Ross Clark

There is one form of female under-representation which no-one seems concerned about – the fact that a mere 4.5 per cent of the prison population is made up of women. No one says we must rebalance that so as to make it 50-50 by 2025, or whatever. It just seems to be accepted that men are more prone to greed, lust and violence, and that greater numbers of them deserve to be behind bars. I guess that is right. If we have 20 times more male offenders than female ones, then I want the prison population to reflect that. But why the need to readjust the criminal justice system in order to try to exaggerate the gender imbalance in our jails even further?

I can think of many people who deserve to be in jail but perhaps not Stanislaw Skupien. The homeless Pole was watching the London Marathon in April when he suddenly fancied a go himself. He clambered over a barrier and started running. When 300 yards form the finish, he picked up a race number which had fallen from a competitor’s short and decided to cross the line himself, picking up the finisher’s medal which should really have gone to a man who was on a charity run. I guess that is technically fraud, but does it really deserve 16 weeks in jail? It is hardly as if being the 3000th finisher – or whatever – in the London marathon is going to land you with a lucrative sponsorship deal.

Was there ever a more fatuous contribution to a political debate than Lord Hague following up the case of 12-year-old Billy Caldwell — the boy whose mother says he needs cannabis oil to control his epilepsy — with a demand for recreational cannabis to be legalised? But the former foreign secretary has done us a favour of sorts. He has inadvertently explained why Billy Caldwell has become such a cause célèbre over the past few days: the drug-legalisation lobby has cottoned on to his huge propaganda potential. The reason why cannabis oil is not licensed for use as a treatment for epilepsy in Britain has nothing to do with the prohibition of cannabis as a recreational drug.

I am all for taking ethical stands, but if you are going to do so it does help to show a little bit of consistency. Today, Argentina cancelled its World Cup warm-up game against Israel in protest, it seems, at Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. According to striker Gonzalo Higuain, the players ‘have done the right thing’ in refusing to play – and have been warmly applauded by the Palestinian Football Association. So, the Argentinians will miss out their proposed stop in Israel and proceed directly to the World Cup in, er, Russia.

I am all for taking ethical stands, but if you are going to do so it does help to show a little bit of consistency.    Today, Argentina cancelled its World Cup warm-up game against Israel in protest, it seems, at Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.   According to striker Gonzalo Higuain, the players ‘have done the right thing’ in refusing to play – and have been warmly applauded by the Palestinian Football Association. So, the Argentinians will miss out their proposed stop in Israel and proceed directly to the World Cup in, er, Russia.

David Lammy is upset again, as he is every week. This time it is thanks to data released by Ucas, which reveals that while black applicants make up nine per cent of the total, they account for 52 per cent of those whose applications have been flagged up for possible cheating – either because they may have falsified qualifications, used fake identities, sent false documents or because an algorithm has picked out their personal statement. According to Lammy, it is not good enough Ucas simply publishing this data – he says that the organisation 'needs to be able to explain this huge disproportionality and satisfy students from ethnic minorities that their applications will be looked upon fairly'.

So the year-long squeeze on real earnings is now officially over. Figures released by the ONS this morning show that average earnings in the first three months of this year were 2.9 per cent ahead of what they were in the same period of 2018, while CPI inflation was 2.7 per cent ahead. In other words, we are all, on average, 0.2 per cent better-off than we were last year. That is no great deal, it has to be said, and continues the poor run of growth in real incomes ever since the global economic crisis of a decade ago. It is unprecedented in the industrial era to have had such a long peacetime period in which the population does not really grow any richer.

The first instinct of many people towards Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights who finished her 11 day visit to Britain yesterday by claiming that Britain is in the grip of a Brexit-related upsurge in racial intolerance and discrimination, will be to tell her to keep her nose out of our affairs. I am not going to fall into the trap of offering material which could be used to try to prove her point.

The Resolution Foundation has called for 25-year-olds to be paid £10,000 to help them afford homes, saying the ‘generational contract’ between young and old has broken down. But is it really harder for young people to buy a home now than it was 30 years ago? House prices were booming in the first half of 1988, when a typical first-time buyer home could cost £50,000. That same property now, according to the Halifax UK House Price Index, would cost £234,850. Since 1988, the Retail Prices Index has increased 2.7 times, according to the ONS, so, in real terms, £50,000 in 1988 is now worth £135,000 – making it harder to afford a deposit.