Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)
Has the word ‘woke’ become a lazy, all-too-common cliché? The novelist and Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver thinks so. During an appearance at the Hay Festival, she has lamented how the word has become ‘horribly overused’. The author says: ‘I’m as tired of it as you are. There have been other people trying to coin something else, which
You may laugh. You may have gasped in disbelief. But yes, it’s true, we now have a new socio-economic classification, known collectively as the ‘working class, benefit class, criminal class, and/or underclass’. This, is at least, is the latest addition to the list of ‘traditionally disadvantaged groups’ especially welcomed by The Camden People’s Theatre, North
Much has been made in recent weeks, and especially in recent days, about the degrees of ignorance often displayed by those protesting for the people of Gaza and Palestine. To put it pithily, many don’t seem to know from which river and to which sea they chant about with such passion. Such ignorance has prompted
Move over vinyl: the cassette tape is back. According to the British Phonographic Industry, sales of this retro piece of technology last year came close to a two-decade peak. Having been the top-selling format for albums in the UK from 1985 to 1992 and then seemingly disappearing (selling only 4,000 units in 2012), last year
The battle over sexism and equality at the Garrick Club continues to rumble on. It was revealed yesterday that several of its members, including Stephen Fry, Sting, and Dire Straits frontman, Mark Knopfler, had put their name to a letter threatening to quit the Garrick unless members vote to admit women. They have been joined by luminaries from the world of theatre, film
As a conservative non-smoker who in his youth was a libertarian twenty-a-day man, I can see both sides of the argument over the government’s recent anti-smoking legislation. Sure, cigarettes can be delicious, and it’s entirely up to the adult individual, not the state, whether he or she decides to light up. But as I finally
Civil servants are being given lessons instructing them not to roll their eyes or look at their mobile phones while dealing with members of staff. Such behaviour can be deemed evidence of sexual or racial discrimination, examples of ‘microaggressions’. As the Times reports today, more than £160,000 has been spent by the government since 2021
Why are the French so bad at learning foreign languages? Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a lament as to how the British are so terrible at learning foreign languages, a theme so beloved by stand-up comedians, who insinuate that it reflects our outdated superiority complex and ingrained xenophobia. I meant the French. For
Foreign wars have the unfortunate side-effect of bringing out the self-regarding narcissist in people. This is made all the more pronounced in our era of social media, in which some types appear to think that mere tweets can stop wars, and that an appropriately-altered Facebook profile might bring about world peace. The latest casualty in
There are signs that woke capitalism is on the way out. Unilever, purveyor of the most right-on brand of the moment, Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, will no longer ‘force fit’ all of its brand with a social purpose, following a backlash over the company’s ‘virtue-signalling’. Hein Schumacher, who became Unilever’s chief executive in July, has
There have been groans of derision following the proclamation by the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterell, that the opening lines to the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Our Father’ – might be ‘problematic’, owing to their ‘patriarchal’ connotations. Yet the cries of mockery and exasperation on social media, though justified, have also been mostly predictable. After all,
Most people who have been following the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s speech at the Oxford Union, and who have been observing this debate that combines transgender rights, the rights of women and free speech, might be tempted to conclude that the dispute has its origins in a sole ideology. That is, the transgender ideology which
Are the culture wars real? Some assume that they’re an imaginary affair, or, at best, a distraction from the real, pressing bread-and-butter concerns of today. As Matthew Syed put it in the Sunday Times yesterday: ‘The culture wars…may be seen not as genuine debates but as a form of Freudian displacement. The woke and anti-woke
The government’s proposal to overhaul and tighten betting laws, ostensibly to target problem gamblers, has understandably raised concerns about government interference and nanny-state overreach. Yet viewed from a wider perspective, we should welcome these initiatives and for the precedent they could set: they could be the final recognition that young adults do not reach maturity
Ever since Monty Python created their internecine, bickering and ridiculous groups of freedom fighters – the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front – for their 1979 film The Life of Brian, it’s always been easy and tempting to mock and deride the fissiparous nature of ideologues and tin-pot revolutionaries. Those who believe in the
The veteran BBC show Have I Got News for You is ‘due to become BBC television’s only satirical comedy show’. This is the likely result of The Ranganation – also a panel show which dissects the week’s news – reportedly being cancelled. Satire at the BBC has been vanishing alarmingly quickly. Only last week the corporation announced the end of
The veteran comedian Jack Dee has been applauded and condemned for announcing that he is cancelling his PayPal account. As he tweeted yesterday: ‘Big Tech companies that feel they can bully people for questioning mainstream groupthink don’t deserve anyone’s business.’ PayPal has been in the news for cancelling the account of the Free Speech Union,
It’s a well-known fact that Michael Palin is a ‘national treasure’. Or so you are told just about every single time the travel presenter and writer appears on television or features in a newspaper interview. So it was with grim inevitably that a few days before the first instalment of his latest expedition, Michael Palin: Into
There’s nothing worse than a grass. Or so goes the wisdom expressed in soap operas like EastEnders. Of course, there are worse things than being a grass, but such an overstatement does reflect a common taboo found in many cultures: no one likes a snitch, telltale, narc, informer or sneak. Which is why the news
After seventeen years and more than 200 episodes, the cackling and sniggering is finally over for the panel show Mock the Week. As the BBC announced yesterday: ‘The next series of Mock the Week will be the last, we are really proud of the show but after 21 series we have taken the difficult decision
