March 2012
Turning professors into social engineers
Obsessed with furnishing student-consumers with skills, universities now merely train where once they enlightened.
How the West wrecked Libya
Far from being a model for future interventions, Libya shows that meddling strangles the democratic impulse.
Why there’s a crisis of compassion
When society doesn’t respect wisdom and experience, is it any wonder carers don't respect the elderly?
Smoker or non-smoker, your freedom is at stake
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never lit up in your life - you should still be agitated by the paternalism of the plan to put fags in plain packets.
A cult film that won’t be a cult film
Slow thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene – lauded at Sundance, ignored by the Oscars – isn’t challenging, just vague.
Politics and TV: the odd couple
No modern political chat show, including ITV’s new one The Agenda, has a patch on The Wright Stuff.
Why the FA loves gay footballers
A new campaign against homophobia is more about lecturing footie fans than tackling discrimination.
In defence of the Luddites
200 years after Lord Byron’s tub-thumping speech about the Luddites, let us distinguish those radicals from today’s eco-miserabilists.
The myth of the workshy Greek
Ashley Frawley reports from Greece on the reality of the economic crisis: millions of people working hard for low pay or no pay.
Making the fiskalpakt Ireland-proof
The EU is doing everything it can to ensure that the Irish referendum is stitched up before a vote is cast.
A ‘human-rights sceptic’ and proud of it
Anyone who values liberty should be a card-carrying ‘sceptic’ of the European Court of Human Rights.
Why the EU is treating Greece as a moral punchbag
In a speech in Athens, Brendan O'Neill argued that it is the EU's crisis of moral authority that has made it so hysterically anti-Greek.
God save us from atheist whining
A US campaign encouraging atheists ‘out of the closet’ is fuelled more by victim culture than secularist principles.
Why I don’t ‘Like’ this nipple campaign
Facebook’s ban on photos of women’s exposed breasts is silly, but lactivists’ campaign against it is even sillier.
The myth of crazy-eyed African witch-hunters
The horrific murder of Kristy Bamu by unstable individuals has been used to paint all African Pentecostals in Britain as potential nutters.
This state cop-out is a menace to society
The outsourcing of police services to private companies is a far bigger deal than most people realise.
The chattering classes get their Rocks off
Sydney once violently cleared its working-class district of The Rocks – now it has turned it into a tourist hotspot.
Who wants police chiefs to edit a free press?
In the atmosphere of press unfreedom created around Leveson, it seems ‘the public interest’ is now to be defined by… the Metropolitan Police.
Who hasn't done a
little bit of 'stalking'?
In criminalising stalking, the government is outlawing all sorts of normal, if lovelorn behaviour.
We're not all abusers until proven innocent
In casting us all as domestic abusers until the cops say otherwise, ‘Clare’s Law’ gives relationships a battering.
The elites are making
a virtue of intolerance
ESSAY: France’s criminalisation of Armenian genocide denial is only the latest outburst of twenty-first-century state intolerance.
The best inoffensive film to watch with your parents
Yes, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is unchallenging and cliché-ridden. But this bittersweet retiree romp remains a delight.
Why football needs dictators in the dugout
The best way to lead a footie team to victory? Abolish any idea of democracy in the dressing room.
Feeling too much at home with Homeland
If the new US drama induces a sense of déjà vu, that’s because it’s drawn from the same old post-9/11 script.
One year on: the lessons of Fukushima
On the first anniversary of the Japanese tsunami, Rob Lyons asks why some fairly minor damage to one nuclear plant became the story.
The Syrian opposition: handpicked by Hillary
Just because Clinton and others have beatified the Syrian National Council, that doesn’t make it legit.
The West is already meddling in Syria
From economic sanctions to weapons inspections, international forces are already there, making things worse.
Bomb Syria so that I can sleep at night
The most shocking thing about the intervene-in-Syria lobby is not its historical amnesia over Iraq and Afghanistan, but its naked narcissism.
The media showtrial of Smokin’ Stacey
The hounding of Stacey Solomon for having a fag confirms that pregnant women now have little autonomy.
The Kony viral campaign? Dislike
With its inaccuracies and childish arguments, Kony2012 is no help whatsoever to the people of Uganda.
The debt crisis is only the canary in the mine
ESSAY: Demonising debt distracts us from what caused the public-debt crisis in the first place – the sluggishness of the productive economy.
Joachim Gauck: the making of a technocrat
Germany’s next president might believe in personal freedom, but his parliamentary colleagues seem less keen.
The devaluation of disabled people’s lives
Why is it assumed that the only way to help Tony Nicklinson, a man paralysed by a stroke, is to help him die?
Red meat is bad for you? Burger off!
Medical researchers now churn out scary-sounding studies about steak and bacon faster than McDonald's produces Big Macs.
Stand up if you hate this law
Chanting ‘vile abuse’ at other footie supporters shouldn’t be a criminal offence – it is a vital part of being a fan.
Free speech on Facebook? Think again
The prosecution of a teenager for sounding off about British soldiers on Facebook should be of concern to us all.
The moral crusaders who confuse sex with rape
Today’s relentless awareness-raising about an alleged epidemic of rape speaks to officialdom’s suspicion of interpersonal relationships.
Doing Hardy proud in modern India
Thanks to its Indian twist, Michael Winterbottom’s new take on Tess of the d'Urbervilles is no tired costume drama.
Even dopey teens can be good parents
Pramface, a comedy about young people dealing with unwanted pregnancy, is one child of BBC3 worth keeping.
Time to pick Premier League pockets?
Focusing on dodgy foreign owners or crooked British ones ignores the real problem facing British football.
Why eco-activists love His Royal Hystericalness
What does Prince Charles share with his middle-class fanboys? A small-minded, typically aristocratic fear of change and the future.
In memoriam: the
cold-cut warrior
The strange tale of TV butcher Väinö Purje and how his Finnish sausages helped to finish the Cold War.
Bob Dylan and the birth of The Sixties
On the 50th anniversary of the release of Dylan's first album, Frank Furedi looks back at that decade of tumult.
How anti-abortionists are upping the ante
ESSAY: Heated debate about abortion is good - but pro-lifers' new tactic of harassing individual women and doctors is cowardly and wrong.
Meet the students taking on the state
If you think student groups are all PC, censorious bores, you clearly haven't heard of Liberty League.
Plan B's prole porn for the music press
The lauding of his new single 'Ill Manors' shows even youth culture has been colonised by the chattering classes.
The West is helping to crush the Bahrain Spring
US and UK officials are offering Bahrain’s authoritarians everything from PR tips to policing advice for their war against the masses.
‘Billy No Mates’: the new role model
Some UK schools are banning ‘best friends’ to spare children the heartbreak of falling out. Bad move.
Goading Goldman Sachs: a new sport
Half self-promotion, half banker-bashing, there was nothing brave about Greg Smith's resignation letter.
Did they expect fans to boo Muamba for diving?
Behind the united sympathy for Fabrice Muamba, reactions to his ordeal reveal that bigotry about football fans did not end with Hillsborough.
Shisha scaremongering: a load of hubble-bubble
Perhaps those panicking about the British trend for this Middle Eastern pastime should chill out with the pipe themselves.
Why clicktivism now makes us switch off
President Obama is better than most politicians at exploiting social media, but even he can fall victim to mocking memes.
Why gay marriage is a very bad idea
The gay-marriage juggernaut has nothing to do with liberty, and everything to do with providing the elite with a new moral mission.
Out of the darkness and into the light
It starts as a simplistic, sanitised take on the Holocaust, but finally In Darkness becomes the humanising film it needed to be.
TV’s struggle to live in the moment
As period dramas from Downton Abbey to White Heat show, it can be easier to tell a story by setting it in the past.
Football: less than a matter of life and death
Only those with a malign view of fans could be surprised at the universal sympathy for Fabrice Muamba after his heart attack.
The spy who came in from the Cold War
The Red Army toilet-raiding realities of spying certainly exhilarated Steve Gibson, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought doubt, too.
‘People don’t just want to watch Jeremy Kyle’
A WORLDbytes film crew found Londoners in a supposed far-right stronghold took an intelligent approach to welfare.
Minimum pricing means minimising choice
Ramping up the price of booze won't change drinking habits, but it will squeeze just a little more freedom out of life.
Lies, damned lies and ‘pink slime’
It’s not scare stories about ground beef but the anti-industrial prejudices of foodies that should spoil your appetite.
An assault on ‘real’
men - and women
A London poster campaign about male rape is part of a trend to encourage us all to be victims in need of support.
Rare earths and
not-so-rare tensions
The US government’s threat to take China to court for hoarding precious elements is more than just a trade dispute.
Call off this Culture War over Toulouse
Even before we knew the identity of the anti-Semitic school-shooter, people were turning him into a symbol of all that’s wrong with France.
...but tweets will never hurt me
The imprisonment of a UK student for posting ‘aggravating’ tweets about an ill footballer is no LOL matter.
Why fund the politically bankrupt?
State-funded political parties will do greater damage to politics than any number of dodgy donors to the Tory Party.
These granny-bashers really need to grow up
Recent outbursts of anti-pensioner sentiment show just how Malthusian modern thinking has become.
Have the Dardennes fallen off their bike?
The remarkable Belgian filmmaking duo have produced a string of gritty modern classics - this fluffier fairytale is their first flop.
Just a Minute,
radio isn't dead yet
If radio was really an outdated medium, desperate TV producers wouldn’t keep trying to rip off its ideas.
Viewing fans as a riot waiting to happen
Watching football is not a crime, so why are away fans being treated – and manhandled – like criminals?
A Scottish license to kill culture
Bureaucrats north of the border seem to be on a mission to bleed all the spontaneity out of Scotland's thriving cultural scene.
Who wants to live in
Hugh Grant’s ‘ideal world’?
The tabloid-bashing actor-crusader returns to read Lord Justice Leveson’s script on ‘light touch’ state regulation of the press.
The spy who came in from the Cold War
The Red Army toilet-raiding realities of spying certainly exhilarated Steve Gibson, but the fall of the Berlin Wall brought doubt, too.
How to engage with books
Literary criticism needs a revival, but Michael Mack’s assertion that literature is ‘disruptive’ and his suggestion that it should be analysed for how it can help us cope with life won’t do.
Why eco-activists love His Royal Hystericalness
What does Prince Charles share with his middle-class fanboys? A small-minded, typically aristocratic fear of change and the future.
A Byronic defence of the Luddites
200 years after Lord Byron’s tub-thumping speech about the Luddites, let us distinguish those radicals from today’s eco-miserabilists.
Religious belief is more than an evolutionary affliction
A new book attempts to ground a defence of religious freedom in cognitive science, but in doing so it reveals a lack of faith in freedom itself.
Letters from a beaten figure
A collection of William Burroughs’s letters reveals the Beat writer’s thoughts on everything from Denmark and drugs to ringworm and movie stars.
In higher education quality, not equality, matters
Stefan Collini's new book asks What Are Universities For?, but his relativist view of Truth and Knowledge prevents him from giving a satisfactory answer.
No bowing down before Bébé
American journalist Pamela Druckerman’s fascinating look at how the French bring up their children shows that putting adults first is better for everyone – the kids included.
