Culture

The Twitch-hunters, those antsy, intolerant guardians of what it’s permissible to say on Twitter, have claimed another scalp. Eric Bristow’s. The former darts champion, lovably known as the Crafty Cockney, will now probably be better known as hate-speaker thanks to the offence-taking army that took umbrage at his tweets about child abuse. For this quarrelsome mob has the power to destroy reputations, and it looks like it has successfully destroyed Bristow’s. Bristow’s speechcrime, or tweet-crime, was to gruffly express his views on the child-abuse scandal rocking football right now. Last night, somewhat unguardedly, he wrote a series of tweets in which he asked whether it is wise for the former

I was interested to read that police recorded more shoplifting offences in the year ending in March than they have since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard in 2003. The trend was unique among other diminishing types of hands-on thieving, single-handedly driving up the number of ‘property crimes’ reported in England and Wales, according to a study published by the Office for National Statistics. For a blissful moment, I was back in the heady days of Pop Sox and Labour landslides – the light-fingered calf-country of my 1970s provincial working-class girlhood – and as if surprised in adolescent self-abuse, I felt a blush creep up my ears and my heart

However tempting it would be to think otherwise, I don’t think we will be seeing ‘JS’ on Earth again. She is the 14 year old girl who died of cancer and whose mother has won in the high court the right to have her body cryogenically-preserved in the US – against the wishes of her estranged father. There are moral issues involved in this case, but the question of which parents’ wishes should be taken into account in such cases seems rather secondary. Far more to the point is how moral is it for a company to charge £37,000 to preserve your body in ice when nobody has the faintest

Intolerance wears a progressive mask in the 21st century. Students hound political undesirables off campus in the name of ‘protecting diversity’. Adverts are banned from the London Underground in the name of women’s rights. Rappers and other hotheads are barred from Britain on the basis that their utterances are ‘not conducive’ to our good, progressive way of life. And now assorted leftists and tweeters are seeking to punish tabloid newspapers, to starve them of big revenue, in the name of promoting tolerance. Yes, intolerance – in this case of the redtop press and its right to say what it wants – is tolerance. Stop Funding Hate is a new campaign

It’s time to consider Nietzsche’s view of liberal democracy. It couldn’t work, it couldn’t bind a nation together, he said. Why not? Because of its excessive moral idealism. The belief in equality and social justice, which he rightly saw as deriving from Judaism and Christianity, would lead to fragmentation. For politics would be dominated by various disadvantaged groups demanding respect. Any sort of unifying ethos would be treated as oppressive, the ideology of the ruling class. If virtue lies in weakness, and victim status, healthy politics is doomed. It is emerging that he was largely right. Progressive politics, which affirms the liberal or humanist vision, seems to be collapsing. And

I give an after-dinner speech occasionally called ‘Media Training for Dummies’. That may sound condescending, but the dummy in question is me. It’s a compendium of anecdotes about my disastrous media appearances, each more humiliating than the last. At some point I’m going to turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, interspersing the talk with clips so the audience can see that I’m not exaggerating. Until recently, my most embarrassing moment was in New York in 1995, when I took part in a spelling bee broadcast live on the radio. I was the first contestant and my word was ‘barrette’. I’d never encountered this before — it’s the American word for

It used to be the Coca Cola advert that signalled Christmas was on its way. Holidays were coming, and Coke would deliver joy to the world. These days, it’s the John Lewis advertisement that everyone looks forward to. There’s a running theme to these Christmas adverts. A schmaltzy song, a sickly sweet storyline (often with a few animals thrown in, just to make it that bit sweeter), and a happy, Christmassy ending. Hurrah!! This year’s, which was released today, is no different. Personally, though, I’d say that whoever came up with this advert needs a serious dose of reality – and quick. Of course it’s a lovely image; the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed foxes; the

You’d never think the country’s short of foster parents, would you, though we’re 9,000-odd short at the last count.  I wouldn’t qualify myself, even if I were solvent. Because if you open your trap in the presence of a social worker to say that a child is best off with a father and a mother, viz, probably the view of most actual parents, you can kiss goodbye to your chances of looking after a child unless it’s one you have given birth to. I refer, obviously, to the case of the Catholic couple who’ve been told they can’t adopt a couple of children they’ve been fostering since the start of

Many of my friends are terrified of having babies. It’s the childbirth process that frightens them. And once upon a time I would laugh at their concerns and say something, like: ‘yeah, but it’s all worth it.’ Because I love babies. But now I’m terrified of them too, for different reasons. I was recently asked to prepare a talk on the gender pay gap. With an open mind, I spent hours combing over research – to find out if my sex is really underpaid, and – if so – why this is. I came to the conclusion that babies aren’t a good idea for any woman who values her career. Indeed, not the cutest