Disadvantaged children in England are being priced out of a cultural hinterland. A Social Mobility Commission study, from the University of Bath, reports that children aged 10-15 from low-income families are three times less likely than wealthier peers to engage in out-of-school musical activities, such as learning an instrument or joining a choir or orchestra.

There were also differences according to race – 4% of British Pakistani children took part in music classes, compared with 28% of Indian children and 20% of white children – and regional divides: 9% of children in north-east England played a musical instrument, compared with 22% in the south-east.

Disadvantaged children are also more likely to miss out on extracurricular sports (football, boxing, cricket) and drama, dance and art. The commission set out recommendations, including bursaries, better funding and support for schools – let’s hope they’re taken on board. As well as the activities themselves, children are missing out on other crucial gains including confidence-building, team spirit and social skill, and are less likely to go on to higher education. As certain “creative” subjects don’t qualify for the English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) school performance measure, they may already be underfunded within cash-strapped schools, so some children are missing out even more.

Extracurricular activities tend to cost money, but there are also problems with a lack of availability and access, such as schools being unable to afford to run after-school clubs or stay open during holidays. Another barrier is the kids’ “fear of not fitting in”. In this sense, certain children are self-excluding from, say, learning an instrument, singing in a choir, playing cricket or acting. They decide by themselves that they’re “undeserving” of swaths of music, sport, art and drama. Unbelievably, in 2019, children as young as 10 are already hard-wired with the self-limiting poverty notion of “not for the likes of us”.

This is heartbreaking. It’s hardly news that life is tougher for poorer children, but it’s an outrage if all sense of curiosity, artistry and playfulness is knocked out of them so early. Something is wrong if better-off children feel entitled to explore and participate in areas that interest and excite them, while the disadvantaged are cast from the start as cultural wallflowers – doomed to sit out every dance. The result is full-blown structural elitism: one set of kids grows and thrives, the other is diverted on to a culturally sterile treadmill they could stay on for life.

This isn’t about every child learning the piano or violin (but why not?), it’s about sowing the seeds for a cultural hinterland that will sustain and enrich them for life. It’s about people exploring their passions and refusing to have their horizons artificially limited – avoiding a life stripped back to the pallid basics, memorably encapsulated by the Godfathers’ song, Birth, School, Work, Death. Regardless of circumstances, all children should know that their faces “fit” – automatically and forever. Culture belongs to everyone.

Women don’t mind porn, they just prefer the real thing



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Burt Reynolds was once a Playgirl centrefold. Photograph: Everett/REX Shutterstock

Would women deny themselves pornography if they liked it? A study from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany found that women are just as turned on by sexual images as men, challenging the orthodoxy that men are “visual creatures” and that this explains why they’re keener on porn. While questions remained, brain scans found few differences between men and women, leading to speculation that social factors were at play – such as female sexuality being taboo and women suppressing their true feelings because enjoying porn would feel wrong and exploitative.

Presumably the scientists factored in that women tend to see far less porn, and could have reacted to the novelty of the images. However, why would women suppress a liking for porn? If it’s about moral qualms – and who wouldn’t have those about an industry that systemically exploits and abuses human beings? – or even boredom with heterosexual porn’s relentless male-centric tone, surely women would be consuming “ethical porn” in greater numbers?

It’s as though some men love porn so much, they can’t fathom that women are disgusted by it, or, more likely, simply aren’t interested, and prefer their own imaginations and sexual partners. That most women would just prefer to have sex than watch strangers have sex. Maybe that’s why the old Playgirl/Cosmopolitan male centrefolds were generally played for giggles – the actor Burt Reynolds smirking on a bearskin – rather than any sense of genuine erotica.

There’ll always be exceptions (women who love porn; men who hate it), but it seems a little patronising to suggest that modern women are intimidated by their sexuality or cowed by society’s judgment. When women want things, they tend to go for it – or are we denying the concept of females as avid consumers now? The female brain isn’t scared of porn, though it could be beyond it.

Does Clegg ever dream of 2010 as he sinks into his beanbag?



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Clegg: no tie and no socks. Photograph: Michael Bowles/REX/Shutterstock

Who will write me the country song – The Ballad of Nick Clegg, Sockless in Silicon Valley? The former Liberal Democrat leader has spoken about his second career with Facebook as vice-president (global affairs, communications, thingy, thingy). He says he’s a misfit, that people don’t wear socks (neither does he now), and some phrases (such as “teaching grandmas to suck eggs”) are met with bewildered silence.

Some might say, whatever, Clegg took the social media dollar, and there was all that unpleasantness when he said Russian activity on Facebook had nothing to do with the Brexit result (ahem). Some of us are softer hearted and can’t bear to think of Clegg taking meetings, sinking deeper into a candy-coloured beanbag, or “hanging” with twentysomething coders, ordered by Mark Zuckerberg to play Subbuteo “ironically” with the “stiff Brit-dude”.

I wonder, does he ever think about the glory days of 2010, when TV debates rang with the words “I agree with Nick”? At least he can be comforted that there’s nothing going on politically in Britain – it’s boring here. Otherwise, he seems to be experiencing a double whammy of culture-cum-generational shock. No wonder he can’t work out how to put his socks on. Clegg has been through the kind of living hell that a reputed $4m-$7m salary couldn’t begin to heal.