On Tuesday morning Belgium was the latest European country to suffer a major terrorist attack. It is a disturbing reminder of the war that has not gone away. After the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, chief suspect over atrocities at the Bataclan centre in Paris last November, Belgian officials warned of the prospect of revenge attacks:
Home Iain Duncan Smith resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary two days after the Budget, throwing the government into a fine pickle. In his letter of resignation, he said that new changes to benefits to the disabled were ‘not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers’. With a
Killing time in a Heathrow first-class lounge, I notice how many men adopt an unmistakable ‘first-class lounge’ persona. They stand like maquettes in an architect’s model (feet apart, shoulders squared, defining their perimeter) and bellow into mobiles like they’re the first person ever to need ‘rather an urgent word’ with Maureen in HR. Along with
As Sir Kevin Barron, chair of the MPs’ ‘Standards’ committee, steps down so that his own MP-packed body can adjudicate an allegation against him, the ‘Standards’ commissioner Kathryn Hudson says that some MPs are breaking rules because ‘they do not agree with them’. Are MPs simply not interested in their reputation? Oligarchs at all levels know
Bottling out Does any country have experience of a sugary drinks tax? — Denmark introduced a tax on sweetened soft drinks in the 1930s which by 2013 was being levied at a rate of €0.22 a litre and brought in €60m a year. — However, the Danish government also estimated that it was losing €38.9m
From ‘Common-sense and the command of the air’, The Spectator, 25 March 1916: The Air Service will be the great fighting Service, the Service which will seal the fate of nations. We say this, not because the Air Service is a novelty, but because of a plain, undeniable physical fact — the universality of the air…
PC and abortion Sir: It is heartwarming that Simon Barnes’s son should not suffer the stigma experienced by those with Down’s syndrome in earlier generations (‘In praise of PC’, 19 March). But is it not ironic that in this kinder, more generous and respectful age, over 90 per cent of fetuses diagnosed with Down’s are
