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The Trussell Trust would like to correct the following inaccuracies and misleading statements made in Edwina Currie’s recent blog, and wishes to make readers aware that Edwina Currie has never spoken to The Trussell Trust, and has not sought to verify any of her assertions with us. A response to ‘Food banks aren’t solving problems —
The British government has said it will allow in some of Syria’s most vulnerable refugees. The Home Office hasn’t specified how many will be admitted but says it will probably be in the hundreds. The Syrian civil war has created 2.4 million refugees and 6.5 million internally displaced people, and looking through the archive, you
I thought it obvious that Mark Carney’s trip to Scotland yesterday was a bad day for Alex Salmond and the Scottish nationalists. Sure, the governor of the Bank of England said, a currency union between Scotland the the rump UK could happen and be made to work but it would be fraught with difficulty and
England did so deplorably in the Ashes in part because of an obsession with data, including minutely detailed plans on diet and exercise. Excessive bureaucracy can squeeze the lifeblood out of sport, the arts, and indeed education. Bureaucracy gone mad. Michael Gove, aided by Michael Wilshaw, has massively improved the standards of schooling in Britain.
At the end of Coming Apart Charles Murray mentions, rather enigmatically, that our assumptions about society will soon be blown out of the water by new discoveries about human nature. I imagine he’s talking about genetic discoveries, in particular about the human brain. One of our current assumptions is meritocracy, and the idea that we
If the Faroe Islanders want to eat whale, let them. So says Tim Ecott in today’s Spectator. He argues that the Faroese – who live on dramatic and remote islands in the North Atlantic – shouldn’t be victimised for killing less than 0.1% of the pilot whale population annually for food. There are far more
If there was a coalition to keep the poor down in Britain, Fiona Millar would be its chairman. If a wicked emperor were to seize Britain and want to make sure the rich held all the best jobs, he’d set up a system where there was a direct link between wealth and quality of education.
Does Britain have a one-child policy? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Alec Marsh discusses the death of the big middle class family. Is this a distinct policy from the government or simply families making different choices? Why are some rich and poorer families still having lots of children? Is this trend a result
Corney & Barrow have really pulled out the stops on this one. They presented a couple of dozen wines for me to taste and so delicious were they that it was the Devil’s own job trying to whittle them down to six. In fact, I gave up trying, which is why there are seven wines
Cunning work from Milband at PMQs. He played Syria like a fixed-odds betting machine and came away with a minor jackpot. Last week he had urged the prime minister to accept a few hundred of the neediest Syrian refugees. Cameron duly said OK. Today Miliband was quick to claim a victory for decency, for humanity,
A tax-cutting budget to support growth — that’s the central, very Conservative message of Boris Johnson’s 2014-15 budget for London. At Mayor’s Question Time today, he bombarded members with all the positive things to have come out of his mayoralty. Unemployment down by 18,000, employment up by 54,000, bus crime down 40 per cent, Crossrail
It was back to business as usual at PMQs today. Gone was Miliband’s effort to raise the tone, which Cameron ruthlessly exploited last week, to be replaced by an old-fashioned, ding-dong with a bit of class war thrown in. The result: Labour MPs leaving the chamber in far better heart than they did last week.
Labour will not support Dominic Raab’s Immigration Bill amendment on the deportation of foreign criminals. A party source tells me that ‘if the government are saying that something is illegal, then we can’t support it’. Which will come as a relief to the whips, given the level of support for the proposal. I also hear
Chuckle not, it exists. Wealthy Nation, a new grouplet formed by the eminent historian Michael Fry, is making the case that Scotland can be an admirably prosperous little country after independence provided, that is, she casts off the soft-left Caledonian consensus that remains wearily orthodox thinking north of the Tweed and Solway. Fry, whose new
Monday’s episode of The Unbelievable Truth, in case you missed it, featured comedians Marcus Brigstocke and Rufus Hound. I did miss it, partly because I read about how Hound thinks David Cameron wants to kill your children, and I just couldn’t face the jokes about the Daily Mail and ‘hoards of Romanians!’ Even Charlie Brooker’s
As I type this, Alex Salmond and Mark Carney are chowing over porridge at Bute House, the First Minister’s official residence in Edinburgh. There is always the risk of exaggerating the importance of these things but this morning’s meeting with the Governor of the Bank of England may be the most important encounter Alex Salmond
Douglas Carswell is one of the Conservatives’ most active Euro rebels. So we invited him to our View From 22 podcast to discuss this week’s leading article, which says the rebellion has descended into childish attempts to destabilise the Prime Minister. Given that he has rebelled dozens of times, we thought, he’d disagree. To our
As a child, I was not a good traveller. The mere scent of a car interior – possibly the plastic seats, maybe the closed atmosphere, probably the whiff of petrol – would be enough to bring on the tell-tale flow of odd saliva that heralded a really impressive bout of vomiting. If the smell of fag
The row over the immigration status of Ed Miliband’s American guru Arnie Graf rumbles on (with a question at PMQs). Sprung with the story on TV yesterday, Labour’s Chris Leslie dismissed it as ‘mischief’ and then mumbled something incomprehensible about Lynton Crosby, the Tories’ Aussie guru. I’m told, however, that Crosby has a Tier 1 visa
Here’s a tip for the gamblers among you, albeit one that you’ll have to sit on for a while. Danedream, winner of the 2011 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, has given birth to a filly foal sired by Frankel, the legendary hero of flat racing. With lineage like that, the filly already has a fair
Though the PM and whips have been in a tizz about Nigel Mills’ amendment to the Immigration Bill, it’s Dominic Raab’s call to narrow the grounds for appeal in the deportation of foreign criminals that could cause real problems in tomorrow afternoon’s debate. There is a chance that it could pass, while the Mills amendment
Ed Balls had a tricky time at Treasury Questions today. But fortunately, it seems he had his colleague Chris Leslie watching his back. Or, more specifically, his backside. Mr Steerpike was intrigued to see that Leslie’s contribution during a particularly robust round of heckling was to pat the Shadow Chancellor on the bottom as he
As expected, the government has changed its stance on Syrian refugees this evening ahead of what had looked to be a difficult vote in the House of Commons tomorrow. Nick Clegg has just announced that the UK will now offer refuge to vulnerable Syrians such as women and girls who have experienced or are at
David Cameron has been summoning Tory backbenchers to Number 10 today to personally persuade them not to back an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would reintroduce controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. I have learned that a number of possible waverers who could be persuaded to change their mind and drop their support for
You just knew Lembit would make an appearance sooner or later, didn’t you? I only noticed this morning, reading back through some of the weekend papers I’d missed. Anyway, as the Rennard scandal spreads ever wider within the Liberal Democrats, step forward minxy Hannah Thompson, a former ’schoolgirl activist’. According to Hannah, when she was
‘[T]he old tax havens have no place in this new world. We now call on all countries to apply international standards,’ said Gordon Brown back in 2009 when he was prime minister. Mr Steerpike only mentions this because Brown’s philanthropist wife Sarah has made an odd choice of home for her charity. Sarah Brown is the
Gurus are dangerous beasts in politics mainly because they tend to say awkward things (something Ed Miliband, who has Lord Glasman as his on-off guru, can attest to more than others). But the row over Arnie Graf’s immigration status, sparked by the Sun’s front page today, shows that gurus are dangerous in many, many ways.
Quite naturally, there were rather more Conservative than Labour MPs in the House of Commons for Treasury Questions this morning. And quite naturally, George Osborne and colleagues on the Treasury front bench spent most of the session goading their Labour opponents about this morning’s growth figures. Deputy Chief Whip Greg Hands and Ed Balls had
How will the row over the Immigration Bill pan out? Number 10 was trying to be as emollient as possible yesterday, saying it would look at all amendments, while I understand that Dominic Raab’s deportation amendment has strong private support at Cabinet level. Ministers do, though, understand that Theresa May is starting to worry that
Professor Anthony Clifford Grayling is on top of the world. Well, Bloomsbury. Sitting in his office overlooking Bedford Square, the Master of the New College of Humanities can barely contain his self-satisfaction. ‘We have been more successful than anybody could have guessed,’ he informs me. Two years ago, ‘one of the most hated men in
This article was corrected. Originally it stated that ‘This tiny organisation doesn’t run a single food bank – it merely advises church and community groups on how to’. But the copy has been changed to reflect the reality of the Trust’s work. The Trussell Trust has responded here. The Trussell Trust is having a field
Boy oh boy do I feel sorry for Laurie Penny. I hope that’s not a sexist thing to say. There she is, doing what she does, churning out perfectly harmless po-mo guff for the New Statesman about ‘why the patriarchy fears scissors‘ because ‘short hair is a political statement’ — and people seem to hate her for it, as
These, ranked from first to tenth, are the urban areas in Britain with the highest average weekly earnings in 2012: London, Reading, Crawley, Aldershot, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Aberdeen, Southend, Brighton. That’s from the latest, fascinating, report (pdf here) published by the Centre for Cities. It can be summarised easily: if you want to make it,
Would England be the same without the sight of sheep grazing on its ‘green and pleasant land’? Most likely not; but, then again, that might not be a bad thing. That is George Monbiot’s view. Spectator readers will already know what Monbiot thinks of the humble sheep. Last summer he wrote about how we ‘pay
