Facebook has given new meaning to the saying, ‘Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit’. Social media has brought with it great benefits, but one of the biggest problems associated by many with them is that there seems to have come about post hoc if not propter hoc a diminution in understanding of […]

The Building Better, Building Beautiful commission, headed by Sir Roger Scruton, exists to reclaim beauty in architecture, or to use their own words: to advise the government on how to build new housing with high-quality design tailored to the needs of the community. A lot of the UK’s poorer areas are afflicted by ugly communist-like […]

Is there such thing as ‘reverse racism’? May statements be deemed racist only if uttered by white people? There has been a growing debate around these questions in universities and academic circles more widely in recent months. The student radicals who now occupy positions of power within their unions throughout the United Kingdom seem to […]

There is something Orwellian about the times in which we live. In a recent debate about free speech on the BBC2 Victoria Derbyshire programme, Richard Brooks – the newly-elected Vice-President of the National Union of Students (NUS) – said ‘everyone has an equal right to freedom of speech; however, some people have more equal rights […]

‘Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves’ – William Pitt the Younger Earlier in 2015 Baroness Warsi declared that Britain is fighting an ‘ever-losing battle’ against violent extremists and The Guardian reported that ‘more people were being radicalized in their […]

From time to time determined scientistic voices argue that the Natural Sciences alone are paths to worthwhile knowledge. Now we have the responsible government Secretary of State arguing that students who do not choose science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) subjects at A-Level are making a choice that will ‘hold them back for the rest […]

For the most part having children is not about enhancing choice. It is a practical reality that calls for much forgoing of what parents might want to do – whether listening to music, going to the theatre, having a drink and a chat with friends, or just sleeping. As a result a premium has come […]

As details of the Trojan Horse inquiry make their way into the mainstream press, and as it becomes apparent that there really was something very troubling going on in certain state-funded schools in Birmingham, it is to be expected that questions be asked about the place of religion in schools. But while the ‘hardline and […]