Helpline
‘HELP!!’
The Spectator
Thursday
Ducks
‘Don’t you think you’re taking a risk, not wearing flight socks?’
Twitter 2
‘Twitter’s OK, but I don’t get anything like the satisfaction I used to get from a good old-fashioned poison-pen letter.’
Matryoshka
‘How long have you felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body?’
Poor 2
‘Have you noticed how the gap between the poor and the poor is widening?’
Kindle 3
‘Dad loves the large print on his Kindle.’
Gannets
Sex
‘In hindsight, I regret curing him of his sex addiction.’
Meeting
Prison Pilates
Prison pilates
Missiles
‘Eeeny meeny miney mo…’
Letters | 4 April 2013
Quantitative ease Sir: Unlike Louise Cooper (‘The great savings robbery’, 30 March), I don’t have a problem with inflation or quantitative easing. It’s the perfect tax: painless, easy to collect and fair. It’s painless because after having been collected you still have the proverbial pound in your pocket. OK, it’s worth less — but as
Googling the NUT
Googling lessons Delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference complained about Michael Gove’s ‘pub quiz’ curriculum and suggested that children didn’t need to learn facts any more because they could Google them. Some things you can Google about the NUT: — The union was formed on 25 June 1870 as the National Union of
Portrait of the week | 4 April 2013
Home Housing benefit for council and housing association tenants was reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one spare bedroom and by 25 per cent for those with two or more spare bedrooms. Council Tax Benefit, claimed by 5.9 million families, was transformed into Council Tax Support, supplied by local authority schemes.
George Osborne’s relish over welfare reform risks recontaminating the Tory brand
For the past few weeks Ed Miliband has repeated the words ‘bedroom tax’ ad nauseum. The average voter may think that such a thing exists. His obsession makes little sense without historic context. The last time a Labour opposition succeeded in attaching the word ‘tax’ to something which a Conservative government preferred to call something
Books and Arts – 4 April 2013
45 years ago: The death of Martin Luther King
45 years ago tonight, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was shot and killed as he stood on a motel balcony, aged just 39. Here is the leader from the following week’s Spectator: The agony of America, The Spectator, 12 April 1968 The assassination of Dr Martin Luther King at Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday 4 April
Sunday
Happy Easter | 31 March 2013
It is a glorious morning, suitable weather to mark this joyous day in the Christian calendar. The leading column in this week’s issue of the magazine considers the Easter story in humanity’s past, present and future, from perspective of non-believers as well as believers. Here’s a short excerpt: ‘Unlike Christmas, it’s a story that doesn’t
Thursday
Spring
‘Everything seems to be bursting out; it must be spring.’
Apple
‘Watch him, Atkins. Remember, it takes only one bad apple.’