Politics

The net zero lobby just gets sillier and sillier. According to energy minister Michael Shanks, Reform’s policy of abandoning net zero targets is an ‘anti-growth ideology’ which would cost nearly a million jobs. Coming in a week when the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that the number of payrolled employees across the UK fell by 135,000 during Labour’s first year in power – with 25,000 lost in May alone (the month after the higher rates of employers’ national Insurance came into effect) – you might think that government ministers would want to avoid talking about job losses just at the moment, but no matter. Shanks’ ‘evidence’ for his claim

As we approach the end of a long, hot summer term, it is a good time to reflect on the state of schools after one year of this Labour government. I teach in both the independent and state sectors and it is fair to say that both are feeling bruised and bewildered by the events of the last twelve months. Schools are poorer than they have been for a long time, facing huge and complex challenges. They also feel there is no leadership or vision to make the reforms necessary to bring lasting improvement. It’s an F for Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary. The calendar year began in acrimony with

In retrospect, as has so often been the case with my attempts at Delia’s thrice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé, the question was not so much when MasterChef was going to collapse, but how.  The warning signs were there. Not only in 2001 when Lloyd Grosman, Britain’s answer to Paul Newman (in pasta sauce endorsement terms if not acting), flounced off the show because, so far as I understand the dispute, a revamp dictated that contestants all use the same ingredient. But also in 2018, when now disgraced judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode managed to unify the whole of Malaysia in affront. For which feat, whatever their later sins, I salute them. 

When the lead singer of Bob Vylan’s name was revealed, it caused a fair amount of amusement. This anti-establishment musician who hit the headlines after ranting about the Israel at Glastonbury is actually called…Pascal Robinson-Foster. In football, there has been a crop of stars with double-barrelled names ‘A posh double-barrel name is perhaps not the best handle for a self-styled Rasta radical. So he goes by the name Bobbie Vylan instead,’ wrote veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil. But while it’s vaguely amusing that Vylan’s real name is rather less ‘rock-n’roll’ than his stage act suggests, Neil got one thing wrong: the era of double-barrelled surnames signifying poshness is over. Once upon