In this week’s Spectator James Forsyth interviews new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about how he will continue Andrew Lansley’s legacy on NHS reform. He says his ‘burning mission’ is to ‘demonstrate that we have as much to offer the NHS as Labour ever did’. But while Hunt is keen to praise the work of his
A few surprising revelations from this week’s esteemed Shelf Lifer, as Roger Moore tells us which literary character he’d sleep with, what he doesn’t like doing in his spare time and who would be his author of choice during a year’s solitary confinement. His new book, Bond on Bond: The Ultimate Book on 50 Years of
Portrait of the week
‘It’s an Arab Spring chicken.’
Countryside
‘I have to work to be this poor.’
‘Farage? That’s French, isn’t it?’
‘I now pronounce you man and Wi-Fi.’
Polling
‘If any party really cared about what the people want, they would stop these being on all day!’
‘Gosh, that is a very old-fashioned form of discipline.’
‘Hi. According to iPhone Maps, I’m on the train.’
One man and his Doge.
‘You’ve got reptile dysfunction.’
‘The Money Podcast: How to Get Rich from your Armchair! Step one: sell the armchair.’
‘The examined life is not worth living.’
Proud to be plebs Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell denied calling policemen in Downing Street ‘plebs’. The term has its origins in ancient Rome but was also used as a badge of pride by members of the workers’ education movement in the early 20th century. — The League of the Plebs grew out of a power
Bureaucratic excesses Sir: Your otherwise excellent leader on the billions wasted by Department for International Development (22 September) fails to mention the duplication and excesses in the department and its parent Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Around the world there are only three classes of country: those whose money we want, those who need our money
This week, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again attended the United Nations in New York. Again, his visit was laced with controversy. He denounced the state of Israel as a ‘fake regime’, claimed that a threat of an Israeli strike on Iran’s facilities was ‘bluffing’, yet warned of Iranian retaliation should Israel carry out such a strike. Israel
