Patrick West

In the wake of a tragedy it is only fitting that public figures issue words of condolence. But there’s a vast difference between making a statement that conveys condemnation and anger, sentiments that most ordinary people have felt after the attack on Bondi Beach yesterday, and proffering bland, evasive platitudes that ignore the grave problems that face us – in this case, anti-Semitism and Islamist terror. With every attack carried out by individuals beholden to an extreme interpretation of Islam, responses of the latter kind arrive with grim predictability. The reaction to the Sydney atrocity has proved no exception.

Everyone recognises that teenagers today are unduly anxious. Many people attribute this to a rise in smartphone use. Some even blame an education system that places too much pressure on young people. Yet the acute dysfunction of adolescents and young adults these days could have a more simple, and more serious, explanation: they don’t spend enough time outdoors mixing with other human beings. The more you shy away from human contact, the more shy you become of humanity A study commissioned by an online school, Minerva Virtual Academy, to explore the emotional, social and physical factors that make school attendance so troubling for some today, has found that half of secondary school pupils have avoided school in the past year because of anxiety.

Is it ever acceptable to say the ‘n-word’? As you will have immediately inferred by that sentence, it’s rare to see it even spelt out in full today. It’s perhaps the only word in the English language you will never see written without asterisks in a newspaper or magazine. It is, to use that phrase once beloved of the Guardian, ‘the last taboo’. ‘Words have context, and the word “bitch” can have a positive meaning if you look at the Oxford English Dictionary,’ it was reported that Pormann told the meeting Peter Pormann, a professor at Manchester University, was this week reminded the hard way of its undiminished power, when he was banned from campus and described as a ‘potential risk to colleagues’ for having allegedly used the word in a disciplinary meeting.

Trends in society always come and go, but one that shows no signs of abating is the propensity among many to take offence at words or symbols. Just because that derisive word of the last decade, ‘snowflake’, has fallen out of fashion, it doesn’t mean that these hypersensitive souls have disappeared. Being compassionate in a patronising fashion from afar is mandatory behaviour for white liberals and our aloof, elite classes Emily Spurrell, chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, is a case in point. Spurrell hit out at the surge in St George’s and Union Jack flags being hung on lamp posts, motorway bridges and street signs across England.

One of the most grating and nauseating verbal constructions of our times – ‘Our NHS’ – has with grim inevitability began to evolve and expand. It was only a matter of time before someone or some organisation deemed it necessary to affix that possessive determiner to another state-run organisation, and you hardly need to guess which one. ‘A GB News presenter has said the BBC should hand “several million pounds” of licence-fee payers money to Donald Trump. We must defend our BBC from those who want to destroy it.’ So ran a post on Friday on from the official X account of the Liberal Democrats.

A famous pop star once sang that sorry seemed to be the hardest word. Almost fifty years after Elton John uttered those sentiments, nothing has changed. Saying sorry for your own errors or moral transgressions remains for many individuals and organisations an almost impossible task. Saying sorry for your own errors or moral transgressions remains for many individuals and organisations an almost impossible task The BBC’s reputed apology to Donald Trump, for having spliced a speech of his from January 2021, is an instructive example of how and why people will dodge this substantial and consequential word. ‘While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,’ it says.

One of the greatest dangers posed by the government’s curriculum review is that it will result in children abandoning more demanding subjects such as history, geography and languages at GCSE. This is the fear voiced by a number of educationists, including Baroness Spielman, the former chief of inspector at Ofsted, who said that scrapping the English Baccalaureate would be a ‘death blow to secondary languages teaching.’ Learning to read, write and speak a foreign language is not only a ‘skill’. It’s about learning how to think differently and think better This, alas, merely reflects a longer-term malaise: teaching the adults of tomorrow how to speak – and think – in a second language.

Those who believe in free speech, and those who are particularly concerned by plans to have ‘Islamophobia’ codified, ought to be delighted. A judge has ruled that criticising Islam, or viewing the faith as problematic, is a protected belief under equalities law. As reported in The Sunday Telegraph this morning, an employment tribunal judge has found that Patrick Lee, 61, who was found guilty of misconduct last April by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries over posts on X - including one calling the Prophet Mohammed a ‘monster’ – was merely ‘critical of certain Islamic doctrines and practices, and not to individual followers of Islam or to the Islamic faith/religion at large.’  Mr Lee has now won legal protection for his beliefs.

The first, and the lasting, impression one gets from Canterbury Cathedral’s new graffiti-style art instillation is just how reasonable and normal are the questions it quite literally poses. That’s some feat for an exhibition that purports to be ‘thought-provoking’ and ‘dynamic’ while simultaneously attracting such derision – even provoking the ire of the US vice president, J.D. Vance. Echoing the feelings of many people in this country, he asked why the cathedral's curators had to make a ‘beautiful historical building really ugly’.

The vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Irene Tracey, has been giving some gloriously counterintuitive advice recently on how to safeguard free speech in academia. On Tuesday, she claimed that teaching the ethos of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) ‘goes hand in hand with our commitment to academic freedom and free speech.’ Yet diversity training always has the opposite effect.

The desire to seek restitution from those who have harmed or wronged us is normal. Our instinct for justice is inbuilt. Yet, in recent decades, there has emerged in the West a perverse distortion of this impulse: the demand for financial compensation from people who have done no wrong, made by people who have not been wronged. Long-established campaigns calling on Britain to pay reparations for slavery are founded on this strange premise, and the latest figure to join their ranks is Sir Lenny Henry. The comedian and actor makes his case in a new book, The Big Payback, co-authored with Marcus Ryder, a television executive and charity boss. He argues for the UK to hand over £18 trillion in compensatory payments.

Believe it or not, some judges in this country are starting to show signs of having a connection with reality and in possession of an outlook based on common sense. It’s hard to credit it, given the roll call this year of judges delivering over-lenient verdicts in regard to asylum seekers wanting to remain in Britain – often on highly dubious and sometimes ludicrous grounds. But it’s really happening. Change is afoot. Believe it or not, some judges in this country are starting to show signs of having a connection with reality This has become apparent not in the High Court or immigrant tribunals, the places where those notorious judgements are handed down, but in the less illustrious sector of employment tribunals.

Keir Starmer’s behaviour, demeanour and language has taken a rapid and strange turn of recent. Unable to do anything meaningful about this country’s economic woes or the chronic immigration crisis, the Prime Minister now resorts to words in preference to actions. He relies increasingly on alarmist rhetoric and hollow gestures in order to make us believe that he is a competent and purposeful leader. It’s the customary response of low-intelligence fringe-leftists The decision to officially recognise Palestine, a country with no borders, no capital city and no meaningful government, was merely one indication of this lurch.