Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_31_July_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Ross Clark and Lara Prendergast discuss the demise of individualism”] Listen [/audioplayer]Hell, as one of Jean-Paul Sartre’s characters said, is other people. Unless, that is, you happen to be British and born after about 1980, in which case hell is the opposite: being alone for more than about five minutes. As for the
Will the military ever see any wrong in the execution of 306 soldiers for cowardice and desertion in World War One? I ask only because I have tried and failed to stage a new musical drama on the subject in a military museum. The Imperial War Museum said straight away that it had organised its own programme
I used to feel smug when plumbers, bricklayers and the like used to complain of Eastern European migrants coming over here and taking their work. They might be able to replace a ballcock and lay a line of bricks but the one thing these Poles won’t be able to do, unless they happen to be Joseph
Here is a paradox. Study the photographs of the flats and houses being sold in London’s prime property boom and you see one minimalist interior after another. The huge, empty sweeps of marble and limestone, broken only by a solitary painting, might give you the impression that it is fashionable to declutter your life. One
I have just decided that my work is of equal value to that of the feminist supermodel Cameron Russell. Neither of us, admittedly, is quite as useful as a plumber, and I can’t claim to be of much use promoting swimwear. But otherwise I reckon we are a pretty close match. We both tart ourselves
With Ukip heading for possible victory in the European elections and anti-EU fervour growing across the continent, it is hard to imagine a country where people are so desperate to join the EU that they are prepared to take on water canon in order to make their point. But that country is Ukraine. The violence which has
As Chris Turney and his colleagues make their way home from their failed adventure, the next question is: who is going to be paying for their folly? It certainly isn’t the general public. The efforts by Turney and his co-leader Chris Fogwill to crowd-fund money have been an embarrassing failure. They were seeking to raise
My tweet yesterday – ‘all saved from the ship of fools’ – has turned out to be premature. The havoc created by Professor Chris Turney’s Antarctic expedition has since increased. The Xue Long, the Chinese ship which provided the helicopter to airlift Turney and his colleagues from the Akademik Shokalskiy to the Aurora Australis, has
My favourite quote of the season comes from Tracy Rogers, a marine ecologist who sometime today will be winched from the research vessel the Akademik Shokalskiy and rescued by helicopter. ‘I love it when the ice wins and we don’t,’ she says. ‘It reminds you that as humans we don’t control everything and that the
‘A very good deal for Britain,’ is how Ed Davey described the contract with EDF and Chinese backers to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, when it was signed back in October. Yesterday, it became clear just how wrong the energy secretary was when Ineos chief Jim Ratcliffe revealed on
At last week’s Spectator energy conference Michael Fallon appeared to steer government policy away from green ideology and in a more business and consumer-friendly direction. But there was to be a nasty sting in the tail. Shortly afterwards Ed Davey’s Department for Energy and Climate Change changed the rules on something called Final
It is ‘immoral’, asserted Michael Fallon at this week’s Spectator energy conference, to force basic-rate taxpayers to subsidise wealthy landowners’ wind turbines and the solar panels of well-off homeowners. It is hard to remember the last time a minister was so frank about something which had been government policy until a few hours earlier. As
If Britain is to meet its self-imposed carbon-reduction targets it means the end of coal by 2030. Things aren’t looking much brighter for the coalition. The deep fissure between Liberal Democrat-driven green policy and Conservative-driven business policy has become clear at the Spectator Energy Conference today. Ed Davey has bunked off, with his office saying he is in China.
If Cyril Northcote Parkinson was still around he would devise a law for party political conferences: that the significance of what is discussed in the conference centre is inversely proportional to the difficulty of getting in. Time was, when politicians stayed in shabby hotels in Blackpool and wandered along the seafront to the Winter Gardens
In China you can see replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid, St Peter’s Square and a large slice of Amsterdam. But more remarkable than any of them in its own way is a red-brick military-academy-style building in the Hongqiao district of Tianjin. It is a replica — or thereabouts — of Wellington College
Which businessman is the most influential in the making of government policy? The answer came to me when I received a letter fining me £80 for forgetting to renew my car insurance by the correct date. But it could also have come to me had I forgotten to fill out of council tax enquiry form
In June last year I predicted in these pages that the government would allow High Speed 2 to die a quiet death. Although the government has since reaffirmed its commitment to the proposed railway line, I am sticking to my prediction. Indeed, if the line is ever built I will book a ticket on the
It is good to see Boris furthering his policy of allowing illegal immigrants to stay if they manage to evade the attention of the authorities for 12 years. Older readers may just remember that they read it in the Spec first. The idea, as I remember, came up in conversations for a leader for the magazine back in 2001,
When the Chancellor stands up to present his spending review next Wednesday it will be with the reputation of a crazed axeman. Much of the country, whether it thinks it a good thing or not, subscribes to the belief that George Osborne is shrinking the state year-on-year, slicing here, chopping there. In a recent poll
I’ve been scratching my head for the past half hour trying to work out how I would react if I were a Conservative MP and a BBC reporter stuffed a microphone in front of me and told me that Arthur Scargill had just died. I know I wouldn’t punch the air, but a syrupy tribute?
