Toby Young

I’m not sure what to think about the BBC’s announcement that it wants a quarter of its staff to be from working-class backgrounds by 2027. On the one hand, I’m against hiring quotas of any kind and think every position should be filled by the person best qualified for the job. But on the other, if the BBC is going to have diversity targets – and fighting against them seems futile at this point – then this one seems better than most. The rationale for this quota, according to the BBC, is it wants its staff to ‘better reflect UK society’, but I’m not sure it will achieve that. The problem lies in the way the BBC has defined ‘working-class’.

By the time you read this the new draft of the Online Safety Bill should be on the DCMS website. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have a pretty good idea of what’s in it because I’m one of dozens who’ve been urging ministers and officials behind the scenes to strengthen the free speech protections in the bill. For those not up to speed, the aim of the bill (in the words of Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State at DCMS) is ‘to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online’, i.e., turn the internet into a safe space. The white paper that preceded the bill was a nightmare from a freedom-of-expression point of view.

I’m currently standing at the top of Brownie Point Mountain, having spent the past two weeks looking after our three sons while Caroline has been sunning herself in Barbados. I’ve been cooking, cleaning, washing – you name it. As if that weren’t heroic enough, I spent the previous week with our 18-year-old daughter in Mexico City helping her find a flat and a job. In other words, I’ve had no help from Caroline for three straight weeks. I feel so virtuous, I’m almost tempted to throw myself off said mountain. A place in heaven would be guaranteed. I daresay some women reading this will be thinking: ‘Why should you get any points for doing what your wife has been doing for almost 20 years? Typical bloody man.

Vladimir Putin’s decision on Sunday to put his ‘deterrence forces’ – code for nuclear weapons – in a high state of readiness revived a fear in me that I haven’t experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As someone who spent his teenage years during the Cold War, the threat of nuclear war was never very far from my mind. Indeed, one of the biggest political battles back then was between unilateralists and multilateralists and I was firmly in the latter camp, even starting a local anti-CND group called ‘A Sensible Approach to Nuclear Questions’. But the two sides were united in their fear of Armageddon, only disagreeing about the best way to avoid it. Peak anxiety for me occurred in 1980.

I’m writing this on my last day in Mexico City, having accompanied my 18-year-old daughter here for the first week of a six-month stay. She’s hoping to become fluent in Spanish before embarking on a degree in languages in September. My mission was to help her find a flat in a nice part of town and a job so she can support herself, and between us we just about managed it, thanks to the help of the local expat community. Mexico City reminded me of being in New York in the mid-1990s, where being British and having the modern-day equivalent of letters of introduction meant an entire social network opened up before you.

I was a bit irritated by all the millennials saying the Superbowl half-time show made them feel old. The 15-minute musical extravaganza at Sunday’s game was a tribute to the golden age of hip hop and featured Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and Dr Dre. The reason it made so many people in their thirties and early forties feel a bit long in the tooth is that all artists are now candidates for the Hall of Fame. Dr Dre is 56 and Snoop Dogg turned 50 last year. Seeing their idols thickening around the waist and sprouting grey hairs was a mementomori for people who came of age around the millennium. The reason that bothered me is that I’m even more ancient than Dr Dre. Indeed, I felt old when Snoop Dogg had his first hit with ‘Deep Cover’ in 1992.

It’s not every day that a future prime minister offers you a bribe, but that’s what happened to me 38 years ago. I was the editor of Tributary, a satirical magazine at Oxford, and Boris wanted me to pass on the editorship to him. He conveyed through an intermediary that if I did him this favour he would invite me to lots of parties. That was notable for two reasons. First, it was unnecessary — Boris was the only applicant for the job. Second, Boris hates parties. It would be ironic if partygate is the cause of his downfall, since a love of late-night carousing is one of the few vices the Prime Minister doesn’t suffer from. He would have been cajoled into attending any social gatherings in Downing Street, forced to show his face to please his wife or staff.

Last week brought the news that some universities have attached more ‘trigger warnings’ to certain books, concerned that students may find their contents offensive and upsetting. No, we’re not talking about Lolita, American Psycho or The 120 Days of Sodom. The works judged too disturbing for young people of a sensitive disposition include Oliver Twist, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I’m not making that last one up. The English department at the University of Chester has included it as a set text on its Approaches to Literature module and cautioned students that it may ‘lead to some difficult conversations about gender, race, sexuality, class, and identity’.

When Neil Young issued his threat to Spotify – get rid of Joe Rogan’s podcast or remove my music from your platform – he was probably hoping a chorus of other musical artists would weigh in behind him. After all, Spotify paid a reported $100 million to Rogan for the exclusive rights to host his podcast and, given that each episode attracts 11 million listeners, it must be quite a money spinner for the music streaming service. I’m sure Young’s music does alright on Spotify, but from a purely commercial point of view it was a no-brainer. Thankfully, only Joni Mitchell seems to have joined Young’s boycott so far, and that’s the most significant thing about this episode, not Spotify’s decision to side with Rogan.

I did a speed awareness course on Monday. For the uninitiated, you have the option of doing one of these if you’re caught speeding and want to avoid getting three points on your licence. It only lasts two and a half hours and there’s no test at the end, so it’s a no-brainer, although you have to do it again if you’re spotted playing on your phone at the back. I’ve never heard of anyone choosing the three points instead. Like most people forced to undergo this humiliation, I was convinced I had nothing to learn. We all know about the laws of motion: the faster you’re going, the longer it takes to stop. And, inevitably, I found myself silently correcting the poor English of the two trainers.

I got Covid a couple of weeks ago. Second time for me, which was annoying because I’d told Caroline that natural immunity provided better protection than the vaccines. She’s the only member of our household who’s been jabbed and began to feel quite smug as we all tested positive, one after another. It didn’t matter how much data I presented her with showing how quickly vaccine effectiveness against Omicron wanes, not least because I couldn’t prove I’d got Omicron. As far as she was concerned, I’d lost the argument.

I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Don’t Look Up, the new satirical film on Netflix. It’s about a couple of American scientists who discover a giant ‘planet-killing’ comet that’s going to collide with Earth in just over six months. They try to warn the world about this existential threat but no one takes them seriously, from the President of the United States on down. Some people half- listen, but then get distracted by gossip or greed or lust, and when they do engage they come up with excuses, like pointing out the science is only 99.78 per cent certain, not 100 per cent, so why don’t we just ‘sit tight and assess’? Or maybe we can solve the problem with technology?

I learnt a horrible new word during the holidays: Twixmas. It refers to the 27-30 December period and has its roots in the word ‘betwixt’, although why anyone would refer to those dates as ‘betwixt’ Christmas and New Year rather than ‘between’ is beyond me. Caroline, who now works in travel, introduced me to it and the reason it came up is that she booked an Airbnb in Margate for precisely those dates. This was to be our Twixmas holiday. Not ideal because there were QPR games on the 27th and the 30th, one of them in Bristol, but by criss-crossing the country in our VW seven-seater I made it work. First the good news. Margate is actually quite nice.

Someone sent me a job advert recently for a Junior Research Fellowship at Queen’s College, Oxford. It states: ‘The Queen’s College embraces diversity and equal opportunity. Applications are particularly welcome from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in Oxford. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.’ Nothing particularly objectionable about that, although when the college says it aspires to be more ‘inclusive’ it doesn’t mean it wants conservatives to apply, even though they are among the most under--represented groups at Oxford.

The Law Commission has published a string of recommendations following its recent consultation on changes to hate-crime laws in England and Wales. As expected, the last one proposes that all existing hate-crime laws, as well as the new ones the commission would like to create, be swept up in a single Act of Parliament, much like the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. Readers will recall that this Act means freedom of expression is now in greater peril in Scotland than anywhere else in Europe. In some respects, what the Commission is proposing isn’t as bad as the Scottish law.