Sea Side
‘No, you can’t text on it.’
The Spectator
Thursday
Cricket Ground
‘He’ll never get in the England team playing like that.’
Downing Street
Blanket
‘He’s a shy pollster.’
Mcdonalds
‘To go?’
Cheaper
‘What our company needs, Jenson, is more women — they’re so much cheaper.’
Murder
3D 2
‘...not so impressive now we’ve got 3D printer technology.’
Health And Safety
‘It’s health and safety gone mad.’
Mother 2
Pond 2
‘Crested, yes, and he’s definitely a newt. But great?’
Room
‘I should have seen the warning signs that she was going to leave me.’
Jobcentre 2
‘I’m afraid you made yourself deliberately unelectable.’
Wealth
‘Technically speaking, you’ll be creating my wealth.’
Letters | 14 May 2015
Scotland’s silent majority Sir: Hugo Rifkind’s article (‘Scotland’s nasty party’, 9 May) is a first for the media. It expresses the dismay, disbelief and incomprehension felt at the rise of the SNP by least one — and I suspect many — of the silent majority in Scotland. When will the media confront Nicola Sturgeon’s claim
Barometer | 14 May 2015
Plagued by stigma The World Health Organisation told doctors to stop naming diseases after people, places and animals so as not to stigmatise them. But are diseases even really associated with things that gave them their name? — Spanish flu. First identified in an army hospital in Kansas in March 1918. It gained its name
Portrait of the week | 14 May 2015
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, soon got used to the surprise of the Conservatives being returned in the general election with a majority of 12. He retained George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer and made him First Secretary of State too. Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Michael Fallon and Iain Duncan Smith also stayed
Cameron’s new mission
As David Cameron lined up beside Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband at the Cenotaph on the day after the general election, he said that he had thought he would be the one writing a resignation statement that day. He may also have imagined how history would have judged him: as a so-so Tory leader who
Books and arts – 14 May 2015
The Spectator at war: Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans
From ‘The Right Spirit of Concentration’, The Spectator, 15 May 1915: It need not be supposed that we are blind to the dangers which arise from a large number of aliens in our midst. We have several times written of these dangers. But latterly, whenever the subject was debated in Parliament, the answer was that
