Do Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bashar Assad support ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ in Britain’s EU referendum? I ask because they are the most powerful foreign leaders in deciding the vote, their views being much more effective than any sonorous words that may soon be offered by Barack Obama or any last-minute inducements from Angela Merkel. If
To while away the time at airports, I like to spot celebrities. But pickings have been slim. Where is everyone? On Saturday morning the only face I see is ex-Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, guiltily bolting a free bacon roll in the BA executive lounge at Heathrow. Check your privilege, Jim! To be fair, he
Home In the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, kept talking of the ‘next generation’. He outlined cuts of £3.5 billion in public spending by 2020, to be ‘on course’ to balance the books. Personal allowances edged up for lower taxpayers, with the higher-rate threshold rising to £45,000. A ‘lifetime Isa’ for under-40s
11/22, 36/1D, 48/2, 9/30 and 17/46 combine to form anagrams of the titles of five works (four of two words, one of three) by a writer whose name will appear diagonally in the grid and must be shaded. Across 1 Moll producing sauce or gravy (5) 6 Jolly sister shampooing (7) 12 Small
In line with 10A, other unclued lights were anagrams of US states: 17A ILLINOIS; 29A MARYLAND; 35A UTAH; 7D TEXAS; 9D OREGON; 18D MINNESOTA; 33D MAINE. First prize Paul Davies, Reading, Berkshire Runners-up D.P. Shenkin, London WC1; Mrs J. James, Harrow, Middlesex
Zac Goldsmith’s campaign for mayor is nothing if not ambitious. Despite lagging behind Sadiq Khan in the polls, the Conservative candidate remains hopeful that he can beat the Labour candidate in the mayoral race. In fact, Goldsmith’s team appear to be so confident that they are even going after individuals who are unlikely to be convinced to vote blue.
March is the cruellest month if you’re Irish and venture out of Ireland, breeding plastic leprechauns from dead Tesco aisles, mixing green food colouring with American beer, and stirring dull copy from hacks. Come the third week of March, the Huffington Post is telling us how to make green beer – handy for me as
I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm. But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch
Is George Osborne’s newly announced Budget already losing him the youth vote? After the Chancellor of the Exchequer revealed plans to introduce a sugar tax on fizzy drinks and extend the school day, he received a lukewarm reception on a visit St Benedict’s Catholic Primary School in Garforth, Yorkshire. There to watch a netball lesson,
George Osborne’s announcement in the Budget that he wants to help fight childhood obesity through a tax on sugary drinks has provoked the usual grumbles. But this is not a ‘pious, regressive absurdity’, as some claim. It is practical action that will help to tackle an avoidable health disaster for the nation’s children, a quarter of
Today Chris Bryant has been the cause of much laughter in the Commons thanks to a joke about George Osborne and Coke. Discussing the Chancellor’s new sugar tax, Bryant said that he was glad Osborne had come round to the dangers of coke: ‘I’m delighted that finally the chancellor has realised the dangers of coke.’ Bryant
A ‘damning’ report has been published into the Church of England’s handling of a particular abuse case. Except it’s not very damning. In 1976 a 16-year old was abused by a priest called Garth Moore – an attempted rape took place. He kept quiet about it for a couple of years, then told various priests
Which of us who grew up in the thrall of Paul Daniels’ magic, under the spell of his Saturday-night humour and charm, could have imagined he would spend his latter years as a kind of sexual outlaw? Not many of us, I would wager. But that’s what happened. When, in 2012, he bravely criticised the
How does George Osborne get away with it? The Chancellor was asked this on the Today programme this morning, with John Humphrys needling him on the economic targets on debt and deficit that he set himself and asking whether if he could miss two out of three of those targets and potentially be on course
Yesterday George Osborne found himself accused of using spin to distract attention from his missed financial targets — with the introduction of the sugar tax. Matters weren’t helped when the Chancellor’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison appeared to admit — in a BBC interview — that the tax was introduced in the hope that it
Was it good for you? George Osborne’s 2016 Budget, delivered to a packed House of Commons on Wednesday, has drawn criticism over a looming £55 billion black hole in public finances. But what does it mean for your money? We published a guide to the main changes yesterday. Today Spectator Money looks at reaction to a Budget
Normally, a set of newspaper splashes featuring a Chancellor’s most controversial Budget policy would be judged a bad thing. But today’s newspaper front pages are, by and large, just what George Osborne wanted. The sugar tax is just too irresistible to headline writers – and too controversial a policy not to grab attention and provoke endless debate.
George Osborne gave middle England plenty to smile about in yesterday’s Budget by cutting business rates, helping savers and taking 600,000 people out of higher rate tax. Today’s Money blog looks at the day after the night before while, in other financial news, Fidelity International has warned that the retirement income gap is not just a
Is political correctness a good thing or a bad thing? As Simon Barnes writes in this week’s magazine, he used to think that people should be free to use whatever words they wanted to, in pursuit of truth and meaning. But having a son with Down’s syndrome has changed his mind. Now, he has seen the benefits that
BBC Newsnight sent a crew to North Wiltshire today, to interview voters about the budget. Gladys Pek Yue Macrae, a former Conservative Party branch chairman, said she is fed up because she expected Tory policies to be the result of a Tory majority. Instead, she said, “I find I have a socialist Chancellor. Conservatives are for small government
