Michael Simmons is The Spectator's Data Editor
Gone in a flash, Liz Truss becomes the shortest serving prime minister in British history. As it stands, she’s 75 days short of George Canning, who lasted some 119 days in office before dying from tuberculosis. If Truss’s successor wants to avoid joining her and Canning at the lower ends of the Wikipedia, they’ll need
When Britain crashed out of the European exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday, prime minister John Major phoned the Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie to ask how the day’s events would be covered. McKenzie is said to have responded: ‘Prime minister, I have on my desk in front of me a very large bucket of shit
NHS waiting lists have exceeded seven million people for the first time since records began. That means nearly 12 per cent of people in England are waiting for consultant-led treatment. A&E waiting times broke records too: nearly 33,000 people waited more than 12 hours from decision to admit to admission. The target is four hours.
Some nine million working-age people are out of work and are not looking for it either. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning reveal this number has grown by 630,000 since before the pandemic began. This is an increase from the previous quarter and from the same time last year too. Now
16 min listen
This week: Kate Andrews laments how Truss is hurting the free-market cause (00:51), Anthony Whitehead explains the ‘arrogance’ of the latest environmental activist movement the Tyre Extinguishers (06:42) and Michael Simmons reads his notes on barcodes (12:54). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
Britain will make it through the winter without the lights going out. That’s the view of the National Grid, which is responsible for Britain’s energy system. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on the BBC’s headline: ‘Homes face winter power cuts in worst-case scenario, says National Grid’. But Fintan Slye, executive director of the grid, offered
Beep-bop. The sound of the supermarket checkout – a noise Morrisons felt the need to mute after the Queen’s death – is made possible by an invention which turns 70 this week: the barcode. On 7 October 1952, a patent was granted to American inventors Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland. Four years earlier, a shopkeeper
Kwarteng’s £45 billion tax cuts will have given Nicola Sturgeon a headache. She has power over income tax and has indicated that she won’t replicate his cuts (especially for the best paid). Which means that Scots could end up paying hundreds of pounds more in income tax next year. Already, there is talk about Scottish
The history of political popularity shows things go in one direction: down. John Major entered office with a net satisfaction of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Blair moved into Downing Street a whopping 60 points in the positive. When he left he’d fallen to -27. And so the story goes – even
Life expectancy is perhaps the surest sign of a country’s welfare, which makes it all the more worrying that Scotland’s is going down. Figures out today show that when it comes to life expectancy, Scotland is no longer near the bottom range of western European countries and has instead joined the ranks of the post-Soviet states.
What’s the link between long Covid and mental health? A study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests it’s a significant one. The paper looked at more than 3,000 people who tested positive for Covid in the US. Of those who went on to develop ‘long Covid’, it found many of
In Britain, the damage of lockdown was easily covered up by grade inflation: with 45 per cent of A Level students being given A or A*. In the United States, there are large-scale independent studies published today. It’s pretty devastating. Educational performance scores for nine-year-olds have fallen to levels last seen in 1999: so two
At the peak of the lockdowns, thousands were dying every week. Newspaper front pages demanded action. But in the latest week’s data, covering the week to 12 August, some 1,082 more people than would be expected in a normal year died in the UK. These so-called ‘excess deaths’ have averaged 1,000 for 15 weeks of
Twelve-hour A&E waits are at a record high. Doctors fear that tens of thousands will die because of delays in treatment. Already some 10,000 people have waited more than three months for urgent cancer treatment, a consequence of turning the NHS into the national Covid-but-nothing-else-service during lockdown. Excess deaths at home, the number of people dying above the
London Mayor Sadiq Khan made a bold claim this week: ‘As a result of our junk food advertising ban on Transport for London, nearly 100,000 cases of obesity have been prevented since 2019.’ Hailing the ‘incredible result’, Khan said ‘it’s expected to save the NHS over £200 million’. Is it true though? To ascertain whether the
Scotland has a high amount of drugs deaths. But it’s not just that. It’s that Scotland suffers drugs deaths at levels unknown anywhere else in the UK or Europe – nearly four times worse than any other country for which records exist. This scandalous figure has been updated today, showing that – although it fell one
Could masks be making us sick? That’s the suggestion in a Japanese study, published this week in Nature’s Scientific Report’s journal, which looked at bacterial and fungal growth on face masks worn during the pandemic. The results may put you off your tea. The study looked at the masks of 109 people and shows that
Will global warming condemn Britain to more fires? Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has been widely quoted this morning comparing recent fires around the capital to the Blitz. ‘Yesterday was the busiest day for the fire service in London since the second world war,’ he said – climate change caused the heatwave which ‘led to
Since January, some 22,000 more Brits have died at home than would be expected in a normal year. These so-called excess deaths at home had stumped doctors and left GPs calling for an investigation. The causes remain unclear but a study published today offers the first clues to what’s going on. The study, funded by
Boris Johnson has just quit – forced out by the sheer number of resignations, leaving him without a government. He came into office promising to deliver Brexit. He pledged taxes would be frozen and the size of government would shrink. Everything was of course overtaken by Covid. Here’s a look at his premiership in charts
