03/05/2014
3 May 2014

Save the male!

3 May 2014

Save the male!

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Features
Matt Ridley
E-cigarettes are making tobacco obsolete. So why ban them?

If somebody invented a pill that could cure a disease that kills five million people a year worldwide, 100,000 of them in this country, the medical powers that be would surely encourage it, pay for it, perhaps even make it compulsory. They certainly would not stand in its way. A relentless stream of data from around the world is showing that e-cigarettes are robbing tobacco companies of today’s customers — and cancer wards of their future patients.

E-cigarettes are making tobacco obsolete. So why ban them?
Isabel Hardman
Save the male! Britain’s crisis of masculinity

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_1_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Diane Abbott and Isabel Hardman discuss the crisis of the British male" startat=48] Listen [/audioplayer]Last week saw another victory in the battle for equal pay. Workers in Swansea are now looking forward to receiving around £750,000 in back pay after the university that employs them decided to close the gender pay gap. Vive la révolution! The only unusual thing about this case was that the workers in question were men, not women.

Save the male! Britain’s crisis of masculinity
Matthew Bell
Guns, gays and the Queen - a former bishop reminisces

The bishopric of Bath and Wells comes with more bear-traps than most. For one thing, there’s the baby-eating. Ever since Blackadder told Baldrick he was being chased for a debt by the ‘baby--eating Bishop of Bath and Wells’, the image has stuck. When the last incumbent, Peter Price, made his first visit to the House of Lords, accompanied by his five-week-old granddaughter, the Bishop of Southwark remarked: ‘I see the bishop has brought his own lunch.

Guns, gays and the Queen - a former bishop reminisces
Fraser Nelson
Why Beyoncé is a conservative icon

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_1_May_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson and Freddy Gray whether Beyoncé is a conservative icon" startat=1050] Listen [/audioplayer]When Time pictured an underwear-clad pop star on its cover, hailing her as one of the world’s most influential people, it looked like a crass sales ploy. But in Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, they had more of a point than they seemed to realise.

Why Beyoncé is a conservative icon
Tom Leonard
How to shop for the apocalypse

 New York City An architect friend who usually designs Manhattan skyscrapers was recently asked to pitch for a far more interesting project. The client, a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, wanted him to design a family house in upstate New York with a difference. It wouldn’t just be completely ‘off the grid’, with its own power and water supplies, but — and there isn’t yet an architectural term for this — it would be post-apocalypse.

How to shop for the apocalypse
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