To those of you who say it’s DNA that makes you English, I would say this: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Our DNA is already mixed up. Have a look at your own DNA. Dare I say, you want to take the beam out of your own eye before you take the mote out of the eye of others. We English are not, and nor should we be seen as, some eugenically pure island race. We are a people who have values and culture and strengths and liberties. People who join that should be incorporated in it and encouraged in it, rather than made to feel foreign. But I would say to those who come here and wish to maintain their culture, that they are making a grave mistake. They have come here because of the strength of Englishness. They should join in with it and not hold themselves out as something separate. The condition for coming is to become English, to be part of this great enterprise, not to remain a foreigner in these lands. ✍️ Jacob Rees-Mogg Article |

Andy Burnham took part in the Great North Run, a half marathon, finishing in 1 hour 57 minutes. Some other prime ministers who competed in office: 🏃 Edward Heath captained his sailing boat, Morning Cloud, on the 600-mile Fastnet Yacht Race, finishing in 14th place but helping Great Britain to regain the Admiral’s Cup. 🏃 Alec Douglas-Home took part in charity cricket matches while PM, having played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Middlesex in his younger days. 🏃 Keir Starmer continued to put in the occasional match for a five-a-side football team in Kentish Town. Article |

My early days of baking coincided with the early days of dating the man who became my husband. It is no coincidence that many of those dates revolved around cooking together, shoulder-to-shoulder in his too-small south London kitchen. He was a pretty competent and confident cook; I was an eager and naive idiot, but keen to learn. Slowly (very slowly) his knowledge and skill rubbed off on me. ✍️ Olivia Potts Article |

At the tail end of the summer holiday, my son and I had a shouting match in King's Cross station. For more than three hours on the train south from Durham, he'd been staring at a single question on a comprehension paper. The text began with a description of a road running through the moonlit countryside, and question three asked: 'Why does the author compare the road to a grey silk ribbon?' Between Durham and Peterborough, I had repeated that question, with increasingly psychopathic calm. 'So darling, why does the author compare the road to a ribbon?' ✍️ Mary Wakefield Article | | @MaryWakefield

With Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement beginning today, social media will no doubt soon be humming with supportive messages from politicians eager to demonstrate their solidarity with Britain's Jewish community. Such sentiments are deeply appreciated and can be a source of great comfort when offered by those whose support for the Jewish community isn't conditional, tactical or selective. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to Prime Minister Andy Burnham. ✍️ Angela Epstein Article |

The loud, wheezy hoot of the pit horn used to signal the end of the shift. Blaring across the town, it blew the changes. We'd all hear it. My father, as his father before him, was a GP in Ashington, a large mining town in Northumberland. Ashington was the hub of a network of subsidiary collieries including Woodhorn (now a museum), Ellington and Lynemouth, which both appropriately featured as film locations for Billy Elliot. Mining was in the local blood. To work 'doon the pit' was a proud profession and a natural family succession. ✍️ Alastair Irvine Article |

The final claim is that these workers came 'to support a social care system'. Perhaps that's true. Or perhaps they came for better pay than they could get back home and the opportunity, after five years, to be entitled to a lifetime of benefits at the expense of British taxpayers. In truth, their motives are irrelevant. What does matter is that the care worker visa route was itself a disaster. ✍️ David Shipley Article | | @ShipleyWrites

This week, Kraft claimed that Sheeran had asked him to donate $2 million to 'aid in the region' to match his own. Macklemore had already boasted that he planned to donate $1 million (cheapskate!) to 'humanitarian' organisations supporting Palestine. It's all getting very macho; what it needs to diffuse it is Paloma Faith to step in and calm things down by offering to donate her breast milk (she's done it before) to the humanitarian effort. I really do loathe Sheeran, so it's good (despite my German word) to be able to trace the origins of this brouhaha back to the fact that when he hired Macklemore, he very probably knew that he had once appeared on stage in what can only be described as 'Jewface' – a black wig and beard and a huge hooked false nose. ✍️ Julie Burchill Article | | @BoozeAndFagz

Autumn has arrived; a transition of colour like a Mark Rothko painting with its softened frayed edges. The introduction of a new season is never so profoundly felt as the one from summer to autumn; it’s visceral; a shift in both mind and body, but since 2014, its arrival has filled me with an unshakeable dread. My mother died from cancer at the age of sixty-two on Christmas Eve 2014. I remember so clearly that last autumn I spent with her. I have a memory of one particular day in September that’s incredibly glaring in its ordinariness: a car journey to the local shops. ✍️ Kiran Sidhu Article |

Dante's Beach, Ravenna. It is raining at last, thank God, and the sound of thunder cascades across the heavens like some kind of conversation. This infernally hot summer is drawing to a close. The swallows left last week for sub-Saharan Africa, the bee-eaters the week before. Even the nudists – well, most of them – are going away, back to Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Bologna and Milan. ✍️ Nicholas Farrell Article | | @NichFarrell

As seen in the Times. 'Sodding sods!' I exclaim, as I discover that I'm £16,000 overdrawn. Between the tweakments, the Berry Bros deliveries and the maintenance of a feckless toyboy in rented digs in Hove, I'm deep in the red and digging deeper. I shoot Emilia Cash-Barings a WhatsApp. 'Babe, have you got any comish for me? Something on the new scourge of Athleisure or a righteous skewering of Soho Farmhouse?' 'Look, Helen,' she replies. 'All I've got is something on this "AI" stuff. £2,000? What do you reckon?' ✍️ Helen D'Vorcee Article |

On this week's Spectator Out Loud: Tim Shipman delves into the impact Ed Miliband's Israeli sanctions have had on UK security; Charles Steel explores the men on the spectrum who rule the world; Alex Diggins talks about the importance of physical maps; and Rachel Johnson admits there's an art to buying birthday presents. Listen |

Well chaps, it's over. Reform have buckled under the pressure. The towel has been thrown in. The party in teal are walking away from it all, having recognised that they can no longer win. Have I lost the plot? Maybe. Quite possibly. Almost certainly yes. But bear with me, because I think I'm onto something big. ✍️ Oliver Dean Article |

Many people who work in the Civil Service are revolting. Quite literally in the verbal meaning of the word, and, as many have long argued, very decidedly when understood as an adjective. Civil Servants have been in revolt this week at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which currently wants to ensure that only biological women can use female toilets and changing rooms, to comply with last April's Supreme Court ruling which decreed that 'man' or 'woman' in the Equality Act should refer to biological sex. ✍️ Patrick West Article | | @patrickxwest

Some wear their hearts on their sleeves. Others wear convicted sex offenders on their biceps. The phrase "Rolf Harris tattoo" is now often used online to accuse someone of poor judgement, lack of foresight or even possessing a hard drive in urgent need of checking. But what happens when the person you immortalised in ink as a hero is later exposed as a sex offender? How do you live with a permanent tribute to someone whose reputation has been eternally destroyed? Does it get covered once they've been uncovered? With Harris now going down in history for his indecent assaults on girls rather than his "music" or "art", it may feel difficult to imagine why anyone ever wanted his name or face permanently etched into their skin. Yet there was an ironic appeal for a time. In a 2022 Tweet, one man claims his friend acquired a Rolf Harris tattoo on his calf in the 1990s, "that period when Rolf did 'Stairway to Heaven' and was briefly popular in universities". ✍️ Bethany Elliott Article | | @BethanyAElliot

The San-ikukai hospital in Tokyo's Sumida ward is much like any other in the Japanese capital, save for one special feature. It has had, since March of last year, a small room on the first floor with a cradle (and nothing else), where mothers can anonymously deposit their babies, never to see them again. The hospital accepts babies up to four weeks old. They are then cared for until foster families or infant homes can be found. In July, the hospital announced it had just received its twentieth baby, most of whom had been left within 24 hours of birth. The scheme is the first in the capital but not the first in Japan. Since 2007, the Jikei hospital in Kumamoto City has been accepting unwanted babies in its 'Storks Cradle' programme (modelled on the German ‘Babyklappe’ scheme) and claims to have 'saved' 170 babies. ✍️ Philip Patrick Article | | @Pbp19Philip

Two recent stories sum up the state of Donald Trump's presidency and underscore the growing gap between him and his working-class support base. First, it emerged that Donald Trump Jr. had his wedding paid for by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch who is also a friend of Vladimir Putin. Kremlev is believed to have stumped up a good proportion of the costs, which included hiring a $100,000-a-night island in the Bahamas as well as a $70,000 firework display. While Trump's son is not a government employee and therefore not subject to the rules on political gifts, alarm bells ought surely to have been ringing. Perhaps the Trumps think it doesn't matter because "Russiagate," during which the Donald was accused of receiving help from Moscow in his first election campaign in 2016, and which rumbled on throughout his first term, turned out to have little substance. But then why would Don Jr. ✍️ Spectator Editorial Article |

On today's Coffee House Shots podcast: Military and intelligence chiefs across Europe are sounding increasingly stark warnings about the threat posed by Russia, from cyber attacks and sabotage to drones and hybrid warfare. But is Britain taking the danger seriously enough – and are the armed forces actually ready for what might come next? Patrick Gibbons is joined by Tim Shipman and Noa Hoffman to discuss Britain's military preparedness, Andy Burnham's approach to foreign policy and what to expect when the Prime Minister comes face-to-face with Donald Trump in New York next week. Listen |