The Critical Commentator

  Suspended Tory MP Mark Menzies has joined what is now the fourth biggest grouping in the Commons - MPs suspended from their parties over alleged wrongdoing, who have overtaken the Liberal Democrats, with 18 MPs to the Lib Dems' 15. This rag-tag gang of Independents range from diehard socialist Dianne Abbot to far-right conspiracy theorist Andrew Bridgen. The Houses of Parliament, London Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant (1845-1902) Photo Credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]  At least six of them face sexual misconduct allegations, while five allegedly made offensive or racist comments. Six more face claims of, er, unparliamentary behaviour - from William Wragg handing colleagues' phone numbers to a blackmailer, to Claudia Webbe who was convicted of harassment, to Matt Hancock who was guilty of going on I'm a Celeb without permission. Still, there is one poll the Tories are winning: eight of the 18 are ex-Tories, seven are ex-Labourites! (Private Eye, N...

  Collagen creams, detox teas and vitamin shots may be among the latest wellness trends on social media but it turns out they are mostly an expensive waste of money, according to Which? The consumer group examined the ingredients, price and health claims made by six categories of product or supplement. It consulted experts and gave a verdict. Which? concluded that in many cases there is not robust evidence to justify the price or that people can just as easily get the same benefits elsewhere for less. Social media marketing has given a huge boost to the wellness industry in recent years, and the average person spends £487 a year on fitness, cosmetics and nutrition products, according to GlobalData, a research firm. A Quack selling Medicine unknown artist Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] The research said, for example, that vitamin shots usually cost £2 or more for just 60ml, the same price per litre as Moet & Chandon champagne, but the main ingredient is "typi...

  It is extremely hard to seem authentic in politics, A central task of the job - selling yourself to voters - burdens you with an obvious ulterior motive from the start. Even if your values coincide exactly with what you are saying, your audience may suspect otherwise. How can they trust you? How can they trust any doorstep salesman? You have an agenda after all. Feast of Fools Frans Floris the elder (c. 1517-1570) Photo Credit: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust [CC  BY-NC-ND] To make matters worse, you have a party line to stick to. It's impossible to seem genuine when every single one of your colleagues is saying exactly the same thing. Then, too, collective discipline means you must sometimes defend indefensible colleagues, or seem enthusiastic about policies you hate. Worst of all, you are sometimes required to trot out a particular form of words when navigating a delicate subject. It is here, in the hands of a probing interviewer, that politicians are at their most insincere....

It's almost enough to make you stop doomscrolling: dull devices are now cool. The Boring Phone is a new, featureless flip phone that is feeding the growing appetites of younger people who want to bin their smartphones in favour of a dumbphone... The Magic Crystal Frank Bernard Dicksee (1853-1928) Photo Credit: Lady Lever Art Gallery [CC BY-NC]   The Boring Phone is part of a new dumbphone boom, built on the suspicion of gen Z towards the data-and-attention-harvesting technologies they have grown up with. That suspicion has fuelled reinventions of retro cultural artefacts - a trend known as Newtro, and seen in the revival of vinyl, cassettes, fanzines, 8-bit video games and old-fashioned phones... "There is evidence of this generation modifying their smartphone behaviour, with concerns around the negative impacts of being constantly digitally connected driving this," Birch  [Technology analyst at the research firm - Mintel] added. "Three in five gen-Zers say they'...

They're small, super chic, come with flashy branding and are designed for everyday use. Forget a new It bag - the status accessory luxury brands want to sell you right now is a lunch box. Prada's costs £1380 and can be purchased with a £320 individual set of branded stainless-steel cutlery. Balenciaga's is made of shiny chrome-finished stainless steel, resembles a tool box and is £615. At the French label Saint Laurent, a £1350 "take-away box" made of vegetable leather is for sale. A Capital Joke unknown artist Photo Credit: Preston Park Museum [CC BY-NC-ND] In 2024 the power packed lunch is trending. Those who take their midday meal to work used to be judged solely on the scent of their lunch box's contents. Now when they dine al desko it matters where the receptacle comes from too. If yours is plastic, came in a multi-pack and is more identifiable in the communal fridge by its stubborn stains than upmarket logo, it might not pass muster. Some are willing to...

 In Mark Menzie's case sympathy is undeserved and censure pointless. The MP for Fylde, who telephoned an elderly party worker in the small hours begging for money because "bad people" were holding him to ransom, cannot expect forgiveness; but reproach (though he will meet it in spades) is futile. Some people do just get themselves into the most awful mess... Why do MPs at every level in the parliamentary pecking order, from prime ministers such as Boris Johnson to backbenchers you've never heard of like Menzies - why ever do they take these crazy risks? They know the danger very well. They're public figures. They know the media will go gangbusters if they're caught with trousers down, fingers in the till, tractor porn on their laptops or (if male) running down the road in lipstick and high heels... Raving Madness Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700) Photo Credit: Bethlem Museum of the Mind [CC BY-NC]  Yet the very people who need most to tread carefully, tread mos...

  Not long ago - in 1960, say, when the average man married at 22 and the average woman at 20 - many 25-year olds were homeowners and parents, almost a decade out of full-time education... Thanks to the housing crisis, competition for graduate jobs and student loan debt, increasing numbers of young people are stranded in their family homes, condemned to pass their twenties in a state of childlike dependency. Coddling parents and digital technology exacerbate the problem. In the optimistic jargon of academia, this new phase of life is "emerging adulthood". We should deplore it for what it really is : the infantilisation of young adults... This infantilising instinct is especially unhelpful because as the psychologist Jean Twenge has observed, the lifestyle of many adults in their twenties increasingly resemble those of children. Concerning numbers of people my age continue to watch Disney films and profess loyalty to a Harry Potter house. Children's brands are adapting th...

Shoes Charles Chapman (b. 1955) Photo Credit: Arts Council Collection    Rishi Sunak has apologised to all fans of Adidas Samba trainers after being accused of ruining their credibility when he was pictured in a pair. The prime minister said he was "a longtime devotee" of the brand. He made the apology after wearing the grey, white and black trainers in a Downing Street interview, paired with a white shirt, navy chinos and black socks. Many social media users have said they will sell their shoes. GQ magazine said: "Rishi Sunak took an eternally cool sneaker and ruined it for everyone". (Aletha Adu, The Guardian, 2024) No apology needed. You wear whatever footwear you want to. As for the many social media users selling their Adidas Samba trainers because Rishi Sunak wears them the question must be asked. Why? Does it really matter who wears these trainers? Keith Starmer The normally buttoned-up Keith Starmer [leader of the Labour party] won plaudits earlier this mont...

  In 2009 the NHS's  gender identity development service (Gids) saw fewer than 50 children a year. Since then demand has increased a hundredfold, with more than 5,000 seeking help in 2021-2022. Head of a Girl Albert Lynch (1860-1950) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] In her review of gender services, Dr Hilary Cass said  t here had been a "dramatic increase" in presentations to gender clinics in a decade and, in particular, a rise in birth-registered females... There is no single explanation for these rises, her review concluded. But it says various factors may explain the increase in predominantly birth registered females presenting to gender services in early adolescence. Social Media and the internet The report says girls spend more hours using social media than boys. A study cited by Cass found 43% of girls used social media for three or more hours a day compared with 22% of boys. A systematic review highlighted by the Cass report found use of social ...

  HMRC (Revenue and Customs) claims £36bn was lost to the exchequer last year simply because people do not pay their tax. Shockingly, that figure is £5bn higher than that lost in the previous year. It represents a third of total government spending on education... We also know that £36bn is a very conservative estimate of the gap between what the exchequer does collect and what is due - what is known as the tax gap. For instance, many wealthy individuals  hide their assets in secret trusts they set up overseas in British tax havens, and pay no tax on that hidden wealth. Furthermore, the tax gap does not start to take account of the billions lost each year when global companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft avoid tax  by creating financial structures that have no other purpose than to avoid paying tax. Duty Paid Ralph Hedley (1848-1913) Photo Credit: Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens [CC BY-NC] Paying tax is central to the values that we all sign up to in soc...

  As millions of people across China travelled to the graves of ancestors to pay their respects on tomb-sweeping day - an annual opportunity to honour and maintain the graves of the dead - a new way of remembering, and reviving, their beloved relatives was being born. For as little as 20 yuan (£2.20), Chinese web users can create a moving digital avatar of their loved one, according to some online services. To mark this year's tomb-sweeping day... some mourners turned to artificial intelligence to commune with the departed. At the more sophisticated end of the spectrum, the Taiwanese singer Bao Xiaobai used AI to "resurrect" his 22-year-old daughter, who died in 2022. Despite having only a recording of her speaking three sentences of English, Bao reportedly spent more than a year experimenting with AI before creating a video of her singing happy birthday to her mother, which he published in January. "People around me think I've lost my mind," Bao said in an ...

  It is a play renowned for its extreme violence, with scenes featuring execution, rape and mutilation. Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus even culminates with its eponymous Roman general feeding Tamora, the queen of the Goths, her sons "baked in a pie" before slaughtering her. Titus Andronicus - Tamora Samuel Woodforde (1763-1817) Photo Credit: Royal Shakespeare Company Collection [CC BY-NC-ND]     But the play - and others like it - should not carry trigger warnings, according to the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who has declared that he "hates them". Speaking with students in a Q&A ... Gregory Doran said anxious audience members should simply avoid plays so that they would not be upset by distressing content, the Stage reported. "How do you do [content warnings] for Titus Andronicus?" Doran said. "You just don't come. Don't come if you are worried. If you are anxious - stay away"...  Content warnings in...

  Over the years, evidence of systemic health service failings has been followed by panicked government pledges of reform. There have been targets, productivity league tables, efficiency savings (aka cuts), reorganisations, decentralisation, recentralisation and more targets. Vast amounts of extra money have been pumped into the system, rising from 3 per cent of GDP in 1960 to 9.3 per cent in 2022... The glaringly obvious fact [is] that the NHS simply isn't fit for purpose. Yet this is not permitted to be part of the national debate because the NHS is the most sacred of cows. That's because its foundational ethic is to be a universal service free at the point of use. The system that is presented as the only alternative is private healthcare as practised in the US, which discriminates against the poor and produces at best only middling health outcomes. The limitations of this debate are baffling because there's a third way that's never considered: European social insuran...

  It being a wet Good Friday I began reading a new book. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan  Haidt. But even when the rain stopped I carried on and read to the end his fascinating and utterly persuasive case that children have been "over-protected in the real world and under-protected in the virtual world", leading to the epidemic of mental illness in the age group we call Generation Z. Anxiety Head of a Girl Jean-Baptiste Greuse  (1725-1805) Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC  BY-NC-ND] Haidt shows that although recent technologies such as the internet, apps and mobile phones bring immense benefits to the world, their misuse by tech companies to develop addictive products for young people, destroying much of their social lives, depriving them of sleep and fracturing their attention spans, has done immense harm. His solutions are clear: no smartphones before age 11; no social media before 16; completely phone-free schools; and far more unsupervised play and chil...

 " People say, should we just try to improve things a little bit by making the social media content a little healthier? That's like saying, can't we design guns with bullets that are nicer? And my concern is that we talk so much about the phone. The other half of this conversation has to be about play." [Jonathan] Haidt, the social psychologist became famous with his 2018 bestseller (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff), The Coddling of the American Mind about the peculiar mental fragility of Gen Z undergraduates who feel "unsafe" exposed to any opinion they disagree with... By every objective metric - suicide rates, psychiatric hospitalisation, A&E self harm admissions - all over the world  their mental health was collapsing. For girls in particular, the crisis is now off the charts. The father of a son, 17 and a daughter, 14, Haidt was stunned... "I realised this is one of the biggest - if not the biggest - public health stories ever." It began...