Society

Thursday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Hunt’s war on Scotch whisky is bad politics

The Chancellor’s decision to slap a ten per cent duty hike on Scotch whisky is bad economics. Exports broke the £6 billion mark last year and the industry employs 11,000 people in Scotland while supporting 42,000 jobs across the UK. But whisky is a luxury item in a competitive global market where increases in retail price impact consumer behaviour. Five of the top ten export destinations by value (United States, France, Germany, Japan and Spain) are economies experiencing sharp declines in household income.  Driving up the industry’s costs also hampers one of the biggest export challenges facing Scotch whisky today: breaking India. Per bottle sales rose 60 per cent last year but Scotch still only accounts

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Mick Lynch lashes out at journalist

Mick Lynch strikes again! The tough-talking general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) was out on the airwaves again this morning to defend yet another day of train strikes. True to form, Lynch couldn’t quite get through the broadcast round without getting into a spat with the journalist interviewing him. Speaking to Jayne Secker on Sky News from outside Euston station, stony-faced Lynch slammed the government’s offer to avert the strikes ‘rubbish’. The two clashed when Secker suggested that the RMT’s frequent strikes might be putting commuters off using the railway altogether and were perfectly happy to work from home. Was the RMT risking

Portia Berry-Kilby

Is Jeremy Hunt’s childcare revolution something to celebrate?

Jeremy Hunt has announced plans to extend the 30 hours a week of ‘free’ childcare for three and four year olds to include babies as young as nine-months old. This expansion of childcare provision has been hailed by the Chancellor as a measure to allow mothers to return to employment if they want to; it will also, according to Hunt, help boost the economy. But has anyone paused to think about the impact on the children themselves – and families? The truth is that Hunt’s proposed changes aren’t a win for mothers, children, and families as a whole. Why? Because the childcare plans suggest that a mother’s worth comes from

Sam Dunning

How Justin Trudeau’s government was compromised by the CCP

Justin Trudeau’s government has been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party and Canada’s democracy is in jeopardy. This is a startling claim, all the more so for the fact that Canadian intelligence officials are the ones making it.  Over the past month, a series of leaks from within CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has stirred up an astonishing storm. In November, it was leaked that a clandestine CCP network had funded and infiltrated the campaigns of 11 candidates in 2019’s federal election.  The story may roll on and faulty intelligence may be mixed up in it, but public trust has already been battered Trudeau reacted to November’s leak by having his

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Kugelhopf: a reassuring introduction to baking with yeast

Yeast scares even some of the most proficient cooks. I know home cooks and professionals alike, food writers and fanatics, who wouldn’t think twice about deboning a duck or rustling up a feast for 14, who quail the moment they hear the word ‘yeast’. I understand the trepidation: yeast is a living thing and, as such, capricious and unpredictable. Its behaviour is influenced by the season, the warmth, the humidity and how it is handled. Put like that, it sounds quite relatable, doesn’t it? Despite its intimidating reputation, yeast is actually pretty good at showing us what’s going on: it visibly inflates the dough or batter before cooking. And if

Hannah Tomes Hannah Tomes

The art of eating alone

To some, the phrase ‘table for one, please’ is among the saddest in the English language. Perhaps this isn’t a surprise; the concept of social dining for pleasure dates back to Ancient Greece. There, meals would be served at all-male gatherings on low tables so the guests could recline while eating (a recipe for heartburn, but luxurious nonetheless). Then would come the symposium, the section of the evening dedicated to drinking. Although we mix the two a little more fluidly now, the concept is much the same: sharing a meal and drinks with others is an enjoyable thing to do, so people do it. As such, eating alone has long

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

All mirrors and monochrome: Mister Nice reviewed

Mister Nice is not so much a restaurant as a pre-dawn thought flung into the drag between Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street. Mayfair is becoming a drug for me, in that I both hate it and can’t stop eating here: a recent review was so poisonous that the owner telephoned, with fake bonhomie, to ask what I thought his next Mayfair site should be. Social housing, I replied: he won’t telephone again. Here is the next one: Mister Nice. It sits opposite 21 Davies Street, which houses Lynch Pest Control Mayfair, and has a motto from Louis de Saint-Just etched into the stone: Les mots juste et injuste sont entendus

Roger Alton Roger Alton

What’s going wrong with English rugby

Rejoice, as you don’t normally say after a hammering like the peerless French dished out to England at Twickenham. But looking on the bright side, at last English rugby knows its place, and it’s not pretty. The consensus in the hospitality lounges appeared to be that it was all Eddie Jones’s fault, though that feels a bit unfair to me. But hey ho, the darkest hour before the dawn and all that. And you can learn more from defeat than victory… fingers crossed. What we can see is that France and Ireland are in a different league, with Scotland close behind. Certain players, poor Jack van Poortvliet at scrum-half, and

Wednesday

The Spectator

Unemployment and Britain’s missing million

There was plenty of miserable economic news in this week’s Budget: the highest taxes imposed by any peacetime government, the worst post-pandemic recovery in the G7, the most painful cost-of-living squeeze since records began. But there was also a statistic which, on the face of it, seems to herald a remarkable success. The official unemployment rate stands at just 3.7 per cent – less than half the rate of a decade ago, as low as it has been in half a century. In his Budget, Jeremy Hunt boasted that ‘Conservatives believe that work is virtue’. Sadly, as this magazine revealed several months ago, there is rather more to the figures than

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Bank failures, a ‘Budget for growth’ and a new Duke of Edinburgh

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered what he called a ‘Budget for growth’. He abolished the cap on savings for tax-free pensions and promised help with childcare costs. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast a fall in inflation to 2.9 cent by the end of 2023 and a fall in GDP of 0.2 per cent. Twelve regions for new investment zones were named. Corporation tax would rise to 25 per cent but for small businesses capital expenditure would be tax deductible. Nuclear power and quantum computing would be encouraged; back pain and mental health problems discouraged. The pothole fund would grow. Holyhead Breakwater would benefit. Duty on

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Speak up for the unsung BBC Singers

There are 20 BBC Singers and they cost less than one Gary Lineker. Unlike Lineker, they have broken no rules, but the BBC want to close them down. They have worked in a cave in Maida Vale for a hundred years and it is quite possible that top BBC executives, much too busy to listen to the Corporation’s own cultural output, know almost nothing about the Singers. They probably do not know, for instance, that the BBC Singers have a nice line in singing the Match of the Day theme tune. The Singers are a prime example of the sort of thing which justifies the BBC’s unique privilege of raising

Christopher Caldwell

The banking crisis could be just the beginning

Washington, DC You can measure the health of the American republic, or at least its governing institutions, on a weekday-morning Acela train from Washington to New York. It’s too expensive to use for pleasure ($337 if you plan late and are unlucky), too time-consuming (almost three hours for the 225-mile trip) to permit idling in the café car. So the train is always full of strivers, working their mobile phones. On Tuesday morning, the phone chitchat was anxious. Even in Washington, where analysts and economists had been working all weekend to contain the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the reeling of the financial system when markets opened on Monday caught

Leah McLaren

The truth about single motherhood

If you believed Hollywood, you’d think the world was madly in love with harried, struggling single mothers. I mean, who doesn’t love Erin Brockovich? Or Renée Zellweger’s character in Jerry Maguire? But in real life, that’s not how it works. In recent months, I have unexpectedly found myself the sole-care single mother to two young sons. This has changed my life in unfathomable ways but the main thing it’s altered is my relationship to work. There’s just way more of it – the unpaid kind. For all our talk of progress and equality, single mums are held to higher account than single dads In October, I went from being a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will Credit Suisse trigger a global banking crisis?

When your largest single shareholder decides that enough is enough, that it is no longer prepared to throw good money after bad to prop up your finances, you really do have a problem. And that is exactly what has happened to Credit Suisse this morning. The Saudi National Bank, which owns a 10 per cent share in the Swiss bank, announced that it is no longer prepared to put up any more capital to prop the bank up. Credit Suisse shares promptly fell by 20 per cent before trading was suspended. Yes, Saudi National Bank has trashed the value of its own holding – but evidently reckoned that that is a

Dot Wordsworth

The curious pronunciation of ‘East Palestine’

‘The Royal Pavilion in Brighton is a palace on a Steine,’ said my husband in a dislocated response to learning that East Palestine, Ohio, is pronounced ‘palace-steen’. We’d never heard of the place, pop. 4,761, before a train crashed there, letting out fumes. Its name sounded like a claim to be further east than the original Palestine, but it turns out that when the village changed its name from Mechanicsburg in 1875, the post office added the label East to distinguish it from an existing Palestine in Ohio (pop. today 180). Palestine was, it seems, a name chosen by Rebecca Chamberlin, wife of the settlement’s first resident physician and postmaster

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: another Spectator scoop from Chateau Musar

Whoop, whoop, it’s another Spectator scoop! Mighty Ch. Musar of Lebanon has just released its latest – 2017 – vintage, and wily Johnny Wheeler has ensured that readers are the first in the UK to get their hands on it. This wine is not available anywhere else until Easter and, with Musar repositioning the brand (aka putting the price up a fiver a bottle), you won’t find it cheaper. If Musar’s your thing – and it’s certainly mine – do get stuck in. Yes, the 2017 Ch. Musar White (1) is an acquired taste but it’s one that I have most definitely acquired and trust you have/will too. It’s hard

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Will sharing a bed ruin our friendship?

Q. I am a 29-year-old gay man. About four months ago I met a man at least 30 years older than me. We have become very good friends with many shared interests. I am certain that my friend (let’s call him ‘Tom’) has enjoyed the friendship as much as I have. It has been entirely platonic, even in situations where ‘something’ might have happened. We have often discussed making a trip to Paris (in particular to go to the opera). We had a very straightforward conversation about the cost of the trip and it is clear that I am to be his guest in April, for when the trip is

Toby Young Toby Young

When is a crime not a crime?

On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI) against a person’s name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I’m exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to ‘migrant workers’ in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn’t committed a crime. The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime

The Spectator

2593: Capital Development – solution

1A, 7A, 18A, 40A, 46A and 47A are all on the new Elizabeth Line, which appears in the grid when 25A, 26A and 27A are entered correctly. First prize  Nick Huntley, DarlingtonRunners-up  John Fahy, Thaxted, Essex; Heather Weeks, London SW1