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Tessa Mayes
Harassing the paparazzi
The right to take pictures of and write about public figures is far more important than the privacy of Prince William's girlfriend.
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Dolan Cummings
The fag end of America
The gay-bashing Phelps family in Louis Theroux's latest exploration of 'weird America' is a cranky fringe group that reveals nothing about the US.
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Brendan O’Neill
One man is not a mob
The British media claim that an ‘Iranian hate mob’ has demanded the execution of the 15 captured British seamen. Really?
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| Tuesday 3 April 2007 |
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Nathalie Rothschild
...seal hunting?
How seals became the latest poster species for climate change.
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Bill Durodié
Is London still stressed out about 7/7?
A survey claiming that 11 per cent of Londoners were ‘substantially stressed’ by the bombings raises more questions than answers.
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Ken McLaughlin
Multiculturalism: bad for your mental health?
Today's emphasis on 'cultural difference' is one reason why black people get unequal treatment in the mental health sphere.
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Mick Hume
Why Blair can’t get no ‘Falklands Factor’
The twenty-fifth anniversary of Thatcher’s triumph in the South Atlantic throws some light on Britain’s current crises over Iraq and Iran.
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| Wednesday 4 April 2007 |
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Chris Bickerton
‘We all are children of France’
Days of Glory has a less-than-subtle political message: we should all be good patriots now, regardless of our skin colour.
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Patrick West
Football on the box: better than the real thing
The pundits may be too chummy or have hangdog demeanours, but at least TV cuts out all the boring bits.
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Frank Furedi
The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself
NEW ESSAY: How human thought and action are being stifled by a regime of uncertainty.
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| Thursday 5 April 2007 |
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Duleep Allirajah
To boo or not to boo?
Should England fans jeer the England team? Well, what else should they do when they've paid good money to watch Premier League prima donnas play like a bunch of girls?
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Ethan Greenhart
Is it ethical to buy Easter eggs?
Our ethical columnist provides advice on eggs, fish, turkeys and bird flu.
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Dent & Hallsworth
Sweet Jesus…
Easter special: Shirley Dent doesn't buy the cheap iconoclasm of 'Chocolate Jesus', and Dave Hallsworth on all the dirty talk in the Good Book.
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Josie Appleton
Hobby clubs: no under-18s allowed
A new report shows that heavy-handed ‘child protection’ policies mean that some clubs are closing their doors to kids.
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Munira Mirza
‘We’re creating a hierarchy of victimhood’
Neil Addison, author of a new book on religious hatred laws, says the laws are dividing communities and inflaming a ‘grievance culture’.
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| Tuesday 10 April 2007 |
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Obituary
In memory of Gina Owens
Helene Guldberg and Wendy Earle pay tribute to a long-time supporter of spiked who died last month.
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Munira Mirza
Stop pandering to Muslims
UK government initiatives to 'deal with' younger Muslims only leave them feeling more alienated from political life.
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Nathalie Rothschild
…chubby schoolgirls?
The numerous panics about children's bodyshape are more of a problem than whether our kids are too fat or too thin.
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Brendan O’Neill
A lean, mean victim-making machine
The saga of the 15 British servicemen, and the sale of their tales of woe from Iran, reveals a British military that is all at sea.
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| Wednesday 11 April 2007 |
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Bill Durodié
A cultural revolution at Tate Liverpool
Free of Western pessimism, the young Chinese artists on exhibition in Britain are witty and experimental.
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John Dennen
The HighTide of new theatre?
Harp-playing, incest and 7/7: a festival in deepest, darkest Suffolk showcases the work of yoof-ish British playwrights.
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Jennie Bristow
Rule 2: It’s not All About You
Jennie Bristow's guide to subversive parenting tackles the proliferation of mummy identities.
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Tessa Mayes
What’s worse than Big Brother? Little Brother
Tessa Mayes reports on how the British government is recruiting children to spy on and ‘re-educate’ the adult population.
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| Thursday 12 April 2007 |
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Emily Hill
Kate and Pete: the new Charles and Di
Kate Moss is pretty but dim; her boyfriend Pete Doherty is posh and poetic. Meet Britain's new First Couple.
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Rob Lyons
Live Earth: change the record
The anti-development message of the Al Gore-inspired gig planned for July is nothing to sing and dance about.
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Daniel Ben-Ami
Sachs sucks
Celebrity economist Jeffrey Sachs is worshipped by Bono and Co, but his first Reith lecture showed up his painfully low horizons for the world’s poor.
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| Friday 13 April 2007 |
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Ethan Greenhart
Is it ethical to buy exotic plants?
Our ethical columnist on the danger humans pose to bio-diversity.
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Duleep Allirajah
Battering fans, British style
Italian and Spanish cops still like to baton-charge supporters, but the British have found more insidious ways to ruin the game.
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Tim Black
The excruciating comedy of self-censorship
Mitchell and Webb return to mine the gap between inner doubt and public appearance in Peep Show.
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Mick Hume
Sadly, there is no human right to be happy
The case of the British woman denied the right to use her frozen embryos is a cautionary tale of our times.
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| Monday 16 April 2007 |
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Emily Hill
The devil and the detail in the DDR
The Lives of Others, a very human tale of omnipresent surveillance in East Germany, is as taut as a thriller.
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James Woudhuysen
Remembering the Moscow Trials
Amid today's craze for anniversaries, there's one episode in history that nobody – especially on the left – wants to talk about.
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James Heartfield
A new Russian revolution? Get real
Another Russia, the anti-Putin campaign group, commands the front pages of the Western press. But it hasn’t impressed the Russian people.
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| Tuesday 17 April 2007 |
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Neil Davenport
...The Horrors?
Why the British rock band are not
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Alan Miller
The attack on free speech gets hairy
The sacking of US shock jock Don Imus for referring to 'nappy-headed hos' suggests we're all too weak to cope with obnoxious remarks.
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Neil Davenport
Can you cure society’s ills at the blackboard?
A decade after Blair promised to prioritise 'education, education, education', his government still sees schools as a lab for solving every social problem.
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Mick Hume
Browne and Brown: the celeb connection
What links the defence secretary’s mishandling of the Navy sailors debacle with the chancellor’s fantasies of a ‘new seriousness’ in politics?
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| Wednesday 18 April 2007 |
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Kevin Yuill
No law can stop a school shooting spree
What kind of security-on-campus measure could possibly prevent a maniac from lining people up and shooting them?
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Frank Furedi
Virginia Tech: a massacre without meaning
The response to the horrific shootings runs the risk of spreading fear and loathing beyond VT’s dorms to society at large.
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| Thursday 19 April 2007 |
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David Chandler
What next - eco-imperialism?
The British government is making dubious links between climate change and conflict in an attempt to boost its moral authority in global affairs.
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Patrick West
The remote control: a symbol of postmodernity
Nothing confirms the death of narrative like the zapper that lets us pick between a hundred channels without even getting off the sofa.
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Duleep Allirajah
Beer and rowdiness allowed
A new study suggests more fans are watching football in the pub because, thanks to the footie police, stadiums have become dull, rigid and regimented.
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Brendan O’Neill
Turning society into Room 101
‘In denial’, ‘phobic’, ‘hateful’… increasingly, certain kinds of speech are depicted as a sickness, and censorship is seen as the cure.
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| Friday 20 April 2007 |
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Ethan Greenhart
Is it ethical to use pig fat to power motor-cars?
Our ethical columnist on a dangerous and speciesist alternative to oil.
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Mick Hume
Downing Street hoist with its own petition
Celebrity culture and the UK government’s e-mpty e-stunts: read Mick Hume’s columns in The Times (London) this week.
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Matthias Heitmann
Paul Wolfowitz and the politics of corruption
A co-editor of the German magazine Novo says our obsession with scandal is corrupting political debate.
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Dr Michael Fitzpatrick
What’s behind the ‘autism epidemic’?
In the run-up to a debate in London on our 'Autism Nation', Dr Michael Fitzpatrick diagnoses a perverse celebration of a mental disorder.
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| Monday 23 April 2007 |
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Austin Williams
Are environmentalists an oppressed minority?
In TV, film, newspapers, schools and political circles, the green outlook has become the new orthodoxy. And still greens aren't happy.
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Tessa Mayes
How about a bonfire of the Vanity Fairs?
The green issue of the US magazine - all Beautiful People photographed on glaciers - shows how pompous environmentalism has become.
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Rob Lyons
'The IPCC goes looking for
bad news'
An Australian academic who worked on the latest IPCC report says it overstates scary weather scenarios and understates man’s ability to adapt.
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| Tuesday 24 April 2007 |
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Rob Lyons
...toilet paper?
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Martyn Perks
The tyranny of technology
Promoting healthy eating, tackling truancy, improving 'social inclusion': the great potential of IT is being used for instrumental political ends.
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James Heartfield
Yeltsin: the West’s hero-turned-scapegoat
From ‘warrior for democracy’ to drunken buffoon: the former Russian president’s reputation was made and broken by Western pundits.
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Nathalie Rothschild
The ‘politics of behaviour’ with a Tory twist
David Cameron has called for a ‘revolution’ against state interventionism into our lives. It’s a good idea, until you read the small print.
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| Wednesday 25 April 2007 |
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Theresa Clifford
A Greek tragedy on the streets of Baltimore
Good cops, bad cops, kingpins and foot soldiers: TV drama series The Wire is an intricate and humane portrait of a crumbling American society.
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Ellie Lee
Abortion: better ‘late’ than never
A contributor to a controversial study outlines the reasons why women need access to abortion - even five months after becoming pregnant.
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Brendan O’Neill
'Humanising politics – that is my only agenda'
As he turns 60, author Frank Furedi discusses environmentalism, conspiracy theories and the ‘network of McCarthyites’ slurring his name.
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| Thursday 26 April 2007 |
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William Whitehead
Thou shalt not steal church members
A Baptist pastor from New Jersey reveals how low some will go in the Christian turf wars over worshippers.
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James Heartfield
Celebrating the ‘human footprint’
The Channel 4 documentary Human Footprint denies mankind’s positive side and reduces all our output to waste.
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Emily Hill
Anti-malarial bed nets: the $10 insult
Giving nets rather than DDT to Africans sends a powerfully paternalistic message: ‘You can hide from disease, but you cannot eradicate it.’
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Mick Hume
Sackcloth and ashes - the new black
Read Mick Hume's columns this week in The Times (London).
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| Friday 27 April 2007 |
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Patrick West
What’s the point of TV reviewers?
Our TV critic suffers an existential crisis - but satellite documentary channels, all war heroes and weird tribes, come to the rescue.
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Rob Lyons
Getting teary-eyed over 1966
Some are mourning the death of Alan Ball, a member of England's World Cup-winning team, because it reminds us we haven't won the cup in 40 years.
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Ethan Greenhart
Is it ethical to euthanise my grandmother?
Our ethical columnist on how we should stop people from living so long.
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Mick Hume
Not a case of 'plus ça change...'
They might still use the rhetoric of Left v Right, but the presidential election confirms that those days are past in French politics, too.
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| Monday 30 April 2007 |
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Austin Williams
On trial in the Red Star gallery
Sam Tanenhaus, the American editor and author of a book on McCarthyism, proves to be a prickly interviewee.
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Frank Furedi
Politics without sovereignty is not politics at all
He may be a 'professional exile', but a new book reminds Frank Furedi that the ideal of national sovereignty is worth defending today.
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