The banishing of venerated figures from universities is a relentless exercise in correcting past faults by the standards of the present. Busts or portraits are removed, lecture halls are renamed, and classic works are deleted from the curriculum. University College London has launched an independent enquiry on whether it should continue to honour polymath Sir Francis Galton. The retrospective offence … [Read on]
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, Allen Lane, 2018, £20. Hysteria is a taboo word nowadays. Derided for its original concept of female volatility wreaked by hormones, it also offends the postmodern elevation of emotional truth. Yet the feminist #MeToo movement, a … [Read on]
‘Enoch was right’. A remark sometimes made in below-the-line comments on political websites, but never in polite conversation. The phrase, of course, relates to the pariah figure of Enoch Powell and his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, half a century ago. The event has been marked in mainstream media as a turning point in race relations, with commentators competing for … [Read on]
The most significant events in social history tend to arrive unexpectedly, and only in retrospect do we see their inevitability: the storming of the Bastille, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who would have thought last week that the whole world would be talking about the founder of the English Defence League and the demise of British justice? Tommy Robinson … [Read on]
A metastasis of apartment blocks, the ubiquitous design differentiated merely by an exterior paint job. Cranes mark where another few degrees of vista will be obscured. Just when it seems every possible gap has been filled, magically another site is cleared and the pile-driving resumes. Parsimoniously-sized flats for the urban dweller, cheaply constructed with a narrow balcony overlooking the railway line. … [Read on]
Adulation and glee, as a surge in the youthful Labour vote wins Canterbury and other university-graced seats. The Corbyn cult has certainly gained momentum among the financially challenged younger generation, for the crusty Marxist promises of change from the debt-ridden drudgery of Tory Britain. This dalliance with socialist ideology could be viewed as a swing of the political pendulum, but … [Read on]
