When you read the Guardian free online, a yellow notice appears asking you for money (‘Will you invest in the Guardian?’) to support its fearless journalism. But now arises a donor’s dilemma. After two years’ work, the paper has just produced a full report on and apology from its current owner for its founders’ involvement in slavery. The historian David Olusoga, part of the project, says that what the Guardian owes the descendants of slavery for this is ‘an unpayable debt’. The paper is attempting to pay it, however, setting aside £10 million for the purpose of restorative justice over ten years. So for the conscientious Guardian reader (is there any other kind?) the question arises: ‘Which is the more important destination for my money – the current needs of the newspaper or reparations to the victims of its past complicity in a great evil? If the latter, should I not pay directly to that cause rather than rewarding a paper which has taken two centuries to admit its wickedness?’ Is the Guardian letting itself off rather lightly?

The current crisis in Israel is poorly explained. Binyamin Netanyahu’s opponents are described as ‘pro-democracy protestors’, but in fact they oppose judges being chosen by MPs rather than by other judges. (They may be right here, but democratic they are not.) The real source of the trouble is the electoral system which empowers tiny extreme parties in coalition-building. It is the results of proportional representation, a subject which usually engages only the dullest and most moderate politicians, which now excite the basest passions. 

Some say it is an unfair advantage for Oxford and Cambridge that college, rather than university, teams enter University Challenge. I imagine that this Oxbridge exception, present when the programme started in 1962, was made to stop Oxford and Cambridge being the joint finalists most years, thus turning the programme into the intellectual equivalent of the Boat Race. But members of either university have, so far as I (Trinity, Cantab) know, no collective Oxbridge pride here. We care only (if at all) about the victory of our own college. Indeed, there is more needle in being beaten by a rival Oxbridge college than by another university. Of course, it is undeniably remarkable that, say, Peterhouse, currently with only 254 undergraduates (and the winner in 2016) could take on, say, Manchester, currently with 30,900 undergraduates (and itself a multiple former winner). But anyone shocked by the inequality inseparable from the attainments of a few can take comfort from the thought that once Oxbridge has finally decolonised its curriculum, expunged its past and excluded any applicant previously well-educated, future undergraduates will know nothing not readily available on social media. They will then declare themselves ‘uncomfortable’ at the thought of speedy questions fired at them on air by a male authority figure and refuse to appear on University Challenge. 

As a Cambridge graduate, I regularly receive emails from the university’s Development and Alumni Relations. The latest includes items about the danger of nuclear winter (a real throwback to CND in the 1980s, the sin here being western retaliation more than Russian nuclear attack), our youngest ever black professor, an archaeologist who explains why her exhibition about islanders is ‘especially relevant in a post-Brexit Britain’, and an item about the Boat Race that puts the women’s race above the men’s. What strikes me most, however, is the launch of a criminology scholarship for ‘under-represented’ students in memory of Jack Merritt, a student at Hughes Hall. In 2019, he died in a terrorist attack at the Fishmongers’ Hall. The nature of the attack is not explained in the bulletin. As a course coordinator for the ‘Learning Together’ programme of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, Jack was helping a former offender, Usman Khan, recently released from prison after a stretch inside for al Qaeda-inspired terrorist offences. Khan had been considered a success story for rehabilitation. In the criminology conference at the Fishmongers’ Hall, however, wearing what later turned out to be a fake suicide vest, he suddenly produced two knives and started stabbing people. He succeeded in murdering 25-year-old Jack and a colleague, Saskia Jones, before being shot dead by police on London Bridge. None of this terrible story invalidates criminological work, but surely it should not be glossed over. Tales of Christian martyrs always include an account of how they died, as inspiration. In that spirit, Jack’s story should be told to those encouraged to follow his path.

Sitting in the new UnHerd Old Queen Street Café in Westminster, I interrogated myself: ‘Why do I feel so content?’ The answer, I realised, was because there was so little choice on the menu. Freedom of choice is a wonderful thing but can be cumulatively depressing. As someone with no ‘dietary requirements’ other than nice food and plenty of it, I want to eat whatever is put before me in a place I trust. The reduction of food choice in restaurants and clubs because of the great inflation is therefore most welcome. It has long been my ambition to start a chain, perhaps called Hobson’s, which offers no choice whatever (not even a vegetarian option, though it could sometimes be a wholly vegetarian day). It would save waste, thus reducing price; and the customer could relax in complete confidence.

We columnists all dream of the perfect first sentence to capture the reader’s attention. In the latest Sunday Times, Hadley Freeman began her column thus: ‘The first time a man choked me in bed, I assumed I was being murdered.’ My immediate reaction was not so much wanting to know what happened next, as one of pure professional envy.