Society

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Oil giants aren’t government cash cows

According to Labour, solving the energy crisis is really very simple. Rather than funding an energy price cap through borrowing, as Liz Truss wants to do, it should be funded by a windfall tax on oil giants instead. In other words, let’s grab some of more of the gargantuan profits being made by these polluting companies and use it for the social good. But hang on a minute. Is there really such a bottomless well of money to be exploited? This morning’s profit warning from Shell suggests otherwise. We have been conditioned into thinking that companies such as Shell have been coining it in all year – not least thanks to the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Britain’s shameful appeasement of Iran

France took some flak from Britain earlier this year for its perceived reluctance to rally to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. They were accused of ‘appalling cowardice’ in one respectable newspaper and the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, suggested that there was a ‘whiff of Munich’ about France’s approach to Vladimir Putin. Britain has from the outset been a staunch and commendable ally of Ukraine, a position that Liz Truss has promised to maintain as Boris Johnson’s successor. It’s not just the occupant of 10 Downing Street who has been a robust supporter: celebrities, sports stars and just about every walk of life has also got behind the blue and yellow flag.

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the free-market cause ever recover from Liz Truss?

In theory, I should be delighted about the Liz Truss project. She is saying the things I’ve been arguing for years: talking not just about lower taxes but about basic liberty and how it relates to everyday life. She’s passionate about these ideas – and sincere. I remember watching her deliver a rallying cry, a salute to the ‘Airbnb-ing, Deliveroo-eating, Uber-riding freedom fighters’. This was just over three years ago when she was a Treasury minister. Her speeches were getting punchier and her one-liners becoming newsworthy and memorable. She was turning into one of the most recognisable faces of classical liberalism in Britain – a development which clearly delighted her.

Anthony Whitehead

Meet the Bristol Tyre Extinguishers

If the world really does face a climate emergency, what ought you, personally, be doing about it? Should you, as increasing numbers of young people are doing, roam the streets at night letting down the tyres of SUVs? The fast-growing movement that calls itself the ‘Tyre Extinguishers’ thinks this is an effective approach, and has targeted thousands of SUVs in cities around the world. My home town of Bristol – always quick to espouse a green cause – has seen at least 200 SUVs ‘extinguished’ in recent weeks. Though they claim to be leaderless, the Extinguishers have a Twitter account where you can keep up-to-date with their latest ‘hits’, and

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Is Credit Suisse the tornado on the banking horizon?

Headlines about ‘alarm over CreditSuisse’ might be read as a sign of normality in financial news, rather than the reverse. The second-ranked Swiss bank (behind UBS) has slipped on so many banana skins in recent years that, as I wrote in February: ‘I sometimes wonder how and why it survives.’ As a recognised basket-case, its difficulties are not usually seen as harbingers of systemic trouble. But in the Kwarteng-induced febrile mood of London’s markets, the question has to be asked. This is October, the devil’s favourite month for provoking crashes. Could Credit Suisse be the tornado on banking’s horizon? Amid rumours of critical balance-sheet weakness, Credit Suisse’s shares have fallen

Colin Freeman

Will guns from Ukraine end up on the streets of Britain?

While visiting a Ukrainian militia this summer, I nearly trod on an anti-tank mine which was being used as a doorstop at the entrance to their HQ. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a broken Russian one that we found,’ said my breezy host, Eduard Leonov. ‘We’re trying to fix it so we can use it.’ Eduard’s militia isn’t exactly the SAS of Ukraine’s forces. It’s a volunteer army and he himself is a folk-singer-turned-fighter in his fifties. Eduard’s dozen-odd comrades are Dad’s Army age, yet even so they still have a formidable arsenal – everything from grenade launchers to Kalashnikovs. I thought about Eduardo when Scotland Yard issued their recent warning about

Harry Mount

Fellowship of the Lamb: how we’re saving Tolkien’s pub

I’ve just bought Tolkien’s pub in Oxford. Well, to be more precise, I and more than 300 fellow drinkers have bought the Lamb and Flag, the 400-year-old Oxford pub where the Inklings group of writers – including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis – drank. Like so many pubs across the country, the Lamb and Flag closed, in January last year, thanks to the pandemic trading slump. Across the road, the Eagle and Child pub also closed, in 2020, because of Covid. Tolkien and Lewis drank there, too – they called it ‘the Bird and Baby’. It remains shut. What rare survival stories these two pubs are – or were. The

Laurie Graham

Open alms: how I came to live on charity

A year ago, I moved into what I hope will be my home for the rest of my life. I became an almshouse resident. The announcement of my implied reduced circumstances provoked some interesting responses: from family, joy that my recent hard times were over; from acquaintances, a range of reactions: embarrassment, shocked disbelief, scepticism. Even some thinly veiled envy. Who’d have thought? What kind of person ends their days in an almshouse? The key word is need. It might be financial, it might be social, perhaps both. Some people are quite alone in the world. Some reach old age with a negligible pension, or no roof over their head.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The trouble with Nick Robinson’s Thoughts for the Day

Thought for the Day appears every morning on BBC Radio 4. This preachy slot is hallowed by longevity, if not because of its content. But when Nick Robinson presents the accompanying Today programme, he often uses the moment after the hourly news and papers to contribute a political Thought for the Day of his own. Before he settles down to attack a government minister with his dentist’s drill, Nick likes to deliver his own wisdom about the foolishness of political leaders. ‘Making promises is easy,’ he told listeners on Tuesday. ‘Explaining how you’ll pay for them is rather harder, as the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are beginning to discover.’

Melissa Kite

British Gas has turned the builder boyfriend into a socialist

A cleverly worded email has arrived from British Gas to explain why, despite the Prime Minister’s announcement, my gas and electricity is going to rise to £3,761.60 a year. When I say this email was well worded, I mean it was a master class in stating the indefensible while making it appear reasonable. You could tell that what they had wanted to type was: ‘Listen here, Missy. That Liz Truss might have told you she’s capping energy prices but we are here to tell you it will be a cold day in hell before that happens. (Leaving hell aside, which we are trying to work up a new tariff for,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Smoking is more hassle than it’s worth

I gave up smoking one year ago this week, as part of a series of pitiful capitulations to the forces of coercive conformity. As far as I see it, the path to the grave is lined with compromise after compromise until, at the moment of the final rattle, one has become a travesty, physically and spiritually, of the person one used to be. Not that I would want to overdramatise the whole thing, mind. I more usually tend to present my dis-avowal of smoking as a kind of glorious epiphany. One moment I smoked, the next I didn’t. And in a sense that is true: no doctors were involved, there

Dot Wordsworth

Why ‘pop’ is popping up everywhere

The Guardian kindly tells us that green is a colour whose time has come: ‘A blazer or a cotton shirt in Wimbledon grass-court green as a pop of saturated colour against white jeans and chunky flat boots is very Copenhagen Fashion Week.’ For the Express, it’s nails: ‘With polish costing from as little as £1, you can add a pop of colour to an outfit for next to nothing.’ This is the sassiest usage just at the moment of that vastly productive word pop. Yet in the papers, the predominant references by far are still to pop stars or (heaven help us) pop culture. That kind of pop simply comes

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Why aren’t I getting more Instagram ‘likes’?

Q. As a novice user of Instagram I was flattered at how quickly I gathered followers – 200 already. Many of these are old friends of 40 years or more who I never get to see, partly because my circumstances have changed – very much for the better – and I have moved out of London. Although I say it myself, I have posted 16 stunning videos, which have been viewed multiple times, but I am averaging only 12 ‘likes’ per post. Mary, how should I interpret this traffic? — M.N., Bridport, Dorset A. Unless you are selling something, and your Instagram is designed to drive commercial traffic, you should

Peter Jones

A lesson for Rupa Huq from the ancient Greeks

The Labour MP Rupa Huq, of Pakistani heritage, has been suspended for suggesting that Kwasi Kwarteng, of Ghanaian heritage, was only superficially black and did not sound black on the radio. The ancients would have been baffled by her comment. They were fascinated by their world’s many different cultures, but colour held no significance for them. People’s beliefs, however, were a matter of great interest. The widely travelled Greek historian Herodotus (5th century bc) produced a fine example (among many others): while Greeks expressed utter revulsion at the Indian idea of eating their dead, an Indian tribe also did so at the idea of burning their dead. Conclusion: there was

The Spectator

Who has the most nuclear weapons?

Out of office Could Liz Truss end up being Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister? She would have to remain in office until 2 January to outlast George Canning, who was PM from 12 April 1827 until his death on 8 August of that year. Like Truss, Canning had served as foreign secretary, where he was credited with boosting trading opportunities for British merchants. However, he became leader of a divided Tory party, which split between his supporters and those of Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington. Tax returns Some countries by the top rate of income tax: Japan 56% Denmark 55.9% Sweden 52.9% Belgium, Israel 50% Netherlands 49.5% Ireland

Peter Mandelson

I feel sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng

In Singapore last week, I was asked: do ministers just come in, reach for the dumbest available policy and go ahead without asking anyone what the consequences will be? I explained the mindset. They do not ask because they do not want to hear the reply. In their minds, they are up against old thinking that just wants to keep Britain on the same declinist path – or ‘cycle of stagnation’ as Kwasi Kwarteng described the record of his Tory predecessors – and if you want to break new ground, don’t ask the people who will always say no. This is what Labour’s far-left Bennite wing think. Labour ministers didn’t

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The barcode revolution

Beep-bop. The sound of the supermarket checkout – a noise Morrisons felt the need to mute after the Queen’s death – is made possible by an invention which turns 70 this week: the barcode. On 7 October 1952, a patent was granted to American inventors Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland. Four years earlier, a shopkeeper in Pennsylvania went to the local university begging for help. He needed a way to get customers through his store quickly because logistics were stopping him meeting demand since typing in product numbers and prices into tills was cumbersome. An electronic system wasn’t possible, said the university. Silver overheard the conversation, set up shop in

The Spectator

Letters: Why I love Warhammer

Troubles ahead? Sir: Jenny McCartney’s article ‘Border lines’ (1 October) was a profoundly depressing one. Perhaps there will be a united Ireland within the next 30 years; but will it be a peaceful and happy place? I have my doubts. Might not areas such as overwhelmingly Unionist Antrim, north Down, north Armagh, east Belfast and indeed much of Co. Londonderry become no-go areas for the new Irish governing authorities – rather in the same way as Derry, west Belfast and south Armagh were for the British in the times of the Troubles? Most of the wiser commentators observe that the Good Friday Agreement was only a truce, not a perpetual

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Tory party conference, gas supply warning and Denmark’s royals stripped of titles

Home Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, came up with a message for the Conservative party conference: ‘Whenever there is change, there is disruption… Everyone will benefit from the result.’ Her words followed a decision not to abolish, after all, the 45p rate of tax, paid by people who earn more than £150,000 a year. Backbench Conservative MPs had let it be known they would not vote for it. ‘The difference this makes really is trivial,’ said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank. But the pound rose and the government was able to borrow a little more cheaply. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems about Her late Majesty’s favourite things

In Competition No. 3269, you were invited to write a poem about Her late Majesty’s favourite things. Alongside the more familiar royal predilections – corgis, horses, Dubonnet and gin, Corrie, the colour blue – was the revelation that the Queen was partial to a spot of heavy metal, and in particular Ozzy Osborne, though perhaps that was just a flight of fancy. Most competitors went the Rodgers & Hammerstein route, but despite some inevitable repetition, it was an instructive and entertaining postbag. An honourable mention goes to Roger Dickinson, Brian Murdoch and Janine Beacham; the winners, printed below, receive £30 each. O I am frugal, regal And when there’s nothing