The unclued lights (including the pair at 4/41) are the friends of Winnie-the-Pooh in the books by A.A. Milne. First prize Fred Rainbow, Birmingham Runners-up Adam McNaney, Oxford; Val Urquhart, Butcombe, Somerset
Jonathan Swift had a suitably unromantic attitude to holy matrimony. Once, when sheltering under a tree during a storm near Lichfield, he was asked to marry a heavily pregnant bride to a rather guilty-looking groom. Asked to provide evidence that he had performed the shotgun wedding, Swift found a piece of paper and wrote: Under an oak, in stormy weather,I joined this rogue and whore together;And none but he who rules the thunderCan put this rogue and whore asunder. Despite his cynicism, even Dean Swift would lament the marginalisation of one of our foundational institutions. Marriage is undergoing a seemingly inexorable decline. In the 1970s, almost three quarters of the
The term ‘spinster’ doesn’t seem to scare young women like it once might have. In fact, it is rarely heard nowadays. Instead, women are declaring themselves ‘alpha singles’ and eschewing dating altogether. Influencers are keeping their relationships quiet, for fear that simply posting photos of a new amour can lead to an exodus of followers. Vogue has declared boyfriends to be unfashionable. Women, it seems, are swapping engagement rings for solo travel, matcha lattes and nights spent at home with an LED face mask. Is marriage suddenly uncool? There are certainly plenty of women pushing this idea. Elle McNamara, a beauty influencer who goes by the name ‘Bambi Does Beauty’,
Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time high of 38 per cent of GDP in 2030-31. She froze tax thresholds until the end of 2030-31 and introduced a council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2 million from 2028. She scrapped the two-child benefit cap. She froze fuel duty for only another five months but brought in a tax of 3p per mile on electric vehicles. The amount that can be added annually tax-free to a cash Isa was reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 (except for over-65s)
If the leaks are correct, Rachel Reeves will use today’s Budget to abolish the two-child benefit cap. Another £3.4 billion a year will flow to larger families. On paper, half a million children will be lifted out of poverty. Labour backbenchers will congratulate themselves on a job well done, and columnists on the left will cheer that compassion has been restored. Forgive me for not joining in with the applause. Addiction, chaos, and learned helplessness don’t vanish because the monthly bank transfer gets a little fatter For 20 years I’ve been a foster carer working closely with underprivileged families, and what I’ve learned is that simply giving parents more cash won’t
Everyone’s moaning about political bias at the BBC. They have done for years. And they’ll continue to. The right’s accusations that the BBC is anti-Trump and anti-Israeli are mirrored by the left’s accusations that the BBC is pro-Israel and reluctant to criticise Brexit. This indicates the difficulty of the broadcaster’s role, and suggests it’s probably doing something right. The bigger issue with the BBC is that it is dumbing down its output, a process that it’s half confessed to with its vow to make ‘lighter’ content for ‘C2DE’ audiences, whatever they are. If you want an example of this condescension, look no further than the BBC’s latest blockbuster series, Civilisations: Rise and Fall,
You don’t need a PhD to see that censorship thrives in universities. In the past few weeks alone, a professor has been banned from the University of Manchester and described as a ‘potential risk to colleagues’ for having allegedly used ‘the n-word’ in a disciplinary meeting; a sociology lecturer at Abertay University has been subjected to a smear campaign for inviting a speaker critical of Scotland’s rape laws; and pro-Palestinian student activists at City, University of London have called for the dismissal of a Jewish professor because he completed compulsory military service in Israel during the 1980s. Professors at this august institution have placed trigger warnings on essays discussing free speech
Before I begin, let me say this: I like children. To my amazement, I even have two of my own. But do I think they should be allowed in pubs? Absolutely not. Increasingly, this is the view taken by London’s publicans, some of whom have decided to introduce a ban on children in pubs after 7 p.m. Egil Johansen, owner of the Kenton pub in Hackney – which operates a 5 p.m. curfew on children – was quoted yesterday lambasting ‘entitled parents’ who ‘come in, sit down, drink and don’t care what their children are doing’. Other London pubs are reported to be considering banning children altogether. The William the Fourth pub in Leyton will now operate a 7 p.m. curfew for children,
The Reverend Kate Bottley, the celebrity vicar who came to fame on Gogglebox, has a message for the nation. ‘The woman who goes skinny-dipping for charity and posts the pictures on social media is far removed from the cultural archetype of the meek and stuffy vicar,’ the Telegraph breathlessly tells us. ‘I don’t know who these stuffy vicars are,’ says Bottley. ‘All my vicar friends watch The Traitors and shout at their kids and have sex – all the normal things that are part of being a human being. Like the rest of society, we’ve moved on quite a lot.’ The information that Anglican vicars are permitted to have sex
As an American who respects the constitutional role and historical continuity of the British Crown, I view the recent congressional request to interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with disgust. In early November, several of the most progressive Democratic members of the US Congress sent a letter asking him to participate in a ‘transcribed interview’ regarding his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, with a response deadline of 20 November. No congressional body has the power to compel testimony from a British citizen living on British soil While Congress is free to seek information, the request carries no compulsory authority over a foreign national residing in the United Kingdom. In this context, the decision
While the BBC’s mis-editing of Donald Trump’s words has dominated the headlines, less attention has been paid to another example of the corporation’s bias: its coverage of history. The BBC’s latest blockbuster history series, Empire, fronted by David Olusoga, shows the extent of the problem. This slanted and biased version of history is nothing new No one watching these three programmes, which were broadcast this month, could be in any doubt that a negative view of British history pervades everything. The series is not a balanced history of the empire, but rather a collection of some of its most controversial and violent episodes. When Olusoga himself isn’t telling us what
35 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: William Atkinson reveals his teenage brush with a micropenis; Andreas Roth bemoans the dumbing down of German education; Philip Womack wonders how the hyphen turned political; Mary Wakefield questions the latest AI horror story – digitising dead relatives; and, Muriel Zagha celebrates Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
By the standards Shabana Mahmood has set for herself, the speech she made to police leaders at their annual conference in Westminster last week was not the most gripping. The Home Secretary’s delivery was stilted, awkward even, as she stuck closely to the script on the lectern in front of her. She left the stage as soon as she had finished without taking any questions. But there were two sections in Mahmood’s 20-minute address that stood out, sparking speculation that a once-in-a-generation overhaul of policing is on the way. She told the chief constables and police and crime commissioners (PCCs) assembled at the QE II Centre that she would be
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s asylum shake-up has sent the Irish government into something approaching panic mode. The profound new measures, including penalties for those exploiting the system, a 20-year wait for settlement, and returning refugees if their native country is deemed safe, are deeply problematic for Ireland. The government correctly predicts a sharp surge in the number of asylum seekers opting to claim asylum in Ireland, rather than the UK, if these measures become law. It does not take a genius to guess where failed UK asylum applicants will go. Not to mention those who reckon they stand a far greater chance of success in pushover Ireland and decide to
Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks. Those were not my words, they came from a statement by Dr Hilary Cass when this off-label use of injectable gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists was banned indefinitely last December. Streeting needs to change tack. For the children, if not his own reputation However, there was a loophole. Cass went on to recommend that puberty blockers, ‘should only be prescribed following a multi-disciplinary assessment and within a research protocol’. Over the weekend, it was reported that scientists at King’s College London have been granted ethical approval to administer these drugs to dozens more children. Why? What more is there to be
The vast acclaim that Sir Philip Pullman’s latest novel, The Rose Field, has received has cemented his status as one of Britain’s most successful writers. Such authors are listened to, whatever their concerns, and so it has been both unsurprising and depressing that Sir Philip has been bothered not about literary matters, but about his hometown of Oxford: in particular, the apparently never-ending roadworks that have been blighting the western approach to the city for years, and which show no signs of being resolved. ‘Those of us who live to the west of Oxford are more or less cut off from our own city,’ said Pullman In a recent interview
Is it ever acceptable to say the ‘n-word’? As you will have immediately inferred by that sentence, it’s rare to see it even spelt out in full today. It’s perhaps the only word in the English language you will never see written without asterisks in a newspaper or magazine. It is, to use that phrase once beloved of the Guardian, ‘the last taboo’. ‘Words have context, and the word “bitch” can have a positive meaning if you look at the Oxford English Dictionary,’ it was reported that Pormann told the meeting Peter Pormann, a professor at Manchester University, was this week reminded the hard way of its undiminished power, when
The overwhelming smell of weed wafting down the street; heaps of decomposing litter floating in local canals and rivers; the noise of a dozen video calls and TikTok videos blasted through loudspeakers on the train. Many Britons are exhausted with the tide of anti-social behaviour that all too many of us have become accustomed to. The obvious remedy, it might seem, would be to crack down on this behaviour – for the authorities and the public to enforce Britain’s rules with renewed vigour. To do so, however, would only reinforce the problem. It is in fact the plethora of patronising dictats issued from the top down that is behind the collapse
It is ‘insane’, Reform’s Doge chief Richard Tice said this week, that children are wearing ear-defenders in classrooms, supposedly as a ‘calming activity’ to reduce anxiety and stress. Such practices, he said, show UK’s ‘special educational needs and disabilities’ system – known as Send – is not fit for purpose. The number of children receiving support for Send has increased from 1.3 million in 2019 to 1.7 million today, and by 2029, Send-related debts in UK councils are expected to reach £17.8 billion. These costs may bankrupt some local authorities. Tice is of the view that the Send system is being hijacked by some parents and exploited by a well-paid
Whatever happened to British ecology? I was thinking that when I read two reports in the Times this week, both pretty depressing. The first concerned a new study, based on maps, which suggests that England and Wales have lost almost a third of their grasslands, including wildflower-rich meadows, over the past 90 years. The second was about the ‘catastrophic’ collapse in the number of juvenile salmon in Dorset’s River Frome, described as ‘one of the country’s most important rivers for the species.’ Rivers that had ‘tens of thousands of salmon in the 1980s’ today reportedly have only a few hundred. The head of fisheries at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust was