From The Spectator, 14 November 1914: Men guilty of helping the enemy are simply spies within our lines, or traitors to their adopted country. There cannot be any dispute about that. If the penalty visited on them is one of laughable leniency, the spy or traitor, so far from being deterred, has an actual incentive
From The Spectator, 7 November 1914: We say without hesitation that if every town and urban district and village in England had a Guard formed on the lines of the Mitcham Town Guard, something would have been accomplished that might prove most valuable in the event of invasion. We shall no doubt be asked by many
‘Do we know any terrorists who could set up my Facebook account?’
‘It’s Movember.’
‘They’re great friends though one of them is definitely more dominant.’
Legal high
‘Do I call for an ambulance or a vet?’
‘Now I know I came in here for something…’
‘Oh I see. You must be the class straight man?’
‘Yes technically I’m a working dog. But well, you know, what with the current economy…’
‘Just think — they’ve never known a time when they weren’t being told to get off the internet!’
‘This is one of the most interesting scythes I’ve ever seen…’
‘I found this hidden in your marijuana.’
Mind games Sir: I hope that people are not unduly put off by Melanie McDonagh’s misrepresentation of mindfulness as a cop-out for navel-gazers who lack the moral fibre to engage in ‘proper’ religion (‘The cult of mindfulness’, 1 November). She describes it as a ‘practice of self-obsession’, but it is the opposite: it creates a
Space to dream Richard Branson’s dream of commercial space flights has suffered a setback after a prototype craft crashed. But others are still offering opportunities for adventure… — Golden Spike is an American company planning to send a couple of passengers to the Moon from 2020 onwards. Each will pay an estimated return fare of
Home Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, resigned as the head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse three months after Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former president of the family division of the High Court, resigned from the same appointment. Both had been criticised for having establishment links. ‘It is really going to be
