The Spectator

Sugar

‘This bag of white crystals I found in your room — please tell me it’s drugs, not sugar.’

Girls

‘The point is, Mark, if you can’t stop checking out other girls I’m leaving you ...Mark, are you listening to me?’

Barometer | 21 March 2013

Big ask Birmingham Council asked residents, in a survey on wheelie bins, whether they were gay or bisexual. Some more nosey questions asked by councils: — Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned with at birth? (Consultation into relief road near Manchester Airport) — Which of the following describes your

The empty Budget

Dangerous, unfair, verging on kleptomania: the bailout deal proposed by the EU at the weekend and rejected by Cyprus MPs on Tuesday is everything it has been described as over the past few days, and worse. Now it has been established that the EU views bank depositors as a potential piggy bank to be raided

Portrait of the week | 21 March 2013

Home In what he called a ‘fiscally neutral’ Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted a reduced forecast of gross domestic product for 2013 from 1.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and a further delay until 2017-18 in reducing the burden of public sector debt, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Budget 2013: George Osborne’s statement in full

Mr Deputy Speaker, this is a Budget for people who aspire to work hard and get on. It’s a Budget for people who realise there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years. Just the painstaking work of putting right what went so badly wrong. And together with the British people we

Bookbenchers: Peter Lilley | 17 March 2013

Peter Lilley MP is the Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, and has been an MP since 1983. He was a Cabinet minister in both the Thatcher and Major governments, and today talks to us about Waugh, Tolstoy, and his quest for timeless literature. 1) Which book is on your bedside table at the moment?