Society

Sunday

Robin Ashenden

The endless allure of the Shipping Forecast

The Shipping Forecast on Radio 4, 100 years old this October, seems to have achieved the impossible. Few people know the places it reports on when it gives the weather conditions in its 31 regions. Almost no one understands the finer points of what it’s telling them – about wind force and direction, atmospheric pressure, or visibility out at sea. Not many working people are even awake at the times it’s broadcast in the early hours. Yet you feel that if the BBC ever tried to cancel it, there would be a revolution.  Its very opacity is part of its charm, as well as the vivid but workaday metaphors it supplies us

Gavin Haynes

Tiger Tiger burnt so bright

For those who never really took an interest, Tiger Tiger will be best remembered for its bomb. In a foiled June 2007 terrorist plot, a device was found outside the two-storey nightclub just off Piccadilly Circus. An ambulance crew, attending an incident nearby, discovered a car ventilating smoke, and when they peered inside, found 60 litres of petrol, several gas cylinders, and bags of nails. Had it been possible to avoid casualties, most clubbers would have considered the bomb’s detonation to be an improvement on London’s nightlife. A rare jihadist PR coup, even. For a quarter of a century, Tiger Tiger was street furniture, a landmark, a snaking queue that you

Saturday

Philip Womack

Philip Womack, Ian Thomson, Silkie Carlo, Francis Young and Rory Sutherland

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Philip Womack wonders why students can’t tackle university reading lists (1:12); Ian Thomson contemplates how much Albania has changed since Enver Hoxta’s dictatorship (6:12); Silkie Carlo reveals the worrying rise of supermarket surveillance (13:33); Francis Young provides his notes on Hallowe’en fairies (20:21); and Rory Sutherland worries that Britain may soon face a different type of migrant crisis (24:08).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

James Tidmarsh

The West’s green agenda is abandoning Africa to China

In the remote Ludewa district of southern Tanzania, villagers scratch out a meagre living in harsh conditions. The roads are barely passable, clean water is hard to come by, and families live in rudimentary homes made from mud bricks. Preventable diseases like malaria, cholera, and dysentery plague the region, and health infrastructure is almost non-existent. Electricity, for most of Ludewa’s residents, is a distant dream. Yet beneath this harsh land lies enough coal to power all of Tanzania for over a century and to lift it out of poverty altogether. While China is ready to develop Mchuchuma, the West has left the field, wary of the environmental fallout The region’s

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Sale of the century: why is the Kirk selling off hundreds of churches so cheaply?

27 min listen

In this week’s Spectator, William Finlater reveals that some of the Church of Scotland’s most precious architectural heritage is being flogged off quickly, cheaply and discreetly. Most western denominations are being forced to close churches, but the fire sale of hundreds of Scottish churches is unprecedented in British history. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian talks to William about the Kirk’s apparently panicky reaction to losing half its members since 2000, and asks new Spectator editor Michael Gove – once a Church of Scotland Sunday School teacher – why his former denomination is staring into the abyss. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons. 

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Is Airbnb to blame for rising crime in London?

Does Airbnb drive up crime in London? That’s the question posed of the world’s most successful short-term rental service in new research by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology. The UK’s holiday rental market is enormous, projected to reach £3.5 billion this year. Airbnb eats up a sizeable chunk of that revenue; millions on the move take advantage of what the platform has to offer in the nation’s capital. And surely where there’s brass there’s muck? Well, sort of. The research claimed a ‘positive association’ between areas of London where there were high levels of Airbnb and increased criminality. Looking at data from 2015 onwards, they suggested that a 10 per

Julie Bindel

The very necessary asexual awareness week

In the annual queer calendar, which appears to operate at full capacity 365 days of the year, nothing is more auspicious or necessary than asexual awareness week, also known as Ace Week, which takes place this week. The aim is to ‘raise awareness, build community, and create change around the world.’ If you’re someone who suspects that those claiming an asexual identity are simply narcissistic attention seekers, or incels indoctrinated by Stonewall, think again. There’s a TEDx  talk entitled ‘this is what asexual looks like’, in which Yasmin Benoit, an ‘asexual activist and model’, informs us that asexuality is on a spectrum – meaning it is possible to experience sexual attraction, yet still

Alexander Larman

King Charles’s carefully worded reparations speech

For his first formal address as head of the Commonwealth, King Charles would probably have preferred to veer away from controversy. Unfortunately, delivering an anodyne and people pleasing speech was not on the agenda.  Ever since it was announced that Samoa would be hosting a gathering of the 56 Commonwealth countries, it was inevitable that the hot-button issues of imperialism and western complicity in the slave trade would be high on the agenda, and the vexed issue of potential reparations has, inevitably, dominated proceedings so far.  The ‘creative ways’ he suggested Britain might offer apologies for its part in the slave trade may not be enough for many During his

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Justin Welby has made a huge shift on homosexuality

Forget Nixon in China. That phrase needs renaming: Welby on sexuality. For it is now at last clear that he has shifted his position on homosexuality. Talking to The Rest is Politics podcast this week, he finally came out with it. He is not, as we all assumed, a conservative in the awkward position of presiding over a Church that is pursuing reform. He has quietly changed his mind. He is not, as we all assumed, a conservative in the awkward position of presiding over a Church that is pursuing reform In the last year or two, he has hinted that he is on a journey, moving away from the conservative

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The EU knows all about destabilising democracy

Moldovans have voted ‘yes’ by a wafer-thin majority to joining the European Union in a referendum that was held amid ‘unprecedented interference’ by foreign powers. That is the view of the EU, whose spokesman, Peter Stano, accused Russia and its proxies of ‘aiming to destabilise the democratic processes in the Republic of Moldova’. The EU and its proxies know a thing or two about destabilising the democratic processes. Back in 2008, when the Guardian was a broad-minded newspaper which welcomed a diversity of views, Brendan O’Neill wrote a column entitled ‘What part of Ireland’s “no” does the EU not understand?’ The days when the EU could scold countries for destabilising democracy are long gone O’Neill was responding to

Thursday

Andrew Tettenborn

Chris Kaba and the danger of inquests 

The firearms officer Martyn Blake was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba this week. Kaba was a serious wrong ‘un: a violent gangland enforcer with a rap sheet as long as your arm going back to the age of 13. During the trial this information was kept under wraps, on the basis that Kaba’s past was irrelevant to Blake’s guilt or innocence and speculation about it potentially prejudicial to the Crown’s case. After the acquittal, however, all this is rightly in the open. What is worrying, however, is that our ability to know the full facts even now was a fairly close-run thing. Immediately after the trial Chris Kaba’s family tried hard

David Cohen

Why is this New Zealand airport clamping down on hugs?

‘Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,’ Hugh Grant famously offered in the heartwarming opening scene of Love, Actually, ‘I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport.’ It’s just as well he doesn’t think about Dunedin airport in New Zealand. The airport’s chief executive, Daniel De Bono, seems not to be a fan of lingering emotion-packed arrivals and departures taking place at his modest transport hub.  While other airport chiefs look for new ways to limit their terminals’ designated smoking areas or swoop on blameless travellers with too many toiletries, De Bono is cracking down on lingering hugs at his terminal here in New Zealand.   Announcing his airport’s

Catriona Olding

Wes Streeting is right – palliative care isn’t good enough

Wes Streeting informed backbenchers this week that he is voting against the assisted dying Bill on 29 November, saying that ‘end-of-life care is not good enough for patients to make an informed choice.’  Experience of an issue, and I have too much on this one, can both cloud and inform opinion. I’m glad I don’t have to vote on the Bill but I do know that if palliative care was reliably good many people, myself included, wouldn’t fear the end as they do now. The current Bill, if passed, would allow terminally ill adults with less than six months to live to end their lives with medical help. Six months

Nicholas Farrell Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni is going to war with Italy’s judges

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declared war on Italy’s judges who are trying to kybosh at birth her much vaunted scheme to offshore illegal migrants to Albania.  Last Friday, a court in Rome dealt Meloni’s Albania scheme a potentially fatal blow by ruling that the first migrants sent to Albania cannot be detained and must be freed because their countries of origin – Bangladesh and Egypt – are unsafe.  The Toghe Rosse have Meloni in their sights She has now issued an emergency decree to change the law and her ministers are confident that it will stop the judges making similar rulings in the future. Meloni’s Albania scheme launched last week and is seen across Europe as

Francis Pike

Leyte Gulf is the greatest naval battle you’ve never heard of

When you think of great naval engagements, the Battle of Leyte Gulf does not immediately spring to mind, despite it being the largest naval battle in modern history. Leyte Gulf, which celebrates its 80th anniversary today, took place in the Philippines in 1944. Even my well-educated American friends, the CEO of a major publishing company included, fail the vox pop test of knowledge of this epic battle. The sea battles that we remember tend to be engagements that define the outcome of struggles between empires and civilisations. At the Battle of Salamis, Athenian triremes thwarted Persia’s conquest of Greece. Similarly at the Battle of Lepanto, Pope Pius V’s Holy League navy

Ian Thomson

Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow

Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912 with the demise of Ottoman power in Europe. Its first ruler, the glorified Muslim chieftain King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when fascist Italy invaded in 1939. (Zog was put up in London for a while at the Ritz.) Five years later the Nazi Germans were expelled by the Albanian resistance fighter Enver Hoxha. Outwardly a Stalinist, the artful Hoxha was a Muslim-born Ottoman dandy figure who terrorised his Balkan fiefdom through retaliatory murders, purges and the trap-door disappearance of class enemies. Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow.

The Spectator

Which were the closest US elections?

Back to the White House If Donald Trump wins on 6 November, he will be the first US President to serve two separated terms since Grover Cleveland, who was president between 1885-89 and 1893-97. Cleveland actually won a higher share of the popular vote in the 1888 election, but lost to Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college after an election fought on the issue of trade tariffs. Cleveland’s wife Frances was confident she would return to the White House, reputedly telling her staff to keep things in good order for when they return four years to the day. So it proved – Cleveland won the 1892 election easily. Close calls

Francis Young

Halloween is the time for fairies

Among the many options available for Halloween costumes and decorations these days, from witches to zombies, from mummies to serial killers, there is one traditional Halloween character you are unlikely to see: fairies. But in Irish and Scottish folklore, which provides the basis for modern Halloween traditions, fairies were central to this festival. In Scotland, it was on Halloween night that the ‘fairy rade’ (procession) was said to be seen going through the countryside, bearing the souls of the unbaptised dead or those who were snatched away in life by the fairies. In the ballad of Tam Lin, Janet has to wait until the fairies ride at Halloween to rescue

Toby Young Toby Young

A British First Amendment wouldn’t save free speech

Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the government’s unrelenting assault on free speech. If Britons enjoyed the same constitutional protections as Americans, it would have been more difficult to prosecute anyone over the summer for social media posts ‘intending to stir up racial hatred’, the crime for which Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, received two-and-a-half years last week. The solution is not to pass a new law, but to repeal those laws that limit our freedom of expression But I remain sceptical. For one thing, there’s no mechanism in our constitution for creating a