Lara Prendergast is executive editor of The Spectator. She hosts two Spectator podcasts, The Edition and Table Talk, and edits The Spectator’s food and drink coverage.
Simon Danczuk’s lightning-fast suspension from Labour – as they investigate whether he sent ‘lewd’ texts to a seventeen-year-old girl – is an embarrassing note to end the year on. Especially for an MP like Danczuk who has spent much of the last few years positioning himself as a campaigner against child abuse. He has described today’s story in the Sun as being ‘not entirely
In the new year the EU referendum battle will heat up, and it seems the Conservative party are already starting to shuffle things around in preparation. Stephen Gilbert, the party’s current deputy chairman, has today announced that he is standing down from this position. When Gilbert originally became deputy chairman, it was agreed that he
Uber aren’t going to be thrilled to hear that Muhaydin Mire, the man who has been arrested on suspicion of knifing a man at Leytonstone station, while shouting ‘This is for Syria’, was reportedly one of their drivers. On social media, London cabbies have already started to capitalise on this, by making the case that you’re better
‘What’s worse: people who add French flags to their Facebook profiles, or those who sneer at them?’ asks my colleague Isabel Hardman on Coffee House today. ‘Haven’t we always offered small gestures to commemorate sad events? Or to show respect? Why do we buy poppies in November, and feel under-dressed without them?’ In some ways,
Last night, terrorists launched a total of six coordinated attacks at high-profile sites across Paris. French prosecutors have put the current death toll at 128, with 99 critically injured. There were two suicide bomb attacks at a bar near the Stade de France where President Hollande was watching the match. One witness told the Mail: He felt like
The news that the V&A had rejected an offer of Margaret Thatcher’s wardrobe was met with dismay yesterday. ‘Shame the V&A has turned down Thatcher’s personal collection. I for one would have loved to see it!’ said the business secretary, Sajid Javid, on Twitter. Conor Burns MP suggested that the collection’s breakup would be a ‘tragedy’.
The V&A have defended their decision to turn down the offer of Margaret Thatcher’s wardrobe on the basis that it only collects items of ‘outstanding aesthetic or technical quality’ rather than those with ‘intrinsic social historical value’. Yet in the same statement, they also suggest that the museum is responsible for ‘chronicling fashionable dress’. I’m not entirely sure
I hadn’t really thought much about pixels before, despite spending a large portion of my day looking at them. After all, a pixel is just a tiny unit in a digital image, and we all tend to look at the bigger picture. But how about this: this humble unit has now become a key feature
There was much talk about the anti-austerity party Podemos when we visited Andalucía in June. It was hot and sunny, and the orange trees smelt wonderful, but at the same time, youth unemployment sat at 49 per cent, second only to Greece, and that seemed to be what people wanted to chat about. Podemos, which
Another week, another appalling boat disaster in the Mediterranean, another round of the same tired row on migration. Yesterday a boat carrying 600 people sank off the coast of Libya; 400 people were rescued, the rest are feared dead, trapped in the belly of the boat. This morning the same round of cliches are being trotted out. The
Five months after the Charlie Hebdo attack, a man has reportedly been found decapitated in a factory building in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near Lyon. Details are still coming through, but it seems that that one assailant, who has been arrested, claimed to be a member of Islamic State and reports suggest he was ‘known to the security services’. It appears that the
More bad news for Malaysia, I’m afraid, where a group of tourists have apparently managed to trigger an earthquake simply by taking their clothes off. Last Friday, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sabah, Malaysia’s easternmost state, triggering landslides on Mount Kinabalu which killed 18 people. Tragic, and quite clearly the blame must fall on the
The Stepford Student website is full of interesting articles on current affairs. For instance ‘I couldn’t give a single flying shit about electoral reform’ by Nathan Akehurst and ‘Vote for whoever the fuck you want’ by Edgar Sait-Jones. There’s something for everyone. ‘Tim Lott’s annoying but Rod Liddle is a fuckbadger’ by Ruby Lott-Lavigna, would, I am sure, amuse Rod. Tim Lott might be
Prince Charles’s ‘black spider’ letters have just been released. Here are seven things we learnt about the future monarch from the correspondence: 1) He wants consumers to buy British (from a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2004): 2) He is worried about defence spending (from a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 2004): 3) He
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/panictimefordavidcameron-/media.mp3″ title=”Lara Prendergast and Louise Bailey, a hair extensions specialist, discuss the hair trade” startat=1622] Listen [/audioplayer]Perhaps you recall the moment in Les Misérables when Fantine chops off all her hair? The destitute young mother sells her long locks, then her teeth (a detail often excluded from child-friendly adaptations) before she is eventually forced
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a feminist. ‘No! I despise the word!’ she replied. ‘I never thought of myself as a woman in any conscious way. I’m an artist.’ It is pretty obvious, though, that the Sonia Delaunay retrospective at Tate
Organisers at a National Union of Students Women’s Conference have asked that those attending the event use ‘jazz hands’ instead of clapping, because it is ‘triggering anxiety’. Nona Buckley-Irvine, a general secretary at the London School of Economics Students’ Union (LSE SU), was reported as saying that ‘jazz hands are used throughout NUS in place of clapping
A pal recently told me a story. It was about a friend of theirs who had been travelling on a train last summer, one of those old fashioned trains, with the windows that let you open the door from the outside. He was leaning on the door with his arm resting outside when another train suddenly passed by and clipped his
There’s no better way to improve character and cure self-consciousness than to insist your child dress like a fool during their formative years. Distinct fashion tribes exist at some of Britain’s top schools and a boring old blazer simply won’t do. You can never be overdressed or overeducated, suggested Oscar Wilde. But why not at
British film-maker Leslee Udwin’s video interview with one of the Delhi rapists may not make for comforting viewing, but there are some home truths in there that must be faced up to. In the past hour, the Indian government has banned the video – a move which is both cowardly and futile. They fear the rapist’s remarks