Society

Tuesday

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The trouble with Boxing Day

You are bloated and binged. Your bloodstream is 35 per cent blood, 60 per cent a mix of Nurofen Plus, Gaviscon and acetaldehyde and 5 per cent Quality Street. You will either be making more mess, or clearing up the mess that everybody else is making more of. There are tiny pieces of plastic everywhere, perhaps even in you. If you’re with your family, all of them, including you, will have reverted to their personality and status of 1993 at the latest. Television – merely horrible and chiding throughout the rest of the year – has suddenly dumped on you a ginormous dollop of sickening sugar and thick, choking starch. 

Madeleine Silver

The do’s and don’ts of Christmas thank you letters

My late great-aunt would arrive for Christmas from Edinburgh with a stash of pre-written thank you letters. She’d leave gaps for the specifics of the present and the rest was a scramble of generic, suitably gushing adjectives. The turkey pan would still be soaking and my great-aunt not yet north of the border when you’d be ploughing through her two-sider. My own list of overdue thank you letters – weddings, children’s birthday presents, an impromptu late August BBQ – sit on my to-do list like immovable marker pen, never quite shifted. Great Aunt Pammie’s clinical efficiency is not something I’ve inherited. But in an age of WhatsApp, there seems to

Robin Ashenden

Can Jilly Cooper wreck your life?

What do the names Octavia, Prudence, Harriet, and Imogen all have in common? If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re probably – unlike our current prime minister – not a fan of Jilly Cooper. Cooper has just published her latest bonkbuster Tackle, one of the doorstep-sized Rutshire Chronicles series that also includes Riders and Rivals. These books are set in a fictionalised Cotswolds and are as reliably comforting as a tin of Quality Streets. But in the good old, bad old days of the seventies and early eighties many of us came to this writer through her ‘name-books’ – six romantic novels (and one collection of short stories)

Monday

David Shipley

How I found the true meaning of Christmas in prison

What do prisoners eat on Christmas Day? Some tabloid reports might lead you to think ‘lags’ are ‘gorging’ themselves on turkey with all the trimmings. Even the official prison menus from the Ministry of Justice make lunch on 25 December sound appetising: inmates at HMP Manchester, a high-security jail, get ‘Traditional Turkey Dinner with stuffing, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, vegetables (and) sausage wrapped in bacon & gravy’ served up with ‘Christmas pudding & white sauce and Christmas cake’. As you would imagine the reality is very different.  In a typical British prison this afternoon, inmates will be carrying flimsy blue plastic plates down to the servery to receive a slice

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

When will the BBC’s Julia Donaldson obsession end?

The BBC thinks it wouldn’t be Christmas without an adaptation of a Julia Donaldson book. This is another dispiriting example of the invention of a faux Christmas tradition. This year, it’s the turn of Tabby McTat, a story about a musical cat and a busker, which will be broadcast this afternoon. This isn’t the first time a Donaldson book has been adapted for the BBC’s Christmas line up; it was The Smegs and the Smoos last year. And Superworm, Zog And The Flying Doctors and The Gruffalo have all received the animation treatment over the last decade, and are on BBC iPlayer in case you didn’t catch them the first time. Isn’t it time the

Sunday

Miles Windsor

Algerian Christians will face persecution this Christmas

During this Advent, churches across Britain will once again open their doors to both the regular faithful, along with not-so-faithful but much desired and warmly welcomed seasonal visitors. The pews in many churches will swell with those looking for their Christmas fix of candlelight and choral songs. We take for granted that these places of worship will be open for us to meet together weekly, or perhaps less regularly, for our corporate acts of worship. In Algeria, those who long to gather to celebrate their Saviour’s birth don’t enjoy that certainty. Of the 47 churches of l’Église Protestante d’Algérie (the EPA), 43 have been issued orders to close by the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The foul truth about wood-burners

My first instinct is to rush to the attack against any think tank which calls for stuff to be banned. But in the case of a proposal by Bright Blue that wood-burners should come with a health warning, and that their use should be prohibited on certain days when pollution is high, I will make an exception. For far too long, wood-burners have been pushed at us as if they were an environmentally-friendly alternative to burning gas and oil. A whole generation of dinner parties has been thrown by smug hosts showing off their eco-credentials in front of a roaring wood-burner. Yet the sad truth is that they are just about

Francis Young

The ancient roots of Christmas ghost stories

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is either, depending on your perspective, the ultimate Christmas ghost story or a complete subversion of the genre – since the tale is clearly not about the ghosts, who serve as mere ciphers in a morality tale.  Yet in spite of the popularity of the book and its multiple TV and film adaptations, many people today are oddly unaware that Christmas was once associated, more than any other season, with the telling of ghost stories. It is Christmas, traditionally, that is the spookiest time of the year.  Tales of supernatural horror, when you yourself are in perfect safety, are perhaps as old as human storytelling itself Christmas in

James McGrath

The mystery of the Mandaeans, the gnostic sect that worships John the Baptist

Gnosticism – the belief that the creation of the material world was a mistake, and the creator deity a bungling lesser entity distinct from the supreme God – has been vigorously opposed by both Jews and Christians down the centuries. Yet even when censured, the gnostics’ views retained a certain appeal. They said that human beings have a spark of light from above and, with the right preparation for the journey, can hope to ascend beyond this broken material prison to the celestial realm of light. We can see the impact of that viewpoint in popular thought about the afterlife, even among those who reject Gnosticism’s other teachings as heresy.

Robin Ashenden

Where did the Christmas magic go?

It’s late December 1982 or thereabouts, and I’m standing in a Suffolk church before hundreds of people, wearing a cassock and surplice, with a churning stomach. This year, at my prep school carol service, it’s my turn to sing the opening solo to ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. The trouble is, the solo is sung acapella – the organ will give you the opening note, but if you go a semi-tone off-kilter halfway through before the full choir come in with ‘He came down to earth from heaven’, there’ll be the most awful discordant balls-up and everyone will know. Luckily it went off well, my final note dovetailing neatly with

Saturday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi’s rule will end with a whimper, not a bang

That best-selling 1970s toy Action Man proved the power of evolution. First, the painted hair on the initial models was superseded by ‘realistic’ flock hair and then came an ‘eagle eyes enhancement’ that allowed the eyeballs to be moved back and forth via a lever at the back of the head.   One is put in mind of this by the current photograph of Keir Starmer in combat fatigues standing in front of some especially fierce-looking British soldiers. Fixing the camera with a steely gaze and benefiting from his square jaw and Martin Sheen-style Hollywood hair, the Labour leader comes across as a later series commanding officer Action Man. I dare

Jawad Iqbal

When will the Premier League stop treating football fans with contempt?

The Premier League’s television paymasters, who plough billions into football, invariably get what they want. That is surely why the decision has been taken to schedule the Wolves-Chelsea match at Molineux stadium in the Midlands tomorrow, on Christmas Eve: so that it can be shown live on Sky Sports. The Premier League has made ‘special provisions’ to play the game at 1 p.m. – rather than the typical later kick-off time on a Sunday. Ostensibly this has been done to ease travel for supporters, in particular, Chelsea fans trying to get back to London in time for Christmas. But the bigwigs behind these decisions really don’t get it, do they? Without

Senay Boztas

Who wants Amsterdam’s mega brothel on their doorstep?

Amsterdam’s red light district is an uncomfortable place for a woman to walk at night. Drunk tourists from all around the world wander the streets, leering into the red-lit windows where prostitutes rent a space and ply for trade. Thanks to years of problems, the city’s residents are demanding action. The local government coalition was elected on a plan to roughly halve the number of sex worker windows, and to move them to an ‘erotic centre’. But there’s a problem: no one wants it on their doorstep. At the city’s NDSM Wharf on Monday evening, the letters EC (‘erotic centre’) were set on fire. This Docklands site in north Amsterdam had been shortlisted to

Friday

Rupert Darwall

What’s the true cost of Britain’s biggest offshore wind farm?

The world’s largest offshore wind farm is coming to Britain but there will be only one winner from the scheme – and it isn’t electricity consumers. Wind energy giant Ørsted had raised doubts about the Hornsea 3 offshore project earlier this year. But after securing more generous subsidy arrangements from the government, the Danish firm is pressing ahead with the project. Soon, another 230 turbines will fill the North Sea due east of Hull. The news this week is being hailed as a boost for Britain’s net zero strategy but don’t be deceived: the true cost of this scheme will be enormous. Last year, Ørsted won a contract for difference – which is

Andrew Tettenborn

Why was this Christian teacher hounded for her views on LGBT issues?

Who’d be a teacher these days? Until about 50 years ago, your outlook didn’t matter very much provided you were reasonably competent. Today the profession is coming close to saying that anyone who doesn’t profess progressive and morally relativistic views shouldn’t bother applying. Glawdys Leger, an experienced Catholic teacher in a Church of England state school, expressed her views on LGBT issues during a religious education lesson. Leger also raised objections to teaching LGBT material. She was sacked by Bishop Justus CofE School in Bromley, south London, in May 2022, but her troubles didn’t end there. Leger also had her case sent to the statutory teachers’ disciplinary body, the Teaching Regulation Agency

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Raymond Arroyo on the joys of a Sinatra-style Christmas

22 min listen

In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we’re taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.  They’ve failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical theatre, has produced an album entitled Christmas Merry and Bright in which he sings well-loved Christmas songs and carols in spectacular big-band arrangements inspired by one of his musical heroes, Frank Sinatra. And in one track, ‘Feliz Navidad’, he’s joined by its composer – his friend the legendary José Feliciano. I hope you enjoy this conversation as

Tuesday

Jay Bhattacharya

Defending science from ‘cancel culture’

27 min listen

Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental tenets of a liberal democracy, and yet threats to freedom of speech today don’t so much come from authoritarians abroad as they do from within. The idea of ‘no-platforming’ those you disagree with, or ‘cancelling’ them, has taken root in all forms of public debate, and increasingly so in science. The word ‘science’ can today often be a shorthand for ‘truth’, which creates an orthodoxy where diversity of opinion is not welcomed. Science is meant to be ongoing process of finding truth, where what each generation takes as given may well be overturned as we discover more. On this podcast, we will

Debbie Hayton

This transgender schools guidance leaves a lot to be desired

The government has finally published its transgender guidance for schools. Teachers have been waiting a long time. We were promised we would have this document ‘for the summer term’. Well, it has arrived just in time for Christmas. But was it worth waiting for?  On the surface, this long awaited document looks like it will please nobody, upset everyone and leave schools still unclear about what they should do when parents get on the phone and explain that their son John is now their daughter Janet. It’s all well and good to advise that schools do not have a duty to let children change their gender identity but, when it

Tim Stanley

The Pope’s pursuit of relevance is embarrassingly outdated

The Pope is old and unwell. In whatever time he has left, he surveys his years as pontiff and counts only failure. What does he leave behind? Collapsing attendance, theological confusion, a few sentimental encyclicals and a positive meeting with Whoopi Goldberg. Francis called a synod and it gave him nothing. So, in a last throw of the dice, he declares that priests can bless gay relationships – sorta, kinda, maybe not. It’s all a muddle. The priest is not blessing the relationship but the partners; it must have no ritual; weddings are ruled out, for the teaching on marriage is unchanged. To effect this fudge, Francis has broken with

Andrew Tettenborn

The CofE’s same sex blessings stance is even more illogical than the Vatican’s

Traditionalists in the Church of England and the Catholic church don’t, of course, always see eye to eye. But on the issue of gay marriage and same-sex relations they may have found some common ground. In a landmark ceremony last week, the Church of England blessed a same-sex couple’s relationship for the first time. Prayers for two women – Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce – were held at St John the Baptist Church, in Felixstowe, Suffolk. As if by chance, this week we also heard about the same issue from the papal Dicastery, the Vatican body tasked with maintaining sound doctrine. Five conservative cardinals had submitted a dubium (i.e. awkward question) about whether