Toby Young

It had been billed as the most controversial debate of the year, with even Rishi Sunak intervening to say that Kathleen Stock, who had been invited to the Oxford Union, should not be no-platformed. But if you were sitting in the Union’s debating chamber on Tuesday evening – as I was – the huge kerfuffle

I have a confession to make: I’m a sitzpinkler. That’s the German word for men who sit down when they pee, and it’s a bit of an insult – like calling someone a wimp or a ‘soy boy’. Real men do it standing up, apparently. But the reason there’s a German word for it is

I’m trying to organise an event in Westminster with the journalist Isabel Oakeshott and it’s proving a bit of a nightmare. So many obstacles have been thrown in our way that we’re beginning to think it might be jinxed. But we aren’t about to give up. The original idea was for the two of us

I was in Canada last week, travelling across British Columbia on a luxury train called the Rocky Mountaineer. It was great. The downside was I had to travel to North America and back in five days, meaning that as soon as my body clock had adjusted to the time difference I was back in England.

As another summer approaches, I’ve embarked on yet another attempt to lose weight. You’d have thought I’d have learnt my lesson by now – what goes down, must come up – but it turns out yo-yo dieting is actually good for you. At least, that’s the conclusion of a team of researchers at Oxford University

I wasn’t surprised to hear that six police officers raided a pub in Essex after a customer complained about the presence of 15 golliwogs on display behind the bar. After placing the dolls in evidence bags, the officers told the pub’s owner that they were investigating a possible ‘hate crime’. Needless to say, you’re lucky

For me, one of the joys of going abroad is bargaining with the local sellers. They name an extortionate price; I make an insulting counteroffer; they threaten to walk away; I increase my offer by a fractional amount; they accuse me of not being serious, then name a price that’s fractionally lower than their opening

The teaching unions never let a good crisis go to waste. Following the tragic death of Ruth Perry, the headteacher of Caversham Primary School in Reading, who took her own life after Ofsted told her it was going to downgrade her school from ‘Outstanding’ to ‘Inadequate’, the NEU has called for the Office for Standards

On Monday, a bill was passed by the National Assembly in France that will give courts the power to prevent parents posting pictures or videos of their kids online. The courts will decide, based on the child’s age and maturity, if the consent of both parents is needed, or whether the child’s approval is sufficient.

On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an

The problem with being a film collector is that the technology on which films are preserved keeps changing. I’m not talking about abandoning my DVD library – although I’ll come to that – but my collection of LaserDiscs. LaserDiscs were a forerunner of DVDs. They were the same size as LPs and you often needed

I’m currently sitting on top of a brownie point mountain. Caroline has departed for a two-week tennis freebie in Barbados, leaving me holding the fort. I have three teenage boys to take care of and a very small dog. That means getting them up for school every morning, emptying and loading the dishwasher, walking the

James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure of Mark Steyn from GB News following a bust-up over his contract. Mark has been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart