From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: Time being against her, a condition of stalemate on her frontiers is a hopeless business for Germany. Invasion, then, is a logical necessity. It is true that the chances are small, and that failure might mean the loss of a quarter of a million Germans or more, but to the
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: For years past the vodka monopoly in Russia has been a public scandal. Government officials, in order to get good financial returns, have connived at the abasement of the people by encouraging drink. Year by year the revenue from the vodka monopoly has increased by leaps and bounds till
‘Please, Dad, can I have a puppy?’
‘It’s another breakthrough for artificial intelligence — it’s learned to take selfies!’
‘It’s a worse record on immigration than the government’s!’
‘What do you mean you want to cut out dairy?’
‘Did you have to buy him toy refugees?’
‘When I was a lad it never occurred to me that we were all absolutely stinking filthy rich.’
‘You do realise that everything you’ve said is a quote from a film.’
Health check Sir: I have to take issue on (at least) three counts with Dr Vernon Coleman and his absurd suggestion that the GMC should be abolished (‘Get rid of the GMC’, 18 October). I administer the annual appraisal and revalidation process at an acute hospital. First, revalidation of licensed doctors is based on an
Home A hundred firemen could not prevent wooden cooling towers at Didcot B gas-fuelled power station in Oxfordshire from burning down. A consortium said it could power 2.5 million houses in Britain by 2018 with solar energy generated in southern Tunisia. The Bank of England indicated that interest rates would stay low for longer because
George Osborne has declared victory over Ed Balls, the IMF and all the others who warned that his austerity measures would throw Britain back into recession. But his triumphalism obscures a huge failure: his inability to contain the national debt. While the UK economy has been growing strongly (it is currently the fastest-growing of any
This week’s issue of the Spectator takes a close look at Europe. Nicholas Farrell focuses on the terminal decline of Italy, and asks whether anything can be done to stop the rot. Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP, suggests that David Cameron might not mean it when he says he will campaign for an EU exit
From The Spectator, 24 October 1914: In the western theatre of the war great movements have been going on which have won for themselves the name of the coast battle. Strange as it may sound, it appears that as soon as Antwerp was taken, and the inevitable State parade was finished, General von Kluck determined,
From ‘Topics of the day’, The Spectator, 24 October 1914: That spies are a great danger at the present time, and that espionage is being carried on on a gigantic scale, we do not doubt. It has been shown again and again that reports of the movements of our ships and of our troops, and