In 2007, I spent time in Blackpool investigating the disappearance of Charlene Downes, a 14-year-old whose body has never been found. She was one of hundreds of girls in the town targeted by sexual predators who would groom and then …
Idleness is the tool of the devil
Idleness is the strangest of Beveridge’s five Giants, an amorphous shapeshifter in comparison with the terrible lumbering colossus Want. It appears last in Beveridge’s sequence, a place usually reserved for the most baleful of adversaries — Death upon its pale …
The betrayal of Britain’s seaside towns
It was the first night of Blackpool’s Illuminations, when seven miles of promenade are transformed into a parade of glitter set against the ink-black Irish Sea. The traffic had poured in from across Lancashire to crawl, bumper to bumper, beneath …
Is Rishi too rich to be PM?
When Rishi Sunak, Britain’s richest MP, moves into No. 10, it will be a week since the UK’s biggest food bank announced it is running out of supplies. This contrast between wealth and poverty has not been so vivid for …
Domestic abusers feed off crises
This winter is going to be the hardest in living memory. The cost of living has already spiralled so far out of control that poor families are talking about having to choose between eating and heating; just imagine being a …
The self-help guru who conquered Brazil
Brazil has grown increasingly distant from its foreign clichés, those of samba and bossa nova, sensuous coastal cities, Catholicism, cordiality, and collectivism. The Brazil that has incubated Bolsonarism is a more individualistic one, in which evangelical Christianity, popular entrepreneurialism and …
Poverty is not inevitable
The energy companies are drowning in dollars, while a season of strikes continues to dismay much of the media. Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News talks about “taking on” the trade unions, as though they were a bunch of armed …
Britain’s pawnbrokers are booming
William Hogarth was no fan of pawnbroking. In his 1751 print Gin Lane, he portrayed a Mr Gripe seizing a saw from a carpenter and cooking pots from a housewife in exchange for cash they would fritter on cheap gin. …
Scotland’s poor are left to die
There is arguably one unifying theme which connects many of Britain’s current difficulties — proximity. From wealthy politicians tackling poverty to drug counsellors who’ve never smoked a joint, Britain is riddled with problems of proximity across its key institutions and …
What made Blakenall turn Tory?
Blakenall Heath, Walsall
The writing is almost on the wall in Blakenall Heath. Only the K and N of Blakenall remain on the sign that marks the entrance to this small suburb of Walsall in the West Midlands. “It’s about …
The narcissism of America’s race politics
The Romans loved their Saturnalia. For one week, every year, social customs were overturned in the spirit of carnival: gambling was permitted and slaves were treated as kings. The literary critic Northrop Frye was fascinated by this festival, and saw …