Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
The teaching unions never let a good crisis go to waste. Following the tragic death of Ruth Perry, the headteacher of Caversham Primary School in Reading, who took her own life after Ofsted told her it was going to downgrade her school from ‘Outstanding’ to ‘Inadequate’, the NEU has called for the Office for Standards
On Monday, a bill was passed by the National Assembly in France that will give courts the power to prevent parents posting pictures or videos of their kids online. The courts will decide, based on the child’s age and maturity, if the consent of both parents is needed, or whether the child’s approval is sufficient.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) produced what his biographer Hugh Brogan called ‘the greatest book ever written on the United States’. Among the most remarkable things about this work – Brogan was referring to the first volume of Democracy in America, not the more abstract second volume – is that Tocqueville’s journey to the United States
On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an
I’ve been gripped by the Telegraph’s Lockdown Files. The 100,000 WhatsApp messages on Matt Hancock’s phone, handed to the paper by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, contain an embarrassment of riches. For those who thought the curtailment of our liberties between March 2020 and July 2021 was justified by ‘the science’, these exchanges will be an
The problem with being a film collector is that the technology on which films are preserved keeps changing. I’m not talking about abandoning my DVD library – although I’ll come to that – but my collection of LaserDiscs. LaserDiscs were a forerunner of DVDs. They were the same size as LPs and you often needed
I was disappointed to learn that the authorities are planning to crack down on dockless bikes and electric scooters. Westminster City Council says it intends to fine the rental firms if vehicles are ‘abandoned’ on pavements, while the Department for Transport is planning to introduce a licensing scheme. This is partly in response to lobbying
For those of us who were cynical about the government’s pandemic response as it was unfolding in real time – as I was – the Daily Telegraph’s ‘lockdown files’ confirm our worst suspicions. Judging from the revelations in the 100,000+ WhatsApp messages from Matt Hancock’s phone that Isabel Oakeshott has handed to the newspaper, the
I’m currently sitting on top of a brownie point mountain. Caroline has departed for a two-week tennis freebie in Barbados, leaving me holding the fort. I have three teenage boys to take care of and a very small dog. That means getting them up for school every morning, emptying and loading the dishwasher, walking the
James Delingpole and I had a blazing row on our weekly podcast on Monday. We were discussing the recent departure of Mark Steyn from GB News following a bust-up over his contract. Mark has been hosting a show on the channel for over a year, but took a break in December after suffering two heart
In a newspaper article five years ago, Michael Gove singled out the tax exemptions enjoyed by private schools thanks to their charitable status as one of the ‘burning injustices’ of our time. He took it for granted that scrapping these benefits would raise money and proposed spending it on children in care instead. ‘How can
Some readers will recall the furore five years ago about the Presidents Club charity dinner at the Dorchester. The Financial Times sent two undercover journalists to work as ‘hostesses’ at the annual fundraiser and their report made uncomfortable reading for the big hitters in attendance, including Nadhim Zahawi. It was not just a men-only event,
About six months ago I was contacted by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, and asked if I wanted to help with an investigation into the surveillance of critics of the government’s pandemic response by state agencies. Would I submit subject access requests to different Whitehall departments to see if I was among
Two and a half years ago, I wrote a column about how I’d started sleeping in my garden office. No, not because Caroline had kicked me out of the master bedroom, but because we were having the house rewired and the builders needed us to vacate our room at seven o’clock every morning. The move
About ten years ago I thought seriously about becoming a Conservative MP. I jumped through a series of hoops and managed to get myself on the candidates’ list. Had I taken the next step, I might have been selected to fight a marginal seat and, given the party’s success in 2019, could have been elected.
Last week, the Office for National Statistics published the data on gender identity in England and Wales, as revealed in the latest UK census. For the first time ever, the census included the following question: ‘Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?’ This was asked of those aged
This week: Stuart Ritchie asks whether we should worry about declining sperm counts (0:29). Mary Wakefield wants to end the term ‘making memories’. (9:00), and Toby Young shares his disastrous Airbnb winter break (15:10). Produced and presented by Natasha Feroze.
Caroline likes to rent somewhere on Airbnb between Christmas and new year to break up the winter holiday. No, not in Courchevel or Barbados, I’m afraid, but something a bit more affordable. Last year, we spent three days in Margate, which worked out quite well, save for the eggy smell on the seafront. This year,
When I imagine the perfect Christmas lunch, I think of the end of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge turns up unexpectedly at his nephew’s house and discovers a warm family gathering: ‘Nothing could be heartier… Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!’ I can picture myself as an old man, parked in front of
According to a quote in a recent article by the environment editor of the Times, I’m ‘the most prominent UK public figure’ whose posts on Twitter related to ‘climate scepticism’ are ‘heavily shared’. This was based on an analysis commissioned by the paper from two researchers at the University of London, Max Falkenberg and Andrea
