Sunk | The Spectator

Britain needs small government, not weak government. That means strong flood defences

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_February_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Christopher Booker discusses the failures behind the floods” startat=61] Listen [/audioplayer]There is nothing inevitable about the by now familiar sight of residents being towed away from flooded homes, of shops and businesses submerged, and all the misery and economic turmoil which follows. A short hop across the North Sea is a country which

Portrait of the week

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: as the waters continue to rise

Home Floods grew worse in the West Country. The village of Moorland, Somerset, was abandoned. Then the Thames flooded, from above Oxford to Teddington. Eventually, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, declared from Downing Street: ‘Money is no object in this relief effort.’ Some 1,600 troops were deployed. By midweek 1,000 houses had been evacuated. A

Diary

White Dee

White Dee’s diary: From Benefits Street to Downing Street?

There’s no reason why you should have heard of me. No reason why you would have watched a Channel 4 television series called Benefits Street — with a title like that, I’d have changed channel if it came on my telly. But they didn’t tell us the title when they wanted to spend 18 months

Ancient and modern

Peter Jones

Ancient Rome’s fraudulent foreign students

Foreign students getting on to courses under false pretences, overstaying their welcome and so on are nothing new. Ask the Romans. In the 4th century AD, the Roman empire was tottering, and Diocletian decided to sort it out. The resulting increase in bureaucracy led to a large rise in taxation. This laid a particularly heavy burden

Barometer

The Spectator

Barometer: The kamikaze pilot who retired after three missions

A kamikaze pilot at 80 The Japanese city of Minami-Kyushu was attacked for wanting to add the letters of 1,036 kamikaze pilots who died on suicide missions in the second world war to a UN archive. Not all kamikaze pilots died, and a few are still alive. — Shigeyoshi Hamazono, who is now in his

Letters

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Fears for Scotland, and John Cornwell answers Melanie McDonagh

Save our Scotland Sir: Matthew Parris is quite right to praise Lord Lang’s speech in the Lords on Scottish independence 9 (‘The End of Britain’, 8 February) and there were other notable contributions, especially from Lord Kerr, on the European dimension, and Lord Robertson, the former secretary-general of Nato. But is anyone listening? The debate got

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