Media

Even by the standards of what has been a particularly shameful episode in British media history, the latest phone-hacking revelations are disgraceful stuff. According to the Guardian, private investigators hired by the News of the World targeted the phones of the then-missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family, in 2002, to listen into their voicemails. And, worse, the paper is said to have deleted voicemails from Milly Dowler’s phone to make room for more — an act which it thought to have given the police, and her parents, hope that she was still alive. There is much more detail here, including news that the Dowlers are now pursuing a damages

A change from the usual for this week’s excavation into The Spectator archives — which is to say, we won’t be digging out an article from the magazine’s 183-year back-catalogue for CoffeeHousers’ delectation. Instead, the images above, and a quick, little story. Given how nostalgic some people have recently been for the General Strike of 1926, my thinking was to present The Spectator’s coverage from the time. (It is critical of both government and unions, as it happens). But it was the appearance of the issue dated 8th May 1926 that caught my eye, rather than its content. Its pages are thicker and rougher than the typical Spectators of that

There are, as the old adage goes, “lies, damned lies and statistics”. I’m beginning to think the same about polls. Take the polls that Britons are not as keen on overseas aid as the Prime Minister. Some of the headlines attached to them are prone to exaggeration. For example, on the back of the poll, the Mail claimed that “one in four people say they will no longer give money to charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children.” People may say that but they don’t seem to mean it. For it turns out that the British public has actually increased its giving to Save the Children by nearly 10 per

I was on the panel of Any Questions last night in Saltaire, the most beautiful town I’ve seen outside of the Highlands. Jonathan Dimbleby always warms everyone up with a test question, which lets the panelists make their mistakes early. The first question was this: the town of Saltaire was founded by a philanthropist, Sir Titus Salt. What can be done to make today’s rich pay their fair share? Lucky for me that it was not recorded, because I went on for ages. Sir Titus was living in an era before the welfare state, where welfare was provided voluntarily, by people in the community. Had he been alive today, the

David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail.   Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the second week in a row, succeeded in catching Cameron out on the details of government policy in an emotive area. Last week it was benefits for cancer sufferers, this week it was the retention of DNA from those arrested for, but not charged with, rape.    The Prime Minister is a good enough performer at