Recently in this column, I wrote about a “thoroughly depressing Christmas shopping trip to The Grafton end of town”, with its “endless parade of grubby vape shops and empty units”.
But guess what? Turns out literally everywhere else is even worse, as our city has once again topped the “vitality rankings” of 1,000 UK retail centres. That’ll teach me to be such a gloomster, talking Cambridge down!
Seriously, though, it is welcome news – if slightly oddly timed, given the vast swathes of retail that are about to be transformed into laboratory and office space. Though on the plus side, we have recently welcomed a second Harry Potter shop to the city centre – so at least we’ll never run out of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.
It’s funny, though, how only a decade or so, there was a mild moral panic that we were all turning into a zombie army of mindless consumers – less Napoleon’s nation of shopkeepers than a nation of shopaholics, worshipping at the temple of Mammon. Whereas now, popping into town feels increasingly like a civic duty: a defiant act of resistance to the Amazon-isation of Britain. Though when you get there, of course, whatever you’re looking for will almost certainly be out of stock, and they’ll advise you to check the website instead.
Another moaning update: Further to my recent grumbling about “bare minimum Britain” – that vague, slightly intangible feeling that no-one really cares about doing a good job any more – I’ve given up hope that they’re ever going to sort out that big puddle at Cambridge North station.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, this is the pool of water – somewhere between a large pond and a very small lake – that’s been blocking the main path through the car park for about a year, forcing pedestrians to turn 90º and slide between the neighbouring parked cars instead.
It’s a small thing, given the world’s numerous looming extinction events – but isn’t that rather the point? If we can’t even fix a puddle, how are we meant to have confidence in the bigger stuff?
Forgive me for sounding like one of those people who write Facebook poems about how everything used to be better in the racist olden days, but I’m sure in the past they’d have just sent out a couple of workmen to get the job done in an afternoon. Now, they probably have to log a ticket request in Lahore, then wait 18 months until they send someone from head office in Milton Keynes to have a look at it. (And I do mean have a look at it. If you want it fixing, you’ll have to log a separate ticket request.)
Over the years, I’ve generally kept my counsel about the most toxic debate of our times – you know which one – because, as a middle-aged man, I’m not sure it’s really my job to tell either women or trans people what to think. And also, I’m a bit of a coward, who likes a quiet life.
I had hoped against hope that the publication of Hilary Cass’s review of NHS gender identity services might prove a watershed moment that offered everyone the chance to take a breath, calm down and seek to find common ground. But clearly that was never going to happen, and everyone duly retreated to their entrenched positions – in most cases, I’m fairly sure, without bothering to read the report itself.
Personally, I happen to think caring about women’s rights, trans rights and the medical safeguarding of children needn’t be mutually exclusive. But hey, what does a crusty old centrist boomer like me know?
I certainly don’t see why this whole thing should be characterised as a left-right issue. But until moderate voices on the progressive left have the courage to call for a more nuanced debate, it has rather left the field open to the frothing blowhards of the Daily Mail, GB News et al to colonise the discourse.
A couple of Saturdays ago, the group Cambridge Against Transphobia organised a protest against a visit to the city by Let Women Speak, founded by the gender-critical activist known as Posie Parker. As it happened, the event passed off fairly peacefully – but then, for a student city, we’re notoriously light on firebrand activism, generally preferring polite debates in the Cambridge Union to wearing ski masks and screaming abuse.
Also, being both a liberal, progressive city and a scientific centre of excellence, I guess we are sympathetic to the agony of gender dysphoria and sceptical of attempts to downplay biological sex. Because, again, these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
One person who doesn’t have much time for rational, nuanced debate is that venerable Bard of Barking, Billy Bragg, who in recent years has been burning through his progressive credentials by noisily telling women on social media to wind their necks in, and leave the debate about what it means to be a woman to the experts – ie him.
And while the British Medical Journal, among others, welcomed the Cass Review as “an opportunity to pause, recalibrate, and place evidence informed care at the heart of gender medicine”, Billy quickly decided that his position as the man who wrote Sexuality (“I’ve had relations with girls from many nations, I’ve made passes at women of all classes, and just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away”) made him more of an expert on the subject than the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
But to all those people saying Billy Bragg should “stick to singing”, I would simply say: be careful what you wish for.
Like many others, I was astounded to read the recent Spectator article, in which the magazine’s theatre critic admitted that the sight of a young female academic giving a lecture at Darwin College had left him feeling so horny, he had to nip into town and secure the services of a sex worker.
Professor Lea Ypi, an Albanian academic who lectures on political theory at the London School of Economics, was giving a talk on Immanuel Kant and the politics of revolution. But it was her “blonde hair spilling over her shoulders” that prompted Lloyd Evans to seek the services of a “companion” in what he called the “rougher end of Cambridge” (by the railway station – you know, next to all those million-pound flats). In fact, so overcome by lust was Mr Evans that he couldn’t even remember which college he’d been in (he called it Downing, not Darwin, in the article).
Clearly, there are many astonishing things about this sordid little episode – the main one, surely, being why the Spectator would choose to print such a thing in the first place?
But perhaps the last word should go to Immanual Kant himself, who said: “In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”
In other words, Mr Evans: keep your mucky thoughts to yourself.
Question of the month: What if it simply never stops raining? What then?
Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
