Melanie McDonagh is an Irish journalist working in London.
From our UK edition
All right, he’s eaten dirt. Andrew Mitchell, Chief Whip, has now apologised to the Prime Minister and apologised profusely to the policeman he may or may not have called a pleb. In a statement today – prudently, he declined offers of radio interviews – Mitchell admitted that he ‘did not treat the police with the
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Around the time that speculation was mounting about Tony Blair’s possible return to British politics last month, I went to a public discussion about faith and public life by the man himself and Rowan Williams in which Charles Moore was both participant — or should I say, combatant — and moderator. It was, as you’d
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In the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, there’s a picture that, last time I looked, was curtained off. A couple of Japanese girls came out from behind the curtain, stuffing their hands into their mouths to stop the giggles. I went in to see the cause of the girly mirth and there it was, Gustave Courbet’s
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If feminism is ‘a creed of women’s solidarity’, do you pick and choose about which women you’re in solidarity with? In the case of Harriet Harman, the answer is, well obviously. If you’re a Tory you can’t really join in the creed. In an interview with Total Politics magazine she was incredulous at the notion
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Did anyone else notice anything weird about the BBC’s coverage of the story last week about the 14 NHS trusts that a government health watchdog found to be breaking the law in providing abortions? Those 14 clinics used pre-signed abortion referral forms to authorise abortions, which flouts the bit in the Abortion Act that requires
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Paris for lovers, tick. Paris for gastronomes, tick. Paris for the fashion-conscious, obviously. But children? Funnily enough, I find it one of the most child-friendly cities we go to. The proprietors of grand boutiques and restaurants who cold-shoulder grown-ups are all smiles when it comes to children. Propping up a bar with my two on
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Today is the last day of the Government’s consultation about its gay marriage proposals. But as an editorial in the Telegraph points out, this is a more limited exercise than it sounds…you’re not being asked whether it’s a good idea for gay people to marry so much as how you think the Government should implement
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It’s probably tendentious to say that the feminine voice is a feminist issue, but let me say it anyway. I have, I may say, a voice that spans the vocal spectrum from soft to strident — oh all right, shrill, but I never quite appreciate what a problem it is until I do the odd
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It was pretty well apparent at the outset that the Equality Act 2010 – the so-called Socialism in a Single Clause law – spelt trouble and now it is the Catholic Church that may run foul of Harriet Harman’s pet project. The Catholic Education Service in England and Wales has written to Catholic secondary schools
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A few years ago, The Spectator, in an inspired notion for the Easter issue, asked a number of prominent individuals whether they believed in the Resurrection. And among the surprises was George Galloway, who replied emphatically in the affirmative: ‘Yes, I believe in the Resurrection. I believe God restored the life of Jesus of Nazareth
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There was an element of bafflement in the early BBC coverage this morning of the welcome news that police have identified and surrounded the suspected killer of seven people, including Jewish children, in Toulouse. To some people’s surprise, the BBC correspondent remarked in the early reports, the suspect turned out to be a Muslim, Mohammed
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The Chancellor didn’t even bother to hide the thick end of the wedge as he inserted the thin end into the Sunday trading laws. He declared yesterday that restrictions on Sunday trading would be lifted for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics on the basis that ‘It would be a great shame if the
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The last hours of the Titanic were a perfect tragedy. No wonder we’re still obsessed What with the centenary coming up next month, it was hard to imagine anything that could make the Titanic loom larger in the popular consciousness. But that was before Julian Fellowes’s new series, to be broadcast this month. It’s the
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Last night, we posted Douglas Murray’s conservative argument in favour of same-sex marriage. Here’s the opposite view: Consultations are, for the prudent, an exercise you only engage in when you’re quite sure of the outcome. I’m not sure, then, that Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is entirely wise to go all out in galvanising
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No sooner does Baroness Warsi denounce militant secularists who try to marginalise Christianity than, bang on cue, up surfaces Richard Dawkins with a survey commissioned by his Foundation for Reason and Science intended to demonstrate that Christianity is a minority pursuit. His Ipsos MORI poll, published today, is intended to unpick that bit of the
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There are times when you think, really, the Prime Minister should get out less. The good ideas he comes back with when he goes abroad are fine and dandy — of which, more later — but the bad ones are very bad indeed. One notion he is considering just now after attending a Nordic-Baltic summit
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Most Spectator readers have probably heard by now of Alain de Botton’s latest, Religion for Atheists, in which he argues that the benefits of religion are too great to be confined to believers — not least because he wrote the Diary column for this week’s magazine. And for those who haven’t yet read about the
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During the leaders debates before the last general election, David Cameron declared that he wanted to make immigration a non-issue and he would go about it by reducing immigration numbers from hundreds of thousands a year to tens of thousands a year. He hasn’t succeeded in the second objective — more than half a million
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The Saville Report into the events of Bloody Sunday is ten volumes or 5,000 pages long and was five years in the writing. The inquiry lasted 12 years, including those five years, and cost the taxpayer £200 million. Some 2,500 people gave evidence, nearly 1,000 of whom gave oral witness. It was set up under
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So Lord Falconer’s commission, funded by Sir Terry Pratchett, has concluded that there is a ‘strong case’ for assisted suicide, has it? Well, there’s a thing. Given their previous form and the composition of the committee, it would have been remarkable if they’d decided that, on balance, the law works perfectly well — which is
