Society

Privatisation has been a hugely successful policy over the past 30 years. Unfortunately, though, the government seems to have learned the wrong lesson from it. The proposal to sell the Courts Service’s buildings, and transfer some of its staff to the private sector, promises to bring out the worst aspects of the policy: it gives a desperate government a chance to raise cash in a hurry, relieving the taxpayer of assets at a knockdown price. Meanwhile, it does nothing to replicate what has been good about privatisation: that it has opened up lazy state monopolies to competition. Claims that the measure will save the public purse £1 billion a year

It is a badly kept secret that David Dimbleby was in the Bullingdon Club and he has finally spoken about it, telling the Radio Times that he ‘loved being elected’ to the notorious Oxford dining society and that he is ‘very proud of the uniform’ that he still fits into. Refreshing honesty, especially after years of hearing politicians profess their deep shame at their involvement. Dimbleby goes on: ‘We never did these disgusting disgraceful things that Boris did. We never broke windows or got wildly drunk. It was a completely different organisation from what it became when Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and George Osborne joined, who seemed to be ashamed of it,

With further reports today that Bashar Assad is deploying chemical weapons in Syria, the prospect of intervention looms larger than ever. The EU is talking about lifting its arms embargo (at Britain’s insistence) and France’s foreign minister talks about “stronger and better substantiated indications of the local use of chemical arms”. Barack Obama has indicated that the use of chemical weapons would trigger American military action – but he’ll be aware that intervention in Syria is deeply unpopular in America. He’d have not much to gain, and rather a lot to lose. But should the West go ahead anyway? On Monday 24 June, The Spectator will hold a debate at

I would have loved to have been in the room when David Cameron’s advisers were thinking of an acronym for the new anti-terror committee. Something that sounded scary enough, but not too Monty Python. They eventually went for TERFOR, according to the Mail on Sunday, although it’s still unclear what the T will stand for. But there’s still time. It reminds me of an old New Statesman competition where readers were invited to invent a committee whose acronym mocked its existence. The great Robert Conquest won, teasing the mag for its sympathetic approach to the Soviets: his proposal was Institute for New Statesman Editors and Contributors for Underwriting the Russian

That Universal Credit is one of the government projects at risk of failing is not a surprise, especially not if you’re a Spectator reader. We warned back in September 2012 that the Whitehall machine was already trying to put the brakes on the project. Officials did try their very best yesterday to avoid a big fuss about the danger this project, and others, is in, by publishing the Major Projects Authority’s annual report late on a Friday afternoon with as little fanfare as possible. It was a cynical thing to do, and also underestimated the ability of journalists following the progress of Universal Credit to read a press release properly.

We’ve had a lot of horrible news this week, and inevitably that means a lot of tragedy tweeting. You know the sort of thing: a terror attack or a natural disaster happens, and everybody hops on the internet to share their reactions and emote ad nauseam. There’s not much point railing against this. Twitter is here to stay. But please — just so we don’t all go mad — can we lay down some basic DO NOT rules for tweeting in the wake of an appalling major news story? Below are the first eight that spring to mind, but please do add more… 1. Do not take to Twitter to