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Politics: An economy killed with kindness

About ten thousand years ago, man learned to control fire. That was one of the most important events in pre-history: a crucial part of the transition from a humanoid past to a human future. But the flames were domesticated, not tamed. Ten millennia later, fire is still a killer and a destroyer. In our cities,

We’re destroying our countryside – and for what?

By the time you read this I’ll be in the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world: a section of the Wye valley in beautiful mid-Wales, where I’ll spend every day paddling in streams and plunging in mill ponds and playing cockie-ollie in the bracken and wandering across the sunlit uplands,

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 August 2011

In the ‘peace camp’ in Parliament Square last week, a man sat with a placard which said ‘NORWAY Jew Mafia Job’. In the ‘peace camp’ in Parliament Square last week, a man sat with a placard which said ‘NORWAY Jew Mafia Job’. I wonder if police would have tolerated it if it had replaced the

Any other business

Any other business | 6 August 2011

The greatest nation? This debt fiasco makes Washington look like a parish council I love America, and if you look at my Wikipedia entry — which I have neither the vanity nor the knowhow to bother to edit — you might suspect that I’ve been brainwashed to say so, because I am ‘a leading figure