n-word during class discussions', I harboured a vain hope that the university might express support for the lecturer on the grounds that they were reading from a text and not using their own words. That would have been the logical stance to take. Instead, we are seeing a capitulation to the accusations of students. Yesterday, it was revealed that the University is providing ‘reverse mentors’ for its academics to teach them about the dangers of institutional racism.

As any parent of young children will tell you, toddler groups exist as much for the adults as for the kids, and my local meet-up is no exception. We knock back coffee and compete to see who has had the least sleep while the children run riot on trikes. The small talk always winds its way round to nursery: which ones are good, which ones are near work, how much they charge per hour. You’d be forgiven for wondering why any of us chose to have children, such is the zeal with which we plot our escape. ‘They just installed CCTV,’ enthused one mother to me recently. ‘So I’ll be able to watch her playing from the office whenever I like.’ I daren’t admit it to my circle of mum friends, but since having children I’ve become a secret nursery sceptic.