Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator

Valentine’s Day

One of the many things I love about my wife is that she doesn’t make me do anything for Valentine’s Day. Bloody Valentine’s. It brings nothing but resentment and misery. It makes single people feel left out and lonely and turns happy couples against each other. True, some women might feel a little gratified if

Sorry Laurie Penny, but the patriarchy likes short hair

Boy oh boy do I feel sorry for Laurie Penny. I hope that’s not a sexist thing to say. There she is, doing what she does, churning out perfectly harmless po-mo guff for the New Statesman about ‘why the patriarchy fears scissors‘ because ‘short hair is a political statement’ — and people seem to hate her for it, as

The François Hollande farce is a tragedy for France

François Hollande seems like the European Left’s answer to George W. Bush, a disaster-prone buffoon who somehow makes it to the top and then wrecks his country. The comparison doesn’t quite work, however: Bush II, for all his flaws, had charm, some good fortune, and some political skill: he was re-elected, remember. Francois Hollande seems

Why Time’s Person of the Year should be Pope … Benedict

It seems that everyone agrees Pope Francis should be Time’s ‘Person of the Year 2013’. Better him than Miley Cyrus, at any rate, or Bashar al-Assad, and Francis deserves it, too. This year he has — forgive the media-speak — changed the narrative about Christianity in the liberal world. He’s spreading the Good News, not

The Frogs of war

What happened to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys? Just over a decade ago, the French, having refused to join the allied adventure in Iraq, were the butt of every hawkish joke. (Remember ‘Freedom fries’? Oh how we laughed.) Now, as America and Britain are beating a retreat from the world stage, France has turned into the

How we beat the Boche — at sidecar racing

There’s courage, there’s fearlessness, and then there’s the sort of sublime audacity you need to do something like sidecar racing. Stan Dibben, 87, has it in spades. He won the world sidecar championships in 1953, still whizzes around the racetrack today and is the subject of a beautiful short documentary film by Cabell Hopkins, No

The Speculator: Why I get so excited at goalless football matches

A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football multipliers.’ Multipliers, in case you don’t know, are those enticing combination wagers on bookmakers’ shopfronts: ‘Liverpool win 2-0 + Sturridge to score = 33/1.’ Mugs like me fall for them every time. My subconscious tends

Can you trust a government report on the alternatives to HS2?

As Britain’s train lines suffer in the wake of St Jude, the political storm over high speed rail continues to rage. The government and Labour are playing footsie with each other. Labour’s somewhat left-field idea to re-open the Grand Central Railway — at an estimated cost of £6 billion, compared to £43 billion for HS2

The Speculator: Put a tenner on Osborne as next Tory leader

When you hear the words ‘economic recovery’, do you think: ‘Great! Britain is on the mend’? Or ‘Damn! I should have bet on the Tories to win an outright majority’? If your reaction is the latter, this column is for you. Back in March, when economists were talking about a triple dip and Chancellor Osborne looked like

How is Obama escaping blame for the government shutdown?

Barack Obama may not be a great president, but he is a wizard at the blame game. He has fought ‘fiscal brinkmanship’ battles throughout his presidency, and he tends to come out on top. America’s federal government is today closing down, and most pundits refuse to say it’s in any way the president’s fault. Instead,

Hillary Clinton, the Unstoppable Power Machine

Hillary Clinton is overwhelming favourite to be America’s next President  – and this time nobody, especially not no pesky filmmaker, will get in her way. Charles Ferguson, who was working on a major new documentary about Hillary, has just announced that he’s cancelled the project. The reason? Apparently, the American political class didn’t approve. The

Don’t be daft – last night’s vote was nothing to be ashamed of

Are you ashamed of your country and depressed following last night’s vote against intervening in Syria?  David Aaronovitch  the journalist is. I do not give a fuck what this means for Miliband and Cameron. It’s the message it sends to Assad that counts. I am ashamed. — David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) August 29, 2013 Tim Shipman of the

Notes on…Rome

Leave Florence and Sienna to the aesthetes. Let the in-crowd do Naples and Palermo. For the amateur Italophile, Rome is the destination. The eternal city is endlessly glorious, chaotic, stylish and funny: where else do you see nuns listening to iPods? Or medieval churches with condom machines by the doors? You can barely walk ten

Should we really bomb Syria ‘for show’?

‘Syria won’t go away if we just shut our eyes,’ says the newly ennobled Daniel Finklestein, in today’s Times (£). What he proposes instead is that we support the Prime Minister, then close our eyes and intervene. It is better to do something than nothing. Who knows what will happen? But at least we will

Stephen Fry: the high-priest of juvenile atheism

Well, well, well. Nick Cohen’s excellent column in this week’s mag  has caused a stir today. Sadly, though, Nick’s astute argument became another excuse for a boring slanging match between atheists and believers. And of course Stephen Fry waded in: Mary had a little lamb It’s fleece was white as snow All you religious dicks

The creepy cult of Mark Carney

Of all the qualities one hopes for in a Bank of England Governor – a brilliant mind, the courage to tell politicians they are wrong, supernatural foresight – coolness is not among them. I don’t mean coolness under pressure; clearly that helps. I mean the ability to project a hip image. The new Bank of

I’d vote for DSK the pimp over Weiner the ‘sexter’

You can’t keep a good pervert down. Every time the Dominique Strauss-Kahn saga – l’affaire DSK, to give it its nom propre – threatens to fade from view, it rears its dirty head again. The latest is that DSK was, according to a leaked document written by the magistrates investigating his case, a ‘pimp party king’