‘I just want to say one word to you, just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.’ That iconic punch line from The Graduate, when a businessman gives Dustin Hoffman career advice at a cocktail party, has been circling my head ever since China announced that, as of 2018, it will no longer act as the
Tuition fees have all but killed the Liberal Democrats. The breach of their manifesto pledge to abolish the charges, compounded by them voting for a fees increase, broke the party. Even the opportunities presented by Brexit have not revived them. In their defence, they can plead that tuition fees make fools of all parties. The
It must be about 25 years since the Rat first made an appearance in The Spectator. He started out as my girlfriend’s six-year-old boy, then became my stepson and featured here quite often over the years because, being a scaly-tailed creature of evil, he was always good for some copy. This new year, with his
I hope you are enjoying the BBC drama series Hard Sun. It is described as pre-apocalyptic science fiction, set in the present day UK. The head of MI5 is a Nigerian woman and everybody else in it lives in a mixed-race family — so, if you are a racist, you might well query that aforementioned
The BBC programme The Coronation, on Sunday evening, was extremely interesting, principally, of course, because of the Queen’s appearance on it. But what was left out was notable. The programme gave a careful narrative, and some explanation, of the stages of the service and of the jewels and regalia (the Queen’s main supporting actors in
Carillion is a disaster on all fronts, but my sympathies go first to the fallen contracting giant’s sub–contractors. Upwards of 30,000 smaller firms were already facing 120-day payment delays and may now have to fight court battles to get paid at all, driving many hard-pressed entrepreneurs to bankruptcy. But the political spotlight won’t help them,
