What did I just say, June 2025
Opinions that people have recently paid me to hold
I disagree with Samuel Johnson that only blockheads write for free (see the archive). But if you notice a recent absence of bears being poked, you may presume that I’ve lucked into some commissions. I have to pay for my own Substack subscriptions, after all.
So while May was quiet at Poke the Bear, a few of Britain’s leading current affairs journals deigned to publish my thoughts on a range of subjects. Normal service at the newsletter should resume shortly, but in the meantime you can catch up on what I’ve been doing elsewhere.
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The internet has been under fire since I first started using it the noughties to a dial-up connection. Claims that is ungovernable have always been overwrought, despite the wealth of cybercrime, illicit imagery and terrorist manuals. Our police are at least on top of most of the bad tweets.
As in much else, the Zoomers disagree with me. Half of 16 to 21-year-olds would have preferred to grow up without the internet, according to a recent survey. Personally I blame social media, which was in a more innocent phase when I was that age. But I still think that the confected nostalgia is misplaced. As I wrote for The Spectator:
The privations suffered before the internet are almost shocking to recall. Only five TV channels? Book selections controlled by Waterstones and the local library? New music flitting briefly across the airwaves, later lost in an obscure corner of HMV? It was no way to live.
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The lockdown-inspired decision to allow women to perform medical abortions at their own home was hailed at the time and subsequently celebrated as a means for women to control their fertility where going to a clinic would be difficult. But it also appears to have triggered an increase in police investigations into potentially illegal abortions.
I’ve covered this issue since the Carla Foster case reached court in 2023. Her conviction has rallied some MPs to attempt to fully decriminalise abortion in England, Wales and Scotland. This means in effect that it would be legal for a woman to abort her child up until birth. I argued for The Critic this is in fact bad:
I suspect if an MP did openly advocate for NHS abortions up until the due date, it would rather expose the brutality of the current amendment. British abortion law has until now struck a sensible balance, accepting termination in the early months as morally neutral, while protecting an unborn child’s right to life in the final trimester, with appropriate medical exemptions.
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Playing or watching live music has become harder in London since I started doing it more than a decade ago. Last year my own band discovered a favourite venue of ours had installed a noise limiter to cut the power at a certain threshold, the change coming at the behest of local residents.
Such trends came to a head at Brockwell Park near Brixton is recent weeks, as nimbys took the council to court in a bid to block certain festivals from happening. Given the pressures facing live music, I think residents can suck it up for a few weeks a year. For CapX:
It is understandable that groups like Protect Brockwell Park wish to safeguard their green spaces, but it is not reasonable to move to Zone 2 in London and expect to be shielded from the cultural hubbub that draws people to cities. Campaigners that claim such events are exclusive should also consider their own curtain-twitching contributes to the costs.
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Having come away with a pocketful of change to cover 60p worth of printing costs at my library, my sympathy for cash users has only shrunk since my recent piece for The Spectator. Britain’s embrace of cards and digital payments has made money managing much easier. And if that offends tax-dodging cabbies, that’s only a bonus:
But we should not be humouring these luddites. Carrying cash is a pain, the breaking of each note a shard in the soul, your pockets weighed down until you empty the contents down the back of your sofa. Shops must employ men in motorbike helmets to ferry it around town, and write signs to thieves assuring them that none is kept on site overnight. It is only convenient as a choking hazard for over-inquisitive toddlers.
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Concerns about low birth rates have become both fashionable and socially acceptable of late. In Britain this has coalesced around the two-child benefit cap, a policy of restricting certain benefits to the first two children in every family (though not, naturally, the actual benefit called Child Benefit).
Voices as respectable as Stephen Bush in the Financial Times and as disrespectable as Reform’s Nigel Farage are now united in condemning the cap. While the government is clinging to its aspirations of fiscal rectitude, its own MPs are keenly aware they did not get into office to restrict benefits. For the Critic, I got here first:
The reason it matters is symbolic. The British government should not be telling its citizens to be two and through with having kids. For one, the replacement rate is 2.1 per woman. More fundamentally, children should not be conceived of as fiscal liabilities who must be merely tolerated before they can enjoy the fruits of self-actualisation.
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I shall write again soon.