Just over 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher’s government decided to look at local government finance. A young aide, John Redwood, outlined ‘some kind of poll tax which is paid by every elector’. Discussions continued, and bright young men (including the young Oliver Letwin) assured the Prime Minister that the figures would all stack up. Unpopular
Home Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, came, with his wife Peng Liyuan, a folk singer, for a state visit to Britain, to address both Houses of Parliament and to stay at Buckingham Palace. Tata Steel announced the loss of 900 jobs in Scunthorpe and 270 in Lanarkshire. This followed the liquidation of SSI, Britain’s
Frankly I don’t know why the British media made such a big fat fuss last week when I accidentally flattened a ten-year-old Japanese rugby player called Toki. He got to his feet. He smiled. Everyone applauded. That’s rugby, isn’t it? You get knocked down, you get up again. And yet I have to admit that
Whatever else one can say about Jeremy Corbyn, one thing is clear: he is a leader who does not believe in leadership. But he is (he believes) a democrat, and thinks democracy means acceding to the views of those who voted him into the leadership. He should try the 5th-century bc Greek historian Thucydides to
Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the 232ft Spasskaya Tower. Clock has a diameter of 20ft. Big Ben: Installed on 315ft Elizabeth Tower. Clock faces are 24ft across. Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York: 700ft high (although the clock is only two-thirds
From ‘Reprisals’, The Spectator, 23 October 1915: The Germans lately executed Miss Cavell, a good and brave English hospital nurse, on a charge of harbouring fugitives. Are Englishmen prepared for such reprisals as this execution suggests? … Is there a single Englishman, no matter how many public meetings he has attended in support of reprisals, and no matter how
Scotland isn’t failing Sir: It will take more than Adam Tomkins descending from the heights of academe to persuade the Scots that education, health, policing and everything else in Scotland is failing (‘The SNP’s One-Party State,’ 17 October). Scots aren’t stupid: they have heard all this before from the unionist press, and they don’t believe it.
