Should parents take their children on

holiday during term time?

Parents defying court fines to take advantage of cheaper travel prices outside the school
holidays have been making headlines but are they wronged by the system or just
selfish?

Holidays, some parents argue, can be just as valuable to a childs education as

classwork. Photograph: Alamy
Barbara Ellen and Julian Baggini
Saturday 24 October 2015 15.59 BSTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
201514.57 GMT

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While there will always be over-entitled nitwits who push it too far, most
people would self-regulate
Barbara Ellen
Barbara Ellen, Observer columnist An Isle of Wight father, Jon Platt,
hasoverturned a court fine for his daughters unauthorised absence from
school on a family holiday, successfully arguing that this did not represent a
failure to attend school regularly. Its also reported that even though
authorised absences have dropped since the introduction of stricter rules in
England in 2013, theres been a rise in unauthorised absences and parent
fines. Is it appropriate to quasi-criminalise parents for briefly taking
their own children out of school? Schools used to have more leeway to grant
leave, and widespread anarchy failed to ensue. Now the system seems to be
about control for the sake of it, and its little wonder that some parents are
rebelling against such authoritarian interference. Everyone knows about the
appalling price hikes during official school holidays, with poorer families
suffering most. Then there are the wider holistic benefits of term-time breaks.
Shouldnt education be about enlightening and enriching children in the
broadest possible sense far beyond the classroom walls?
Julian Baggini, writer and philosopher If the question is whether we
should quasi-criminalise parents then we are in total agreement that the
answer is no. Id concede even more: there are times when it is entirely
appropriate for parents to take their children out of school during term time.
To come up with strict rules to determine when this is OK would be
impossible, so headteachers need their discretion restored. However, it also
seems obvious to me that parents have become too keen and too willing to
remove kids in term time when it should only be done in extraordinary
circumstances. Chaos didnt use to ensue, for sure, but that was in part
because the vast majority of parents accepted the restrictions that go with
having kids in school. Not any more. Something has changed and that appears
to be an increased desire to choose what is best for ourselves with scant regard
for what is best for the wider community as a whole. And this seems equally
true of too many left-leaning middle class parents who join the chorus
decrying selfish individualism and advocating collective solidarity, even while
taking off on their mid-term holiday. Such leaves of absence should be the rare
exception, not the rule. Are we still in agreement?

Half-term holidays cost up to

three times as much
Read more
BE Absolutely. Of course self-regarding parents cant just grab the kids and
zoom off whenever the mood takes them, and without a thought for the school
syllabus. However, while there are always going to be over-entitled nitwits
who push it too far, I think that most people would be effortlessly selfregulating. In my opinion, the former system worked fine it was neither too
restrictive nor too lenient. We once asked for a solitary Friday off for an
important occasion, and by the end it felt as though we were practically
signing our souls away for the privilege with quills dipped in sacrificial chicken
blood.
Joking apart, the old system trundled along just fine, so why change it? This
isnt about being able to afford Disney holidays (though theres nowt wrong
with that). For me, this is about cooperating fully with your school, while
retaining a modicum of parental agency, to occasionally turbocharge your own
childs hinterland, beyond what the Department for Education deems is
inspiring, valuable, or necessary.
JB So you think we are in the grip of a moral panic, there is no trend for
parents to take more term-time holidays and there is nothing to worry about?
Id like to settle that issue by pointing to some good, hard data on long-term
trends in elective absenteeism, but it seems there are no reliable statistics to
clinch the case either way. If you can prove that we are crying wolf, you will

see me immediately and embarrassingly conducting a complete U-turn.

Whatever the numbers say, however, there is a question of what we ought to
be emphasising: the responsibility of parents to keep their children in school
as much as possible, or their right to take them out when they please. In this
rhetorical battle, I do think that the individual liberty argument is given too
much weight and the plea for social responsibility argument too quickly
dismissed as nannyism. Think, for instance, of the teachers who have to take
time to set work for the students to do while away and then mark it. Avoiding
peak times for breaks might be good for those fabled ordinary, hard-working
families, but its one more complication for their extraordinary, hard-working
teachers.
The value of out-of-school learning is real, but often a convenient alibi for
selfishness
Julian Baggini
BE I agree about not sabotaging already beleaguered teachers and the danger
of polarising viewpoints. One bit of data I keep seeing that supports your side
argues that just one week off school damages GCSE results, which seems
somewhat alarmist. Obviously, its the parents responsibility to ensure that
their children attend school, not just regularly, but all the time. That said,
couldnt elective truancy for the truly unmissable also be beneficial? I was
toying with the idea of a different set of parents every year officially being
given the opportunity for term-time time out until every child has done it by
the end of their school career. It would serve as a kind of kids sabbatical, if
you like, with the children being encouraged to explain to their classmates
what theyd been up to with an assembly on their return. But maybe thats
slipping too deeply into a hippy reverie not to mention presenting a
logistical nightmare for teaching staff? Im not asking for parents to have all
the power, and do exactly as they please Im saying that, in my opinion, the
former (perhaps stricter than some recall) system generally worked fine, and it
was a mistake to change it. It seemed to turn a quietly manageable situation
into a playground wild west.
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JB The value of out-of-school learning is real, but often a convenient alibi for
selfishness. I remember one family who took their child out of school for a trip
to Africa that would indeed have been a richer experience than a week in class.
But they only did it in term time to suit themselves and save a bit of cash they
could have afforded. I suspect this kind of middle-class manipulation of the
system is much more common than genuine cases of hard-pressed families

who cannot afford holidays when schools out. Theres another important
lesson children should learn though: we cant always do what suits ourselves
and expect others to work around us.
But youre right to think we ought to look for more imaginative solutions than
the ridiculous expansion of fines. Id favour each school choosing a different
week each term in which everything is extra-curricular and allowing term-time
holidays then. That would mean that those left behind would also have a
different kind of enrichment to the grind of the exams factory. I hope thats
hippy enough for you.

Pensioners prosper, the young suffer.

Britains social contract is breaking
David Willetts
The decline of poverty in old age is good news, but we need measures to ensure that
everybody benefits

Its good to see fewer pensioners living in poverty. Photograph: Alamy

Saturday 24 October 2015 21.03 BSTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
201509.35 GMT

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It marks a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of different generations. Last
week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that the median income of

pensioners (394 per week) is now higher than the median income of the rest
of the population (385 per week).
In many ways, this is a triumph. Nobody wants to see pensioners struggling in
poverty. And we might hope that the forces driving up the incomes of todays
pensioners will similarly boost incomes of the generations coming after.
But if we investigate what lies behind the headline figures we see that this is
not a simply benign economic and social trend from which we might all expect
to benefit. Instead, there are some specific reasons why especially younger
pensioners, the boomers who are now retiring, have ended up enjoying
spectacular advantages that may not boost incomes of the generations coming
after them.
We can get a good idea of how this has come about if we look behind the
headline figures. First, they measure incomes left over after deducting housing
costs. More and more old people own their homes with the mortgage paid off.
They have very low housing costs.

Old-age benefits cant be

sacrosanct for ever
David Brindle

Read more
Meanwhile, younger generations struggle to get on the housing ladder, with
high rents for poor quality property. We simply are not building anything like
the number of houses we need. Through the 1950s and 1960s, we were
building 300,000 houses a year but now, despite all the governments efforts,
we are only at about half that. Getting more houses built and bringing down
the cost of housing is crucial to reducing this gap between the generations.
Pensioners are also doing well because of the triple lock protecting their
incomes. This means the state pension is boosted by either inflation or

earnings or 2.5% whichever is highest. This is a ratchet that means whatever

the state of the economic cycle the state pension keeps on going up. So even
when earnings were not increasing, pensioners kept enjoying increases in
their pension because it was linked to prices. Inflation has now dipped below
zero but, because earnings are going up by 2.9 %, pensioners are going to do as
well as workers next April.
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Increases in the female state pension age do provide some offset to these costs
for the exchequer. Nevertheless, the annual ratchet of the triple lock raises
public spending at a time when the government is, for example, planning cash
cuts in the incomes of working people on tax credits. One estimate suggests
that the triple lock is already costing around 6bn a year, significantly more
than the 4.5bn cut to tax credits from next April that is causing so much
controversy.
What does this mean for households? Well, a pensioner couple with an income
of around 15,000 can expect it to rise by roughly 300 as a result of the triple
lock. This contrasts with Resolution Foundation estimates of a loss from tax
credit cuts of around 1,500 for a family with one child in which a single
earner brings in that same 15,000 (and thats even after accounting for the
welcome rise in the minimum wage promised by the chancellor).
The figures for the incomes of older people are rising not just because of their
pensions it is their total income. More and more pensioners work. Again,
this is a good thing. But they have a clear bonus over younger counterparts
because they pay no national insurance contributions. So, for the same pay
rate and the same work they will take home more pay than a younger
colleague working beside them.
There is another factor, too. The company pension used to be a pretty basic
promise to pay a cash income if you stayed with the firm for a long time. But
successive governments have legislated to increase the protection for these
pensions, such as adding ever more requirements for price indexation. Sounds
good. But such measures have the crucial drawback of making the cost of
providing such pensions so high that companies have opted out from
providing them for future generations of workers. The company pension has
turned into an unrepeatable special offer for one generation.
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The promise to them is so expensive that it has created big pension deficits
that have to be plugged out of the revenues generated by the company
workforce. These pension contributions are recorded as a return to labour but
they dont benefit younger employees who are working to generate revenues to
plug deficits in pension schemes that they cannot themselves join. These
pension contributions are one reason why take-home pay is lagging behind
overall performance of the economy. Young people are paying to boost
pensions that they are not themselves ever going to benefit from.
The decline of pensioner poverty is good news. But not enough of it is a story
of wider prosperity enjoyed by everyone. Too much is a specific generation
benefiting in an unrepeatable way. Some is a deliberate decision to help people
above a certain age and so younger people might hope one day to gain, but
even here we can ask if it really is the best use of limited resources. We are
reshaping the state and storing problems for the future by creating a country
for older generations. The social contract is a contract between the generations
and in Britain it is being broken. So we need to help. A key driver is housing
costs. That is why we need to get more housing built. It is outrageous when
older owner-occupiers, having benefited from earlier waves of home-building,
object to new housing.
We also need to support affordable pension schemes that younger people can
join, help them into work through more places at university and better
investment in skills.
I do not believe that todays pensioners are greedy geezers. They worry about
their own children and grandchildren. In fact, some of these extraordinary
benefits are going to be saved up to pass on to their family. But they are in a
state of denial about what is happening across the generations as a whole.
Sometimes, this is justified by arguing that somehow the younger generation
are feckless or incompetent. But they are not. They are decent and hard
working. We have a duty to them just as much as we have to the older
generation. And if we do not discharge it to them now then why in the future
as they come to hold power and influence should they feel any obligation to
older people?
As the bumper sticker says: Be good to your kids they choose your nursing
home. That is not just true for individual families: it is true for our country as
well.

David Willetts is a former minister for universities and science, executive

chair of the Resolution Foundation and author of The Pinch

One law for steelworkers. Another for

farmers
Kevin McKenna
The government needs to be as generous with the steel industry as it was with banks and
farmers

The Tata steelworks In Lanarkshire. Photograph: Mark Runnacles/Getty

Images
Sunday 25 October 2015 00.02 BSTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
201509.01 GMT

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It was the Queen I felt for most last week. As head of the Church of England
we can only guess at the maelstrom of emotions in her head as she welcomed
the president of China to her table at Buckingham Palace. Being one of the
worlds most influential Christian leaders, Good Queen Elizabeth will not be
unaware thatXi Jinping has been an enthusiastic participant in one of his
countrys most popular civic pastimes: giving the Christians a right good
kicking and keeping them down. Of course, diplomatic protocol forbids the
Queen even having a word in the ear of Xi about the intimidation of Christians
and the routine torture and murder of Chinese citizens if they speak out of
turn.
The Queen, poor soul, has been through this distressing charade oftentimes
before. The close relatives of President Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania must
have gained solace from the knowledge he went to his death by firing squad
comforted by the still-fresh images of his red-carpet treatment by the Queen
several years before. But thats the Queen for you, friend of the friendless,
comforter of murderous dictators everywhere.
And you have to feel sorry for David Cameron too. There he was, having
cleared four days in his calendar to bow and scrape to this dismal sociopath in
the hope that the vile Chinese government would choose the UK to be its
principal trading partner in Europe. The things you have to do these days to
save British jobs. Mind you, they do have to be the right sorts of jobs.
Obviously, the thousands of UK jobs that went up in smoke last week as a
direct result of China dumping cheap, inferior and state-assisted steel into the
marketplace was unfortunate and, goodness gracious me, the timing could
have been better. But what are a few thousand steel jobs and an entire heavy
industry in truculent Scotland when theres the chance to do business with the
worlds richest dictatorship?
Placed alongside the obvious discomfort and embarrassment to the Queen and
her prime minister, the steelworkers who lost their jobs and their families
dont really have much to worry about at all. If theyd been reading the right
sort of newspapers they would have discovered that the globalisation that put
paid to their jobs has actually made them richer and happier, job or no job.
Dont they know that millions fewer people all over the world are living in
absolute poverty and that median incomes have grown by more than 75%,
according to the World Bank?
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Surely they must know that, under Conservative doctrine, the rule of the
marketplace and of competition must be paramount in every facet of British
life, even when youre trading with a country that murders its citizens,
strangles free speech, artificially distorts the marketplace and breaks the rules
of competition?
Such is the anthem of the hard right that now holds sway in this country and
that was sung all week by its acolytes: move along, nothing to see here. Its just
another heavy industry being dismantled and a working-class community
whingeing for state intervention and, ha-ha, nationalisation.
The change to Westminsters standing orders that will exclude Scottish MPs
from voting on English-only matters was just the cherry on top for the Tory
hard right. It was their way of saying: Were the masters now. North of the
border, perhaps we should consider reserving our taxes for Scotland-only
services.
Who cares if 250,000 children in Scotland are living in poverty, after all?
Theyre not living in absolute poverty. And just be thankful that youre even
getting 6.50 an hour because millions of others born in the wrong country
dont even have roofs over their heads. We are told that globalisation sets its
own rules and that there is nothing you or I can do about it and that the state
cannot intervene artificially to save economically stricken communities. It all
depends, though, on whether you belong to the right kind of community.
Will preserving what remains of the steel industry in Scotland and a plant in
Scunthorpe cost the taxpayer as much as it did (and continues to do) in 2008
when the state partially nationalised the banks and pumped in 500bn of our
money to prop them up? Criminal behaviour, corruption and lies had brought
some of these banks to their knees yet they were rewarded with a bail-out that
cost each family in the UK more than 2,000. The conditions attached, such
as lending more to small businesses, ending the culture of grotesque bonuses
and smaller home deposits, have all been cheerfully ignored.
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Perhaps if the steelworkers had been farmers they might have expected some
government intervention. In 2001, the government spent almost 1bn
compensating farmers following the foot and mouth disease and made37 of
them overnight millionaires amid claims from within the National Farmers
Union itself that the compensation system had been rigged. Nor were some in

the farming community brought to book for many of the questionable and
risky feeding practices that partly contributed to foot and mouth.
The steelworkers, though, are a different breed: they are expendable and, just
like the miners and the shipbuilders, when their time comes, the rest of us are
told that they didnt upskill enough and were hostile to change management.
They were working in a dying industry. Yet the last time I looked the world
was still using lots of coal, many people were still using ships to sail the seas
and steel is still used in the construction of bridges and buildings. And if
demand ever wanes then we can get the Americans, supported by us, of
course, to start a wee war somewhere.
The artificially depressed steel prices will not remain so and will climb again,
so nationalising the industry for a few years, as we did with the banks and
effectively did with the farmers, makes sense. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeons
SNP government must expedite the temporary nationalisation of the two steel
plants in Motherwell and Cambuslang. The price for doing this must be set
against the cost, for the next three generations, of unemployment and the
physical and mental wellbeing of a community.
If millionaire bankers and affluent gentlemen farmers are worth saving, then
so are our steelworkers.

Its a victory for the status quo but all is not

yet lost for Francis

Andrew Brown
Pope Francis may have lost this battle for reform but at least he has changed the
conversation

Pope Francis waves as he leaves at the end of the Synod of bishops at the
Vatican. Photograph: Alessandra Tarantino/AP
Saturday 24 October 2015 19.53 BSTLast modified on Saturday 24 October
201522.02 BST

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Pope Francis appears to have been defeated after a bruising battle with
conservative Catholic forces over his attempt to humanise the treatment of
divorced and remarried couples. A second meeting of bishops from around the
world, in a synod on the family, will probably end with no movement on the
inflamed question of whether some divorced and remarried couples can be
admitted to communion.

Vatican synod holds its line on

gay couples but offers new hope
to Catholic divorcees
Read more

This may be scored as a draw between liberals and conservatives, but it has
been contested as venomously as a Test match draw and almost as publicly.
Briefings, leaks, reports vehemently denied that the pope has a brain
tumour, and threats of schism have all been used. According to the
conservative Catholic blogger Damian Thompson, the next conclave an
occurrence which would require Franciss resignation or death cant come
soon enough for many conservatives. And this is the least hysterical language
from that side.
The German delegation, broadly liberal, has issued a stinging denunciation of
the conservative Australian Cardinal George Pell for language which was
false, imprecise and misleading. In an interview with the French
newspaper Le Figaro, Pell had accused the liberal German cardinal Walter
Kasper of opposing Pope Benedict XVI, and this must have seemed a wholly
unforgivable attack. The German cardinals said the words had offended
against the spirit of the synod and its fundamental rules We distance
ourselves decisively from this.
It will take a long time for the wounds to heal. Such open denunciations of
senior cardinals by one another are quite unprecedented in recent history. Pell
was personally chosen by the pope to clean up the Vaticans finances, while
among the Germans who signed the letter were Gerhard Mller, the head of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the enforcer of doctrinal
orthodoxy, and Christoph Schnborn, the favourite pupil of Benedict XVI.
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Mller, as it happens, is on the same conservative side about change as Pell
but passions are running high. What makes the whole spectacle astonishing is
that they are arguing over something which already happens, and everyone
knows must happen. Catholics get divorced and remarried at about the same
rate as everyone else. If a remarried Catholic couple in good standing with the
congregation present themselves at the communion rail, they will not be
turned away as sinners.
Officially, however, they are adulterers, living in sin, who renew their sinful
status every time they have sex. The only way out of this is to get a certificate
annulling the first marriage, a chancy, prolonged and sometimes humiliating
bureaucratic procedure. For conservative Catholics, this principle is a central
part of their faith. For outsiders, it seems part of a lack of realism about sex,
credible only to a body where policy is made by celibate men.

What makes the official position so damaging is that it implies that having sex
makes committed relationships more sinful and less loving. That is so contrary
to the way lay people experience their lives that it cannot be respected. On the
other hand, it is all of a piece with the churchs condemnation of artificial birth
control, another dogma which is, in practice, utterly ignored.
The Catholic church in Europe and the US is sharply divided between liberals
and conservatives, mostly over issues of sexual morality. The liberal faction in
the rich and influential German church, led by Cardinals Kasper and Marx,
had hoped to tidy the situation by allowing some remarried couples to
undergo a penitential journey, repenting of the failure of their first
marriages before the church would admit them to communion in their second
ones. It seems clear that Francis was in favour of this solution. As pope, he can
of course impose it if he wants to. He hoped, however, that free and honest
discussions among the bishops would produce a clear majority in favour of his
preferred plan. This hasnt happened. The fury of the German church makes
that clear.
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So what will Francis do? In his early career he was so autocratic as leader of
the Jesuits in his native Argentina that when his period in office finished he
was exiled by them to the provinces. Relations with his fellow Jesuits have
never entirely healed. This makes it doubtful that he will attempt to impose a
solution on the conservatives today.
His immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, worked tirelessly
for 30 years to impose their views on liberals. Between them, they appointed
the great majority of the bishops now disputing their legacy. In one sense, this
divided synod is a testimony to their failure to ensure a conservative
succession as much as to Franciss inability to drive through a more liberal
line.
And this may be Franciss real victory: by showing that disagreement on these
matters is possible, he is encouraging Catholics to think for themselves. God
knows where that could end.

Feminism isnt dead, despite all the

assassination attempts

Laura Bates
The proclaiming of the end of feminism by the Spectator and others is merely an
attempt to deflect blame for problems society has failed to tackle

Sisters Uncut protest at the Suffragette premiere about cuts to domestic

violence services. Theres a feverish desperation to portray modern feminism
as obsessed with body hair and lipstick. Photograph: Ben Pruchnie/Getty
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Sunday 25 October 2015 13.30 GMTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
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Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. The front page of the Spectator and a
spate of other articles would have us believe the battle is won and we can now
move on.
I cant be the only one who thinks this is wonderful news. We highly strung,
hand-wringing, over-sensitive, perpetually offended wilting violets can hang
up our suffragette-coloured hats, stop combing Twitter in desperate search of
minor criticism to weep about and finally stop hating all the men for long
enough to get boyfriends. Rejoice!
Except there are still just a few minor issues to sort out. As kind as it is of
the Spectator (that great bastion of equality, which recently brought us a blow
by blow comparison of the looks of the female Labour leadership contenders)
to let us poor weary feminists off the hook, theres a bit of a catch. Women
are still being murdered by their male partners every week; 85,000 of us are
still being raped each year and 400,000 sexually assaulted; while 54,000 of
us lose our jobs each year because of maternity discrimination. British women
earn about 19% less than men overall, there are fewer of us running FTSE 100
companies than there are men named John. We are the majority of low-paid
workers and the domestic and caring work we do is unpaid and undervalued.
At school, one third of us will suffer unwanted sexual touching, also known as
sexual assault, between the ages of 16 and 18. One in four of us will experience
domestic violence. But you already know all that. Youve heard it all before.
The Spectator and others are terribly thoughtful to offer us a break, because it
is a bit tiring, really, to repeat these statistics over and over again. Its difficult
to keep banging on about a problem that remains unsolved, while a vocal
section of the population sticks its fingers in its ears and sings: Nah nah nah
nah naaaah, I cant hear you!

There is a bit of a glitch in their plan though, because angrily denying that a
problem even exists tends to be one of the clearest indicators that a society has
yet to get to grips with it.

Groups such as Sisters Uncut are

the modern suffragettes
Ellie Mae O'Hagan

Read more
So what is the source of this growing angst about feminism? If the movement
truly were fading to an obscure death, as so many commentators suggest, you
might think that front-page articles declaring its proponents feminazis and
trumpeting its demise would hardly be necessary. The real clue is to be found
in the articles themselves, which fixate on objections to wolf whistles and urge
us to get a grip and admit that the real reason for the under-representation of
women in politics is womens own gooey fixation with babies. (Dont worry,
therell be an emergency feminist meeting where we can get together and work
out what to do now the secret ovary-aching truth has been revealed.)
Both arguments suggest a stricken, defensive desire to deflect any sense of
blame from the majority of men. If we maintain that there might be some
connection between the treatment of womens bodies as public property in the
street and the fact that they are discriminated against in the workplace, were
suddenly suggesting wolf-whistlers might have to reconsider their behaviour.
If we foist the burden for discrimination on womens own uncontrollable
hormones, theres no longer any public responsibility to do anything about the
problem, because its perfectly natural.
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Some are also keen to remind us that we once had a female prime minister
and the Queen is a woman, so what on earth can we still have to make a fuss

about? And theres a feverish desperation to portray modern feminism as

obsessed with body hair and lipstick, issues that werent exactly top of the
agenda when Sisters Uncut staged their protest at the Suffragette premiere,
objecting to deep cuts to vital domestic violence services.
Whats really happening here is an increasing anxiety among those in
positions of power about the growing impact of feminism. So, there is a
defensive attempt to undercut it by painting feminists as wailing whingers
crying about nothing, or humourless harpies attacking innocent men. So we
saw the Sir Tim Hunt case, which resulted in UCL taking the independent
decision to discontinue his relationship with the university as an ambassador,
portrayed as the brutal destruction of a noble, misunderstood man by
an influential, furious online mob. All this falls down a bit if you stop to take a
quick look at the actual online feminist response, which focused largely on a
humorous and positive campaign by female scientists to raise awareness of
their diverse work.

The seven priorities for young

feminists today
June Eric Udorie

Read more
There remains a deep and insidious belief that by advocating for women, we
must somehow be trying to take something away from men, and it is that fear
that is funnelled into anti-feminist front pages. But feminism has so much to
offer everybody, regardless of gender. Those who are concerned about
problems disproportionately affecting men, such as the high male suicide rate,
are not diametrically opposed to feminism, but actually on the same side. We
all want to see an end to the outdated gender stereotypes that tell us boys are
tough and dont talk about emotions, while women are weak and weepy. The
men who claim they are given an unfair hearing in custody disputes are
actually objecting to the same stereotypical notions about gender roles that see

women routinely sidelined and even sacked because they are considered a
maternity risk. Harnessing the potential of the whole of society, instead of
just half, will havebeneficial outcomes for everybody. This isnt about men
against women, its about people against prejudice.
So I hope youll forgive me if I decide, on reflection, to forgo the first part and
just stick with the second: long live feminism.

Royal kisses on the cheeks of a flatulent superpower

Stewart Lee

Instead of wearing a booby-trapped papier-mache head of the Dalai Lama, as was

feared, Jeremy Corbyn wore a black jacket

Free Tibet campaigners in London last week. Photograph: Kristian Buus/In

Pictures/Corbis
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201510.18 GMT

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Last weekend, residents of our east London thoroughfare were told to remove
their vehicles, clearing the route for an exceptionally wide and potentially
hazardous load. Perhaps your mum, who I believe lives locally, had ordered a
new pair of pants from Littlewoods?
Rising on Tuesday to a thunderous ding dong, I saw Free Tibet protesters
fleeing west while nervous Chinese students waved identical banners reading
Welcome and, in much smaller letters, Made in China.
Dispersing demonstrators, police ensured the welcomers were in place as the
object of their obligations began its progress past my window. It was, at some
100 feet across, and mounted on tiny casters, nothing less than a massive
Chinese arse.
With the silent authority of a vast totalitarian slug, the massive Chinese arse
rolled over the buckling tarmac, shiny in the sun, with all farts coming out of
it, speeding its gaseous progress towards Westminster.
Having flown in from China, suspended between four Chinooks, the massive
Chinese arse sat down discreetly at RAF Scampton, where it became the
subject of an enthusiastic Lincolnshire cargo cult, and was then escorted into
London by a fleet of police motorcyclists, clothes pegs discreetly over their
noses against the arses flatulent mechanism.
A human rights protester positioned himself before the massive Chinese arse,
raising defiant fists. But two unremitting meat mountains, enormous Chinese
buttocks, rolled unsentimentally over him, spitting him out behind, winded
and battered.

FacebookTwitterPinterest
Illustration by David Foldvari.
Did you see that? I asked a policewoman, A massive Chinese arse is
crushing legitimate criticism. Calm down Mr Lee, said an undercover
officer, recognising me from my multiple Bafta- and British Comedy Awardwinning TV shows. Perhaps a ticket to tonights ceremonial massive Chinese
arse banquet at Buckingham Palace would buy your silence?
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I told him I could not be bought, having turned down an advert for Sharwoods
Spicy Szechuan Stir Fry Melts on ethical grounds only last week. There will be
braised red cabbage, cocotte potatoes, and timbale of celeriac, he bartered,
waving an embossed menu of tainted possibility.
And so it was that, for truth and timbale of celeriac, I was seated at
Buckingham Palace, with the massive Chinese arse and his confidants, a host
of delighted business people, and some compromised dignitaries: Mark
Carney of the Bank of England, George Pencils Osborne, David
Cameron and, Christ-like in his accommodations, Justin Welby, Archbishop of
Canterbury, supine among the sinners, the non-tax-gatherers, and the nondom non-tax payers.
The Queen wore a white banquet dress, embroidered with beads by her
dressmaker Angela Kelly, and a pair of old ladys knickers, the label sewn in by
C&A. It was the first time she had worn the dress. The Duchess of Cambridge
wore a bespoke red gown by Jenny Packham, and a Chinese Rocks tiara, on

loan from George Pencils Osborne. It was the first time she had worn the
gown.
Instead of wearing a booby-trapped papier-mache head of the Dalai Lama, as
was feared, Jeremy Corbyn wore a black jacket, white tie, white shirt, black
shoes and black trousers, with black socks and white pants from Marks and
Spencers. It was the 75th time he had worn the pants.
I saw the Queens eyes, as she licked the massive Chinese arse, meeting
Jeremy Corbyns eyes
On the subject of clothes, PEN Award-winning writer and academic Ilham
Tohti appears to be wearing a blue anorak and a white T-shirt in the picture I
found of him, but who knows what he is wearing now, as he is serving life
imprisonment in a Chinese jail, as I would be if I wrote this piece there, even
though it is only a silly thing about a massive Chinese arse.
Still, no time to worry about that now. The timbale of celeriac smelt delicious
when I could catch a whiff of it, wafting in from the kitchen, through the lowhanging cloud of the massive Chinese arses effulgent flatulence. And anyway,
dinner was served.
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Fillet of west coast turbot with lobster mousse, roasted loin of Balmoral
venison in a Madeira and truffle sauce, braised red cabbage, cocotte potatoes,
and timbale of celeriac. To follow, and in celebration of the prime ministers
heroic rejection of the sugar tax, dlice of dark chocolate, mango and lime.
And 25 almonds, some Space Dust, and a juicy red apple for George Pencils
Osborne, who was still on his diet.
After dessert came the part of the evening the diplomats had dreaded most.
They knew the assembled worthies were required to venerate the massive
Chinese arse, but even the most accomplished translator had been unable to
ascertain whether the Chinese governments instructions meant the massive
Chinese arse was to be licked, or to be kissed.
Archbishop Justin Welby officiated, the dignitaries processing toward the
massive Chinese arse, in a sick pantomime of the communion. Some David
Cameron, Mark Carney, and the Duchess of Cambridge chose to kiss the
massive Chinese arse. Others Prince William, Prince Andrew and the Queen
elected to lick it.

Xi Jinping protesters arrested and homes searched over London demonstrations

Read more
From where I was sitting I saw the Queens eyes, as she licked the massive
Chinese arse, meeting Jeremy Corbyns eyes. It seemed to me they shared an
intimate moment, as she communicated to him the terrible bondage of duty,
perhaps envying the rebellious leader of the opposition, and her own absent
firstborn son, their uncompromised freedom, perhaps asking for
understanding. And I like to think that it was in solidarity with the quietly
dignified Queen that Jeremy Corbyn too then leaned forward to lick the
massive Chinese arse himself.
The arse-licking and arse-kissing done, the band struck up the James Bond
theme Nobody Does It Better and George Osborne took centre stage. Testing
the opening with his usual pencil, he rolled up his shirt sleeve, James Herriotstyle, and began his diplomatic negotiations, pushing through the halfdigested fillet of west coast turbot with lobster mousse, the semi-dissolved
roasted loin of Balmoral venison in a Madeira and truffle sauce, the brokendown braised red cabbage, the condensing cocotte potatoes, the disintegrating
timbale of celeriac and the dissipating dlice of dark chocolate, mango and
lime. And finally the chancellor pulled out a plum! What a good boy am I! he
cried, holding up the filthy fruit, to the applause of all. This plum is worth
30 billion.

The week dragged on. Unfortunately the massive Chinese arse was unable to
find time to see Ai Weiwei at the Academy, the capitals most important
cultural event. But David Cameron did manage to take it to his local, The Cock
and Pig, in Chipping Norton, where it enjoyed fish and beer, and was then
forgotten, as the prime minister drove off, leaving it in a toilet.
A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 until 8 Jan.
Stewart Lee is the curator of next years All Tomorrows Parties festival, at
Prestatyn Pontins, 15-17 April 2016

Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne forgot the

First Law of Holes

Andrew Rawnsley
Empty threats to the House of Lords reveal how sweaty they are getting about the revolt
over tax credits

Its knowing when to step away from the spade Photograph: Mark Pinder
Sunday 25 October 2015 00.03 BSTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
201509.00 GMT

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Im not sure whether he invented it, but the late Denis Healey was very fond of
quoting the First Law of Holes: when you are in one, you should stop digging.
This essential rule of politics has been forgotten by George Osborne and David
Cameron as they excavate a considerable pit for themselves over tax credits.
Well-meaning people, such as the House of Lords and agitated Tory MPs, are
shouting down the hole trying to persuade them to stop digging. Onlookers
who never liked the pair of them Boris Johnson, for one, and David Davis,
for another are throwing sharp objects down the hole. I notice that Boris,
who had been looking a bit depressed recently and telling friends that there
was a Camborne conspiracy to snuff him out, has suddenly got a spring back
in his step. Yes, it is that bad for the chancellor and the prime minister. Yet
they keep on applying shovels to dirt by insisting that there will be no retreat
from their plan to take large bites out of the household budgets of millions of
poorer workers. They are digging at such a rate that the hole will soon be deep
enough to warrant reclassification as a crater.
We can hear what sounds like an argument breaking out as the light down
there gets progressively fainter. Remind me, George, why are we digging?
Dont go wobbly on me now, Dave. Put your back into it and well get through
to the other side.
It is getting hot and sweaty at the bottom of the hole. We know this from their
hysterical response to tomorrows debate in the House of Lords when peers
will have the opportunity to stop or delay the cuts to tax credits. Downing
Street has been trying to menace the dissident peers by telling them that the
prime minister will flood the upper house with new Tory peers if the Lords
should dare to frustrate the government. Peers ought not to be scared by that
threat, because it is empty. Unless David Cameron has gone completely mad,
he is not going to create 150 new Conservative peers. Wrapping ermine

around a bunch of millionaire Tory donors and imposing them on an already

bloated upper chamber to bulldoze through a measure that hits poorer
workers. Really? What a terrific look that would be for compassionate
Conservatism. Incidentally, the lifetime cost of creating 150 new Tory peers
comes in at about 600m. Where would that leave the governments claim
that it has to make the tax credit cuts to save money?
It is worth investigating how our pair of shovellers ended up down their hole
in the first place. The voters are partly to blame. In the last parliament, the
country swallowed tax rises and spending cuts with much less resistance than
the prime minister and chancellor had initially feared. Tuition fees caused a
riot, but it was the Lib Dems, rather than the Tories, who paid the price. This
encouraged them to believe that there was a lot of public tolerance for attacks
on spending, especially when it was labelled welfare. Now they are learning
that this is true only up to a point.
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I am told that they were both very taken aback when the Sun launched its
campaign against the cuts to tax credits. They should not have been so
amazed. That newspaper is enthusiastic about squeezing welfare in general,
but the tabloid is unsurprisingly less keen when the target is an important
chunk of its readership. The media more widely are also part of the
explanation for why they have ended up in this hole. At the time of the
Conservative conference, there was a lot of breathless reporting of the Tory
leaderships attempt to rebrand themselves as the workers party in order to
land-grab some of the political space made available by the evaporation of the
Lib Dems and Labours choice of Jeremy Corbyn.
Both the prime minister and the chancellor made positionally audacious
speeches, but some of us did caution that it would be interesting to see how
their clever rhetoric was going to be reconciled with the crunchy reality of
what they were planning to do. How were you going to be an enemy of the
scourge of poverty, as the prime minister declared himself to be, when you
were about to reduce the incomes of millions of the already poor? The largely
uncritical reception for those speeches may have encouraged Mr Cameron and
his next-door neighbour to believe that they could talk one way, act in another
and no one would notice.
A further explanation for how they got into this hole is the electoral cycle. Mr
Osborne is following the standard practice of chancellors. That is to try to get
the nasty stuff done early in a parliament when the opposition is concussed

with recent defeat and the next election is far away on the distant horizon.
When he drew up his July budget, the chancellor did so on the assumption
that, whatever short-term turbulence and unpopularity the raid on tax credits
might entail, the controversy would be forgotten in five years time.
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This calculation about the memory span of the electorate does often pay off for
governments. In the last parliament, one of Mr Osbornes early moves was to
increase VAT, even though he had said nothing about jacking up the tax before
he arrived at the Treasury. There was some bother when he did it, but barely a
ripple about it by the time we got to the general election. That was because
increases in a purchase tax tend to be much less visible as an attack on living
standards. The cuts to tax credits are, by contrast, extremely obvious and will
be painfully so to the millions effected.
One certain sign that a politician has dug himself into a deep hole is when he
keeps changing the justification for what he is doing. First it was insisted that
the cuts to tax credits would be offset by other measures, a claim that has
collapsed under the scrutiny of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which declare
that it is mathematically impossible for this to be the case.
George Osborne changed tack last week when he argued that he had a
mandate to do this because the Tories won the election on a platform of
further welfare cuts. Trouble is you can read the Tory manifesto as many times
as you like and I have been through it more times than is healthy for the
sanity of any human being and you will find not a sentence about taking
more than 4bn out of the household budgets of the working poor. Tories
congratulated themselves on getting through the election campaign without
being forced to specify where the cuts would fall. That tactic doesnt look so
Einstein now.
A more recent line of defence, one promoted since the Lords started to get
bolshie, is that these cuts have been sanctified because the Commons has
voted for them. So MPs have. And so what? To see how far that will get him,
George Osborne should remind himself of Gordon Browns debacle over the
10p tax band. Indeed, the echoes of that episode get louder by the day. The
Brown budget that scrapped the 10p tax band was praised across the media on
the day and it sailed through the Commons.
That was because hardly anyone grasped what it would mean and they didnt
listen to the warnings of Frank Field, one of the few who had foreseen the

consequences. The earlier endorsement of the Commons was of no help at all

to Mr Brown when the issue exploded on him some months later. It only made
voters more angry and Labour MPs more mutinous when everyone finally
woke up to what he had done. They felt duped.
The crunch point for Mr Brown came when people started to receive the
payslips revealing the cuts to their incomes. He capitulated soon afterwards.
The crunch point for Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne is coming at the turn of the
year. The letters telling people precisely how much they are going to lose will
start thudding on to doormats between late December and early January.
Christmas greetings from the government: we are going to make you a lot
worse off. MPs will then find their constituency surgeries filling up with voters
visiting their distress and fury on their representatives.
To the growing number of his colleagues alarmed by this prospect, Mr
Osborne says there is no money to reverse these cuts.
The truth is that a chancellor can always find some money if he needs to and
Mr Osborne has done so in the past when he has landed himself in a hole. He
could delay some of his tax breaks for the more affluent. He could suddenly
discover that he is persuaded by Jamie Olivers arguments for a sugar tax. He
could stretch his timetable for clearing the deficit.
There are all sorts of places he could find some money. The rebellion hasnt
become even larger only because Tory MPs are expecting to him to do
something to ease these cuts when he makes his financial statement in a
months time.
Whether he knows it yet or not, the chancellor is going to do some sort of Uturn. The question is whether he does sufficient and does it quickly enough to
climb out of the hole before his reputation and leadership ambitions start to
get buried in it.

Trudeau, Clinton, Bush dynasties are the

blockbuster movies of politics

Jonathan Freedland
Whether its Canadas new prime minister, the former US first lady or James Bond,
increasingly the brand is the defining factor in popular success

Justin Trudeau and his family. Even his greatest admirers do not deny that
part of his appeal resides in his last name. Photograph: Christinne
Muschi/Reuters
Contact author
@Freedland
Friday 23 October 2015 20.06 BSTLast modified on Friday 23 October
201522.01 BST

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Will you be among those queuing to see Spectre next week? If you are, you
dont need to explain why. Its simple. Its the new Bond movie and you like
Bond movies.
The tidal wave of publicity the magazine covers, the posters at bus-stops, the
song on the radio none of it needs to persuade you of the merits of this
particular film. It just needs to remind you that the film is out that Bond is
back and its job is done. Effortlessly, the glamour and excitement of the
past rubs off on the present.
This week Justin Trudeau, handsome enough to play James Bond, as it
happens, was elected as the new prime minister of Canada. He succeeded
where his Liberal party had failed four years earlier. Even his greatest
admirers do not deny that part of his appeal resides in his last name. He is the
son of the former PM Pierre Trudeau and his much younger wife, Margaret,
and some of the glamour and excitement of that past era has rubbed off on
him.

Trudeaus bold change pledge

was a ruse. But Canada now has a
fighting chance
Read more
The birth of such a dynasty is new for Canada, but not elsewhere. For the
dynasty is the franchise movie of politics: the reliable brand that brought in
the crowds before and enjoys an automatic box-office advantage over all rivals.
Where Bond, Superman and the Transformers are the titans of cinema, so the
Clintons and Bushes, the Gandhis, Kenyattas and now Trudeaus dominate
politics around the globe.
Its one of the more unexpected features of modern democracy. Those who
demanded popular self-rule centuries ago partly did so as an explicit rejection
of heredity as a qualification for power. Gone would be the ruling families of
the ancien regime, replaced by elected representatives of the entire people.
The spirit of that earlier age is captured by article 1, section 9, clause 8 of the
US constitution: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.
She may not be the Duchess of Little Rock, but Hillary Clinton surely belongs
to the very nobility Americas founders wanted to prevent. Power and wealth is
concentrated in her clan. So it is with the Cuomo family, holders past and
present of the governorship of New York, or the Daleys, who held Chicago as
tightly as any medieval baron once ruled a fief.

Hillary took a further step towards her destiny this week, thanks to the
announcement by vice-president Joe Biden that he will not be a rival for the
Democratic nomination, and to a promised congressional grilling on
the Benghazi affair that sputtered without catching a spark. Soon, it seems,
Clinton will be facing a Republican field that features Rand Paul, inheritor of
the libertarian movement galvanised by his father Ron, and Jeb Bush, bidding
to be the third US president in his immediate family.
Despite the constitutions best efforts, the American electorate have been
drawn from the start to the de facto nobility formed by its power dynasties.
One study found that 11% of those who served in the US Congress between
1789 and 1858 had lawmaker relatives. As late as 1966, the figure stood at
7%. Even today, the son of a senator is 8,500 times more likely to become a
senator than the average male of baby-boom age. It turns out the Roosevelts
and Kennedys were not exceptions. They were just the ones we had heard of.

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Its like that everywhere. This weeks feted visitor to Britain, Chinese
president Xi Jinping, is the son of the countrys former vice-premier.
Photograph: Oli Scarff/AP
And its like that everywhere. This weeks feted visitor to Britain, Chinese
president Xi Jinping, is the son of the countrys former vice-premier. The
democratic world is not much better. In France, the Front National is being
fought over like a precious item of family silver by the warring Le Pens, pre et
fille. The president, Franois Hollande, has four children with the defeated
presidential candidate of 2007, Sgolne Royal. In India, the Gandhis lost last
time but are still a fixture on the electoral landscape. In Kenya, the son sits in
the presidential chair first occupied by his father.
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A likely contender for Perus 2016 election is Keiko Fujimori, whose nowjailed father ruled the country until 2000. In Indonesia, rule-by-dynasty is so
rife, parliament passed a law in March to bar anyone holding major office
within five years of a relative a kind of genetic cooling-off period. (The law
was later thrown out as unconstitutional.) In some regions, a single clan can
hold up to a dozen political posts at once. Presumably, when one resigns, they
say theyre quitting politics so they can spend less time with their family.
Britain seems less susceptible to the electoral lure of bloodline than most,
despite the fact that, or maybe because, we still give heredity a formal place in
our constitution guaranteeing the headship of state to a single family.
Nevertheless, after the double Miliband era there is now a junior Kinnock in
the Commons, with perhaps a Straw and even a Blair on the way. And the new
politics is not immune: John McDonnells chief of staff is Seb Corbyn, son of
Jeremy.
Not that we should single out politics. The corporate world is similarly the
domain of dominant families, whether its the Murdoch empire or beleaguered
Volkswagen. The Economist recently estimated that 90% of the worlds
businesses are family-managed or controlled, with one in three of Americas
biggest, billion-dollar firms in family hands. And the media of course is not
immune, whether its the Russerts of the US, the Lapids of Israel or our very
own Dimblebys.

Hillary Clinton deflects

conservative jabs in 11-hour
House Benghazi hearing
Read more
So why does the dynasty live on, even in this supposedly democratic age? The
answer is paradoxical. The powerful family may seem an ancient idea but
it boasts two ultra-modern features: such clans have a strong brand,
essential in cutting through the noise; and they come equipped with rich,
intricate networks, dense with connections and social capital. When the time
comes, Chelsea Clinton will inherit not just wealth but the mother and father
of all Rolodexes.
You can defend dynasty. Theres evidence to suggest such families think more
of the long term than other politicians. They want their plans to look good in
decades to come, otherwise their children might never succeed them.
And the bias towards established families has arguably helped women reach a
pinnacle that might otherwise have remained elusive. Would India have
elected a woman who was not Nehrus daughter? Is it a coincidence that the
first woman on the brink of the White House has lived there before?
Of course, everyone should be judged on their individual merits: they should
not be disqualified because of their parents. And yet the stubborn grip of
dynasticism epitomises social immobility at the highest level, a clustering of
one group at the top of the ladder crowding out everyone else. Politics
becomes a kind of Shakespearean clashing of clans at court surely one day, a
Clinton will fall in love with a Bush leaving the country behind.
You cant legislate to stop this happening, but we can insist on a wider, more
fluid, more genuine social mobility. Otherwise politics will become ever more
like the cinema new faces, perhaps, but telling the same old story.

Remembrance Day is not about posing politicians

Barbara Ellen

All the fuss by party leaders about laying wreaths at the Cenotaph is shameful

This truly is a peoples day, Mr Cameron. Photograph: Matthew Lloyd/Getty

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Sunday 25 October 2015 00.02 BSTLast modified on Sunday 25 October
201508.57 GMT

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Proposed plans to shorten the forthcoming remembrance service at the
Cenotaph, to limit the standing time for the 89-year-old Queen and veterans,
have been shelved somewhat. The ceremony remains shorter, but, in the
original proposal, the PM, David Cameron, would have laid his wreath alone,
while representatives of the opposition parties would have laid wreaths
simultaneously for the first time. Now, after undisclosed discussions, the
plans have reverted to all the politicians laying their wreaths separately.
So what happened there? There are rumours of the changes being perceived as
a snub. Theres also a hint that some did not care for Cameron laying his
wreath alone, while the others were herded together. I agree with them,
although only because my ideal scenario would have been Cameron laying his
wreath in unison. For reasons that are beyond the understandable fatigue of
the veterans and the Queen, I dont fathom how any politician, or political
party, could justify being entitled to pay their respects separately. Why should
politics be such a major feature of this important and emotional national day?
Admittedly, some individuals irk more than others. Of course the PM must be
there, but Camerons presence cant help but gall when, back in April,
theveterans transition review, carried out by Lord Ashcroft (the very same!),
concluded that the greatest problem faced by former service personnel was
stigma. (Translation: its the fault of the public and the media and, rather
conveniently, wont cost the government).

And while this isnt about Tony Blair (though I understand why for some it
always will be), why do any former PMs have to show up? If its to lend
gravitas, does not the occasion already have plenty of that? If its to help
maintain the events high profile, Id say that this was an insult to the British
public, who have persistently demonstrated that they care deeply about the
ceremony and what it represents.
However, this isnt really about individuals. Its about the generalised jarring
atmosphere of political one-upmanship that this mysterious scheduling
dispute has thrown into sharp focus. Remembrance Sunday is about many
things honouring memories, of course, but it is also about providing a
crucial shop window for the charities that help former service people. What
Remembrance Sunday definitely isnt about is an opportunity to further party
ambitions or inflate political egos. It isnt a spotlight to be coveted,
monopolised, stolen or sulked about in the manner of a Hollywood starlet who
has just found out that their best scene has been cut.
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Is this unreasonable of me? Probably. Id be the first to condemn a politician
who refused to attend the ceremony or failed to behave respectfully. As this
would be the first time at the Cenotaph for some politicians, I could be doing
them a major disservice. Just as obviously there must be politicians whose
genuine only wish is to represent their party by quietly paying their respects.
However, too often in the past, the whiff of self-aggrandising political theatre
has become a distraction and an aggravation. I cant be alone in having been
irritated by the unedifying spectacle of Westminsters leading lights seemingly
grasping at the opportunity to demonstrate how wonderfully grave and
statesman-like they can be. An anguished jaw-setting here; a wistful, faraway
look there; an air of dramatised solemnity everywhere. Enough! Why cant
they just look normal?
Granted, its the world stage, but it doesnt have to be treated quite so literally
as a stage on which (sickeningly) to shine. Perhaps this year, one hopes, there
could be an unofficial semi-ban on cameras panning on any diva-style
mugging from current or former politicos, keeping their air time to a strict
minimum. Slapping the peoples prefix on everything fast became
wearisome, but if ever there was a peoples ceremony, this is it.
Ill check into the Shining museum on one condition...

FacebookTwitterPinterest
You can have a haunted experience in the Shining hotel. Photograph:
Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
There are plans to turn Colorados Stanley hotel, which inspired Stephen King
to write The Shining, into a multimillion-dollar horror-museum-cumexhibition-space-cum-film-festival-site.
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Please dont force me to intone redrum, as uttered by the boy Danny, in
order to express my unease at this. The idea sounds upmarket enough
(involving a collaboration with the Colorado film school). But Im always, well,
horrified, when people classify The Shining as horror. It is so much more
love, death, sex, madness, despair, family breakdown, innocence, evil, failure,
sorrow In short, its about everything.
In Stanley Kubricks film, the truly terrifying scenes are when Jack Torrances
resentment towards his family is being slyly stoked by the ghostly staff, not the
axe through the door tosh. Ultimately, The Shining surpasses horror and
becomes a psychological supernatural genre-spanning thriller.
Its silly to be precious (the Stanley is already on the tourist trail, offering
guests a free redrum mug, which I now deeply desire). However, if this
development comes off, they need to carefully designate sub-genres. And there
had better be an adult version of Dannys trike for people like me to have a go
on.
This is the true horror of Halloween

FacebookTwitterPinterest
A cuter side of Halloween. Photograph: Action Press/REX Shutterstock
Theres been a row because the clothing site Asos put a bindi in its Halloween
section. After complaints, it was removed but it all seems a tad ridiculous.
The Asos bindi (a bunch of forehead sequins) was hardly presenting itself as a
Hindu religious artefact and, in my opinion was no more offensive than, say,
those henna tattoos you get at music festivals, or permanently being one
Google search away from being able to purchase a Buddha-style ashtray.
At most, this seems to be a reflection of the fact that our Halloween has
become very Americanised of late. People are no longer dressing up as witches
or zombies, but as anything they fancy and so there is a more disparate variety
of costumes.
This isnt really about a bunch of sequins for sale on Asos its about anxieties
surrounding cultural appropriation and ethnic or religious stereotypes.
However, at Halloween, a time of year when costume versions of religious
artefacts are so prominent the crucifix, anyone? it seems a little hair
trigger to see something sinister in the Asos bindi. Im not arguing that it was
ever going to do wonders for assimilation, but neither do I think that it was
offensive.
All this comes at a time when Theresa May has been criticised in some
quarters for saying that the police are too white. To my mind, she was right
to say so institutionalised police racism has long been an issue and ethnic
make-up of the officers needs to be addressed.
It seems odd that racism could be instantly spotted in a silly fashion bindi, but
not in a genuine long-term social concern.

The Trollhttan killer didnt become an

extremist overnight. Somebody could have
stopped him
Bjrn Ihler
As a survivor of the Anders Behring Breivik attack, I believe that such violent extremists
can be steered on to the right course by people in their everyday lives

Normal people can get pushed to extremism and violence, but also normal
people can help bring others out of extremism. Photograph: AFP/Getty
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Friday 23 October 2015 19.47 BSTLast modified on Saturday 24 October
201509.11 BST

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Save for later

A 21-year-old man walked into a school in Trollhttan in western Sweden on
Thursday. He was wearing a helmet, a Star Wars mask and wielded a sword. A
teacher, a pupil and the man with the sword were left dead after a rampage.
Swedish police said that the suspect, named as Anton Lundin Pettersson, had
racist motives.
In 2011 I came face to face with Anders Behring Breivik on Utya island in
Norway as he carried out his atrocious massacre. He pointed his gun and fired
at me but missed. I survived and later testified against him in court. What
were now seeing in Sweden resonates heavily with me. In moving on from the
Breivik trauma, and since becoming involved in working against violent
extremism, I have come to understand violent extremists as individuals
capable of change.
In the wake of the Oregon school shooting and other massacres in the US, the
question arises as to what drives such perpetrators usually young, white men
to carry out acts that seem unfathomable to most of us. This is all the more
pertinent in Sweden, where the last school attack took place in 1961. But the
reality is that violence can be rationalised and carried out by an entirely
ordinary person, living in ordinary circumstances in a relatively peaceful
Scandinavian country. In 2011 this was underlined by Breiviks act of terror in
Norway. He was later ruled by a Norwegian court to be entirely sane.

The tragic school attack in

Sweden fits an American pattern
Andrew Brown

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The idea that violence can be rationalised by seemingly ordinary individuals
might leave us scared and hopeless. But if people dont need to be deeply

mentally disturbed to contemplate horrific acts, then we can at least reach

them. There will be opportunities to change their minds, influence their
behaviour, alter their decision-making process.
In seeking an understanding of what drove Pettersson, some have turned to
reports that he liked YouTube videos by neo-fascist bloggers and videos
glorifying Nazis. He is also said to have followed online content demeaning
women, the religious and the overweight. Through studies of the suspects
online life, we get an impression of a young, angry man, whose hatreds fed his
own feelings of supremacy.
It is likely that Pettersson was influenced by other school shootings inspired
by hate. But his act of violence also appears to have been motivated by a highly
personalised worldview that was different from that of school shooters Chris
Harper and the Sandy Hook elementary school killer, Adam Lanza. The Swede
was seemingly not a far-right ideologue like Breivik or Dylann Roof, the
Charleston gunman, but perhaps somebody who decided he had to act out
against one of his many enemies in order to feel powerful.
We know normal people can be drawn to extremism and violence, but also
that normal people can help bring others out of extremism. One example is
Arno Michaelis, a former neo-Nazi who was deeply involved in the white
power movement, and who was first shaken from those views by a black
woman at a McDonalds cash register who met his hatred with unconditional
kindness.

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People stand by candles and flowers outside the Kronan school in Trollhttan.
Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

Another example is the late Johnny Lee Clary, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
Clary was invited on to Oklahoma radio to debate with Rev Wade Watts of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; he abused Watts
and attempted to intimidate him. Clary explained later in a YouTube
video how a black mans kindness and forgiveness defeated his hate.
Pettersson liked this video two years ago.
How could someone approve of this video and still go on to become a
murderer motivated by the kind of hate Clary deplored in it? Would watching
such testimony make an extremist think twice about carrying out an attack?

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Were missing a trick when it comes to those carrying out violent acts.
Communities touched by violence have an understandable and overwhelming
tendency to scrutinise the ways in which extremists, both those we consider
disturbed and those we consider ordinary, are lured into violence. But
rather than trying to pathologise the individual or the process that led him
there, we should shift the focus instead towards what opportunities are
available to us to prevent him resorting to violence in the first place.
In a young extremists daily life, in their school, among their family or friends,
were there openings, moments when they could have been led to change?

Hateful people have the ability to take charge of their own lives. If we deny this
is possible, we stop it from happening. If we see violence as contagious, we can
view Petterssons act as the latest in an epidemic of young men who are not
necessarily deeply disturbed, but rationalise their own violence and are
inspired by others across the world. But if we did more to anticipate and
intervene before such individuals erupt, then there is potential to stop
ordinary people from becoming murderers.
Rather than looking for the moment they snapped, we should be looking for
the missed opportunities in the ways our societies handle them: the many
moments when we could have changed their perceptions and steered them
away from violence. We need to ensure that similar opportunities arent
missed with others.
This discussion in premoderated