As the only nation to have suffered mass casualties from a nuclear bomb, Japan has been understandably nervous about Kim Jong-un’s missile tests. Sales of domestic nuclear bunkers and gas masks have soared and nationally aired TV ads with a chilling ‘Protect and Survive’ flavour urge residents to hunker behind washing machines in basements and
I was interviewing ten foster parents in west London for a report on children in care. Foster parents are in great demand, so I was startled to discover that only one of the sets of parents was looking after the sort of vulnerable children you imagine to be in the care system. The others were
The plane landed a fraction early, at just after 9 p.m. Hope flickered that passport control would be as deserted as the echoing arrivals terminal. But no. By the time we reached sight of what is now labelled in enormous letters the ‘UK Border’, we had joined a mass of humanity in a single corridor to
The time for choosing is fast approaching for Theresa May. Soon she must make a decision that will define her premiership and her country’s future. The past few days have shown how hard, if not impossible, it will be for her to keep her entire cabinet on board with whatever EU deal she signs. It
The issue of sovereignty has mysteriously disappeared from the debate over Brexit. Some business-focused commentators even like to assert that in a ‘global, interconnected world’, sovereignty is meaningless. But a court judgment, delivered earlier this month, perfectly illustrates what is at stake. The case is about national security. Specifically, it is about the legality of
Have you heard the one about the new Labour MP who refuses to be friends with Tories? When Laura Pidcock dropped into an interview with a left-wing website that she has ‘absolutely no intention of being friends with’ any Tories, she was surprised by the fuss that followed. It might have seemed odd to her,
Nothing spoke of the fractious atmosphere in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum more than the death of 40-year-old Arek Jozwik in a shopping centre in Harlow, Essex in August 2016. What might, on any other weekend, have been passed over as just another grubby Saturday-night incident on Britain’s drunken high streets became elevated into
You have to hand it to Mikheil Saakashvili: the man doesn’t give up. After a tumultuous nine years as president of Georgia, which began with a furious anti-corruption purge, culminated in a short but disastrous war with Russia in 2008 and ended with accusations of embezzlement and authoritarian practices, he is determined to return to
‘The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision,’ said Maimonides. How right he was. Today, we are racked with choice, and decision-making has never been more fraught. It’s hell. Look at restaurant menus. Anything longer than a page is alarming. So much margin for error. ‘Hold on a minute, I
Next month, Theresa May is expected to launch her long-awaited audit into racial disparities in public services. We are being prepared for the worst. Unnamed Whitehall insiders say that they have been ‘shocked’ by the picture it reveals of racial discrimination in the UK. All this suggests the scene is being set for another bout
Enough has been written about a Conservative government that knows its electoral success depends on Britain remaining a property-owning democracy, yet offers nothing beyond token gestures to stop the young being priced out of home ownership. Enough, too, has been said about graduates being overcharged, pensioners soaking up the largesse of the tax and benefit
Are university vice-chancellors paid too much? The government clearly thinks so, and is planning to fine universities that can’t justify paying their leaders more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £150,000 per annum. Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford University (salary £350,000), strongly disagrees, and has contrasted her salary negatively with those of bankers and footballers.
It’s not easy to get hold of Ángel Hernández, the legendary Mexican chemist who for a decade provided illicit performance-enhancing drugs to numerous athletes, including, he claims, all eight 100 metres finalists at the Beijing Olympics. It took me just over a year of trying. The FBI also struggled. The story goes that when they
Last month Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice, warned that anyone who yelled Allahu Akbar (‘God is the greatest’) in his city was liable to be shot dead by a police sniper. A bit harsh you might think, but it’s weird how tricky it’s become to use the world’s fifth most spoken language in Europe,
The good news is that Theresa May has dropped the threat to withdraw universal free school meals. Thank God (and the PM) for that. School lunches are the biggest weapon we have to fight obesity. The UK is sixth in the supersize race of OECD countries, with a quarter of the population obese. The fact
James Cracknell, the athlete turned anti-obesity campaigner, was the subject of sniggering and derision in April when he said that North Korea and Cuba had got a ‘handle on obesity’. With impressive understatement, he attributed this to both countries being ‘quite controlling on behavioural trends’. It was a bad point poorly made, but in a
My name is Katherine and I’m an intern at The Spectator. What does that say about me? If you had to guess, you’d probably assume I was just finishing university and that I’m perhaps the niece or goddaughter of someone important. Because that’s how the media works, isn’t it? That I’m probably unpaid, but it
Environmentalism has gone too far; renewable energy is a disaster; scares about pesticides and chemicals are horribly overdone; no, the planet is not going to end any time soon; and, by the way, the answer is nuclear… This isn’t me speaking, but the views of an environmentalist so learned, distinguished and influential you could call
I received a sad letter this week: Steve is back in prison. Each day the mail comes down to the wing in a pouch, and the office is closed while the staff sort through it, marking a board next to the name of each lucky recipient. When a board is put out, we all have
Berlin Under the PR system we gave them, it’s inevitable that Merkel will have to govern in some sort of coalition ‘Capitalism is armed robbery,’ reads the graffiti on the subway wall, but here in Berlin, German capitalists are doing what capitalism does best — creating new jobs and new industries. Berlin used to be