When you read the Guardian free online, a yellow notice appears asking you for money (‘Will you invest in the Guardian?’) to support its fearless journalism. But now arises a donor’s dilemma. After two years’ work, the paper has just produced a full report on and apology from its current owner for its founders’ involvement in slavery. The historian David Olusoga, part of the project, says that what the Guardian owes the descendants of slavery for this is ‘an unpayable debt’. The paper is attempting to pay it, however, setting aside £10 million for the purpose of restorative justice over ten years. So for the conscientious Guardian reader (is there any other kind?) the question arises: ‘Which is the more important destination for my money – the current needs of the newspaper or reparations to the victims of its past complicity in a great evil? If the latter, should I not pay directly to that cause rather than rewarding a paper which has taken two centuries to admit its wickedness?’ Is the Guardian letting itself off rather lightly?
The current crisis in Israel is poorly explained. Binyamin Netanyahu’s opponents are described as ‘pro-democracy protestors’, but in fact they oppose judges being chosen by MPs rather than by other judges. (They may be right here, but democratic they are not.) The real source of the trouble is the electoral system which empowers tiny extreme parties in coalition-building. It is the results of proportional representation, a subject which usually engages only the dullest and most moderate politicians, which now excite the basest passions.
Some say it is an unfair advantage for Oxford and Cambridge that college, rather than university, teams enter University Challenge. I imagine that this Oxbridge exception, present when the programme started in 1962, was made to stop Oxford and Cambridge being the joint finalists most years, thus turning the programme into the intellectual equivalent of the Boat Race.
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