Twitter

It’s become a given: we are all stalkers now. Thanks to Google, Twitter, Facebook and the fact that absolutely nobody seems to have the faintest idea about privacy settings, it is easier to keep track of people on the other side of the world than ever it was to snoop on a village neighbour from behind the safety of a lace curtain. But a strange and sinister new phenomenon has begun to emerge. Call it secondary stalking. Even the stalkers are being stalked now. This was brought home to me the other night when I was having dinner with one of my closest friends, who I will call Andrew (gay, as it happens, so no romantic implications in what follows).

Are the police wasting too much time on Twitter instead of catching criminals? On this week's View from 22 podcast, Nick Cohen looks at what Britain's fall in crime has done to policing methods. Is the fall responsible for the police's heightened in what people say on social media? What does this mean for our civil liberties and freedom of speech? Consultant NHS surgeon J. Meirion Thomas also joins to explain how The Spectator helped blow the whistle on health tourism abuses. Will the government's plans to tackle systematic abuses by migrants work? How much effect will the levy on students and temporary visitors have? Are the figures quoted by the Department of Health on the cost of health tourism accurate?

Royal Mail delivers to 29 million UK addresses; last year it generated £9 billion of revenues, of which £324 million remained as profit before tax; and it is likely to be valued at £3 billion in its privatisation share sale, indicating a price-earnings ratio modestly below ten. Twitter — the microblogging phenomenon beloved of self-admiring celebs, but now so ubiquitous as a mode of communication that it is compulsory for British ambassadors abroad — has 200 million users and is expected to generate revenues of just £365 million this year, maybe twice that next year. Twitter says it’s profitable but has so far kept its accounts private, and is nevertheless likely to be valued at £6 billion-plus in its forthcoming flotation.

Poor Ian Katz. Just days into his new job as editor of Newsnight and he's already in hot water. Accidentally panning a guest behind their back is hardly the most dignified of starts. Mr Steerpike would love to know who this was really meant to be seen by rather than Katz's thousands of followers: While Rachel Reeves is undoubtedly tedious, it's hardly a good idea to actually say it. Katz's former Guardian colleagues will no doubt be happy to see him enjoying his new outlet. So what are the repercussions of the blunder? Not great if the reaction of Labour's attack dog Michael Dugher is anything to go by: 'Good luck in future to Newsnight in trying to persuade Labour people to go on their frankly rather boring programme at 11 at night,' he quips. I'm not sure he's joking.

Our government loves to snoop. Nick Cohen explained in the Spectator last year why Britain is becoming a surveillance state, and now we have an indication of how much data they have attempted to extract from social networks. Facebook has released its first figures on government requests for data on its users. As the chart below shows, the UK comes third for the amount of data requested, behind the United States and India: It’s a similar story for Twitter, whose figures from January to June 2013 show that the UK is again third for number of requests, behind the same countries as Facebook: On the internet telephoning service Skype, the UK government even made more requests last year than any other country.

Well, well, well. Nick Cohen's excellent column in this week's mag  has caused a stir today. Sadly, though, Nick's astute argument became another excuse for a boring slanging match between atheists and believers. And of course Stephen Fry waded in: Mary had a little lamb It's fleece was white as snow All you religious dicks Just fuck off and go. No more discussion with dickheads. Sorry. — Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) August 22, 2013 Really? Fry's Twitter cronies lapped that up. They always do. He's so clever and civilised, our Stephen, bless his colourful cotton socks. Unlike those credulous maniacs who believe in God. In 2013! Celebrity atheists always claim the rational high ground: we are calm and normal, the God squad is angry and mad.

Listen, this story is moving so quickly stuff will almost certainly have happened in between me writing it and you reading it. I hate the idea that you might be left behind the curve, but I just don’t know how to get around that. An outrage occurs and of course we try faithfully to report it, so that you can be outraged vicariously, but time moves on; the outrage spreads out, like a fast-moving conflagration, and begins to affects us all and we all of us feel unclean and traduced. Already, with the outrage I’m about to describe, the Guardian has decided it was not one outrage but two conjoined outrages, Siamese-twin outrages if you like. By the time you read this we could be in United Nations territory. We could.

I was away last week, filled with joy and love following the birth of our child, but just occasionally I’d check the multi-character psychodrama that is Twitter to stop myself getting too soppy. I sort of agree with Caitlin Moran’s stance in principle; if people are behaving appallingly on Twitter, Twitter should kick them out. If I ran a pub and people were driving away women with foul language, I needn’t call the police, but I’d have every right to bar them. What is problematic is that the organisers of Trolliday do not see this as a question of manners, but of misogyny – hate crime, in other words.

Will online abuse and trolling ever be stopped? On this week's View from 22 podcast, Hugo Rifkind discusses his Spectator column on the subject with Helen Lewis of the New Statesman. They ask if trolling has got better or worse? What, if anything, can or should be done about 'morons' who mindlessly attack people? And should politicians — like Stella Creasy — be influencing the moderation policies of social networks like Twitter? James Forsyth and Toby Young discuss the next Tory leadership battle: Theresa May vs. Boris Johnson. James reports that these two top Tories are jostling to succeed David Cameron, even though the PM is expected to be in situ after 2015: Boris isn’t even going to stand in the 2015 election. Who is most likely to be successful?

Since our archive went live yesterday, we've had a striking response through email, comments and Twitter. The Spectator Archive has been in the making for a long time, and given the obvious problems with recognising scanned pages (the system is pretty good at recognising 1840s typefaces, but not brilliant) we weren't sure how popular it would be. But the facility to read the page for oneself meant it went down a storm — and the quality of the copy trumps all.