Grass
‘Move yourself! The grass needs cutting.’
The Spectator
Thursday
Barman
‘OK — maybe this’ll help. Right, a horse goes into a bar and the barman says...’
Space
Price 2
Assertiveness
‘If I want to go to bloody assertiveness classes, I’ll go, OK?!’
Starbucks 2
‘He loved Starbucks.’
Whinge
‘We’re more of a whinge tank, really…’
Toll
Putin
‘Rain doesn’t bother me — it’s like sanctions off Vladimir Putin’s back.’
Scheduler
‘This is the first world war schedule to end all first world war schedules.’
Fracking 6
‘Strewth, Skippy — the Poms have gone fracking crazy.’
Spectator letters: A defence of nursing assistants, a mystery shotgun, and a response to Melanie Phillips
Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support shown to patients is humbling. It is also worth noting that showing patients a lack of compassion has wider consequences. We know for instance that around 13,000 cancer patients feel like dropping out of treatment
Portrait of the week | 7 August 2014
Home The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined 50 heads of state at the St Symphorien cemetery near Mons to commemorate the invasion of Belgium in 1914. The Prince of Wales attended a service at Glasgow cathedral; the Duchess of Cornwall attended a service at Westminster Abbey where a lighted flame was put out at
Sorry, but trains can’t really replace welfare lines
George Osborne proposed an attractive idea this week: that spending on state benefits should be diverted into new infrastructure in the North. His conceit was that while welfare spending produces no economic return, spending public money on new high-speed railways and the like will inevitably boost the economy. We can’t fault the former assertion: that
Books and arts – 7 August 2014
Podcast: Boris is back, Baroness Warsi’s resignation and the demise of the ‘nice girl’
Here comes Boris! After he announced yesterday that he will stand as an MP in 2015, the next Tory leadership fight has just begun. Now that Boris is back in the fray, and making Eurosceptic noises, he has an excellent chance of making it to No. 10 – to assume what he believes is his
The Spectator at war: A lesson from history
A letter to the editor from the 8 August 1914 Spectator, from Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer: ‘Sir, – A septuagenarian may perhaps profitably remind his countrymen of events which happened some fifty years ago, and of which the present generation may possibly be unmindful. In 1866 Napoleon III. allowed himself to be lulled
The Spectator at war: ‘Why has it come?’
From ‘Topics of the Day’, The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘How does it happen that within a week Germany and Austria-Hungary are at war with France, with Russia, with Britain, with Servia, with Belgium, and that it is exceedingly likely that to the list will have to be added Holland, Switzerland, and Denmark, and later
Wednesday
The Spectator at war: All at sea
From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘The question that every man is asking is, What news of the Fleet? As we write on Friday it is almost impossible to answer this question. All we know is that our Fleet is in the North Sea and doing its duty. In all human
