The Spectator: 12 January 2013
Troubles ahead
If the Belfast riots were happening in any other city in the United Kingdom, there would be uproar. For almost five weeks there have been violent clashes each night. Live… Read more
Bruce Anderson
There is a lesson to be learned from the Francis Report into the NHS in Mid-Staffordshire, and from the police force’s current travails. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS… Read more
12 January 2013
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that, for the ‘coalition government with a full tank of gas, it’s full steam ahead’. He announced a ‘mid-term review’, but an audit… Read more
Fatbusters
The government is having its annual fit about the fat. In the ancient world, most of the population worked the land, while aristocrats kept trim in the gymnasia. Only the… Read more
12 January 2013
The aid argument Sir: ‘The great aid mystery’ (5 January) presents the development sceptics’ case — which in five years in opposition (2005-2010) the Conservative party set out to address… Read more
How did Mary Seacole come to be revered as a black icon?
Isn’t it time, just out of perversity, that we all signed the petition on the Operation Black Vote website to restore the part-time nurse Mary Seacole to the national curriculum?… Read more
12 January 2013
Poor Nick Clegg keeps trying to change the constitution and keeps being balked (the Alternative Vote, Lords reform). At last, he believes, he will be able to fulfil his ambition… Read more
The ineffable sadness of Franco’s ruins
The end of an old year cast me into a portentous frame of mind as I descended a couple of thousand feet down an ancient path through forest, brush and… Read more
Gnomes of Zurich will fall like skittles before US investigators finish with them
So farewell, Wegelin & Co, the oldest bank in Switzerland and the one with the simplest strategy for growth — which was to offer secret accounts to American tax-evaders who… Read more
Nick Clegg’s pallor, Murdoch’s revenge, and Lord Strathclyde’s champagne
Has Nick Clegg seen a ghost? The pallor of the Lib Dem leader continues to excite comment in Westminster. At Monday’s half-time presentation by the coalition, he was looking as… Read more
The accidental exit
If Britain leaves the European Union, historians will say that 30 June 2012 was when the great exit began. That day, David Cameron was due to write an article for… Read more
America’s strategic stupidity
Every few months, America’s four-star admirals and generals gather at a military base not far from Washington to participate in what General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman,… Read more
Stop the drugs war
‘They’re all bad, our politicians, all corrupt,’ said Maria, her cheery face dissolving into distaste. What about the new president, Peña Nieto? I ask. ‘That pretty boy? Ugh!’ It was… Read more
A hit man at 13
After a long wait in the visiting room of the maximum security wing of the ‘Gib Lewis Unit’, Rosalio Reta finally arrived for our interview. He was only five feet… Read more
Paying Osborne’s bills
In her early campaigning days as Conservative leader, Mrs Thatcher had the gift of being able to relate the national economy to the domestic finances of ordinary voters. The battle… Read more
Wedding hells
In the good old days of the gay liberation movement, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the excitement of challenging the orthodoxy attracted even the shy and apolitical to its… Read more
An almost perfect catastrophe
Lots of people have subsequently discovered this important imperial maxim: ‘Don’t invade Afghanistan.’ But the first western power to demonstrate the point of it was the British, in the late… Read more
Her fighting soul
The subtitle of Deirdre David’s life of Olivia Manning, ‘A Woman at War’, has a resonant double meaning. She was, as we are repeatedly informed, a unique example of a… Read more
How not to steal a million
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ crackled the voice over the Buckinghamshire police radio in the pre-dawn light of Thursday 8 August 1963. ‘They’ve stolen a train.’ Fifty years on,… Read more
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