The Spectator

Egypt’s new theocracy

The massacre this week of Coptic Christians in Cairo stands as a bloody corrective to the idea that the ‘Arab Spring’ was a wonderful uprising of the masses against dictators. Revolutions are not, in themselves, causes for celebration if they create a vacuum that can be filled by evil. The deliberate mowing down of dozens

Portrait of the Week – 15 October 2011

Home The Bank of England launched out on a further £75 billion worth of quantitative easing, but refused to buy government bonds maturing in 2017 because traders had driven up the price. Typical households will not return to the level of income they enjoyed in 2009 until 2015, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Letters | 15 October 2011

Members only Sir: Charles Moore (Notes, 8 October) makes some apposite comments about this year’s Conservative conference. This was my 19th annual conference and I feel disinclined to continue to attend despite being a past branch, constituency and area chairman. It is no wonder the attendance by party members was down: Manchester is not one

The week that was | 14 October 2011

A selection of posts from the past seven days at spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson says it might be time to scrap the minimum wage for young workers and calls Andrew Lansley’s handling of the NHS reforms historically bad. James Forsyth explains how Lansley got his health bill through the Lords and says Adam Werritty’s no Walter

Online poetry competition

Thank you to all those readers who entered our online poetry competition last week. There were lots of novel, witty and entertaining entries on the ostensibly mundane subject of ‘games’. The winner is ‘hc18’, who should contact dblackburn @ spectator.co.uk to claim their bottle of champagne. Here is the winning entry: ‘The sweat, the fear, the aching limbs, the

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 10 October – 16 October 2011

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which — providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency — you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no

Just in case you missed them… | 10 October 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. The Fox Hunt has dominated headlines. Fraser Nelson evaluates the dispositions of the forces engaged in Fox versus Boulter, James Forsyth reacts to Liam Fox’s apology, Daniel Korski warns that the defence secretary may lead the anti-coalition Tories if he is sacked, and