Culture

On Eurovision night, the best and most heartfelt performances always come from the countries imprisoned behind an Iron Curtain not so long ago. Since Romania joined the comity of Eurovision in 1994, its entries have always impressed. It has always known that Eurovision is a rare chance for the peoples of Europe – and its environs – to come together, drink vodka and laugh with (and sometimes at) each other’s entries. The sheer effort that these tiny countries go to, as they show themselves to the world’s largest television audience for a non-sporting event, is testimony to the awesome soft power of Eurovision. Which is why it is scandalous that the European Broadcasting

I see that a small furore has been occasioned by the South Downs National Park. It has urged walkers to stop and talk to one another in a civilised and friendly manner. I do not know what business it is of a national park to enjoin us to act like human beings – these bodies get a little above themselves and part of me would like to tell them to get stuffed. That has been the general response from southerners, such as Clive Aslet, the former editor of Country Life, that magazine which still puts some skanky deb wannabe on page three every week. But still. There is not another

Sometimes, the internet is just the worst. To use the hyperbolese that is common in internet culture, especially in the arch, self-satisfied, Buzzfeeding world of meme-makers and tweeters’n’shakers for whom everything is either ‘literally the worst thing that ever happened’ or ‘everything you need in your life right now’, the internet is the absolute pits sometimes. Take the victory of Boaty McBoatface in the poll to find a name for a new polar research ship. This literally makes me want to eat my computer so that I never have to look at anything on the internet ever again. In fact, if I were compiling a list of 23 Things That Literally

For some reason, possibly homophobic, the media just now is refusing to give any coverage to David Furnish, the spouse of Sir Elton John. I think they are trying to suppress an important argument that Mr Furnish made recently. He pointed out how discriminatory it was that, unlike the wife of a titled man, he derives no title from his knighted spouse. He was too modest to say what title he should be given — and I must say I cannot think of a solution, since ‘Lady John’ would make him sound like the wife of the younger son of a duke — but it is the principle of the thing which

‘Amid the cobbled passageways and tumbling tenements of the Italian city of Perugia, it’s possible to daydream you are in the middle ages. You are surrounded by medieval art and architecture. And then you think: hold on, what happened to the Renaissance?’ So begins Paul Mason’s article for the Guardian on Monday about the Panama Papers, in which he makes the case that because Perugia’s wealthy citizens did not pay their taxes, the city fell into decline. ‘We want to be the Florence, Bruges or Amsterdam of the coming century, not the Perugia,’ he adds. Renaissance Florence may be intoxicating and I don’t doubt that its citizens were possibly better at paying their taxes

However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax havens and see if they really want it. The prime reason that tax havens exist is that taxes in most countries are too high. If they did not exist, the competitive element would be reduced, and taxes would go up even more. The EU constantly complains about ‘unfair tax competition’, by which it really means just tax competition itself. Tax avoidance is what most of us try to do. Resentment about it is largely because the rich find it easier to achieve than the rest of us. This is an

The state pension has just risen by the highest amount in 15 years, and the Tory Party boasts that this is a result of the ‘difficult decisions’ it has taken. This is odd, because no one else is being told about dividends from such decisions. In fact, Osborne’s deficit is still massive so he can’t afford any other giveaways. As I say in my Daily Telegraph column, it’s just the latest clear sign of a kind of generational apartheid in the government’s fiscal policy: the cuts are being focused exclusively on the working age. And this is why Iain Duncan Smith resigned: not due to cuts to disability benefit (which

Although you might not think so, female genital mutilation is a welcome subject to many on the left, because it is one of the few areas in which they can be rude about what they would never, in other contexts, dare to call ‘backward’ cultures. In their hierarchy of virtue, women’s rights trump even those of people oppressed by post-colonialism. Though I am not on the left, I’m against FGM too. But there are a couple of points to think about. One is that FGM is not an inexplicable primitive oddity: it is part of a wider culture which sees sexual relations in a completely different way from the choice-and

It’s a red-letter day here at 22 Old Queen St: Miles Goslett’s exposé of Kids Company has just been named Scoop of the Year. The awards, by the London Press Club, differ from the others in that you can’t nominate and you can’t pay to enter: the shortlist is drawn by a distinguished judging panel. It’s a huge credit to Miles that he won, and an even bigger compliment considering who he beat: the Sunday Times’ Insight investigation into athletics doping, the Sun’s exposé of Lord Sewel’s cocaine habit, and the Daily Mirror’s scoop about how the diamond heist thieves got away with it. For a tiny magazine to beat competition from the

The RSPCA have been in a fair pickle for a while now. It had been without a CEO for two years – after their last one, Gavin Grant, stepped down citing health reasons – until two weeks ago when they announced that Jeremy Cooper, (formerly chief executive of the charity’s ethical food label) would be taking on the role. This comes after reports at the end of last year that three candidates had pulled out, apparently due to concerns over finances, and the fact anyone in the job would be accountable to the charity’s council. Two trustees have also stepped down since September over concerns about the governance of the

I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm. But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch by students of the Right2Debate campaign, which seeks to make universities live up to their principles and respect the right to speak and dispute, they have collected accounts from atheists and secularists of the wretched state of higher education. I should pause to explain that last sentence to the confused. You might have assumed that