Today I learned about the All Souls examination, which is reputed to be the hardest exam in the world. To even be considered, you need to have a degree from, or be a current graduate student of Oxford. Hundreds of people sit and only two people pass every year. Attached is last year's general exam. Before I saw it, I wondered, how hard could it be. Well, it turns out…it's "Defend ghosting.", "Does a pope matter?", and "Is body language a language?" hard:

Thinking Allowed is such an unusual and important programme. A real tragedy that it’ll be coming to an end. There’s a wonder archive of previous programmes

Even in the playground I preferred Harold Wilson to Ted Heath. But as an u/g I was never ever tempted to join the CPGB, SWP, RCP, Spartacist League etc. Even as an 18 year old it was obvious to me that apart from a few naifs they were full of weirdos, gobshites and chancers.

At Caius College, Cambridge, attendance of these 1.5 hour-long inclusivity training sessions is mandatory for all undergrads. The sessions will be delivered by Stop Hate UK, who erroneously state that "gender identity" is a protected characteristic and that "Islamophobia is a crime." One would hope these are honest mistakes and they will be correcting them @stophateuk It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about the hate myself and others experienced at Cambridge for having the temerity to join a society for women that excludes men. Their website talks a lot about The Law and they seem to be very much in favour of the crime of Hate as a category: the word itself is menacingly capitalised throughout their material with the ominous implication that the violence or harassment ordinarily necessary for hatred to constitute a Hate Crime is somehow superfluous, and that simply Hating silently in your head should be sufficient. I wonder if they like the law so much when it comes to the protected characteristic of belief in the binary nature of sex and the Supreme Court judgment clarifying that sex in law means biological sex. We shall soon find out. In any case, by bringing them in and mandating attendance, Caius College is at best tacitly endorsing this ideological pressuring of students into being firmly on the woke side of a culture war they are determined not to wade out of, even given recent events. Training will of course include American rubbish about unconscious bias, microaggressions and how to be an Upstander against heteronormative hypermasculinity. No doubt some administrator has looked over this charity and their session descriptions and decided there's nothing at all controversial here, nothing political, just kindness.

What is your proposed compromise solution here? Alluding to the need for compromise on both sides rings a little hollow if you are not, at the same time, able to propose what that compromise might look like. With some issues, there is simply no room for compromise. A space is either single-sex or it is not single-sex. I struggle to see the room for compromise there. However, if you see some space that I don’t see, I am more than happy to listen to you sharing what that compromise would look like in practice.

Meet Hilary Cremin: the Cambridge Professor of Education (yes, the one who appointed Jason Arday) who wants to abolish all secondary schools because they're "fascist", among other mad ideas, says Dr Nicholas Tate. dailysceptic.org/2026/09/17/…