Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
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Is George Osborne the first British Chancellor to hide good news in the small print? I ask this in my News of the World column (£) today, and ask what he’s up to. Listening to Nick Clegg on Marr this morning, even he can’t quite say that the same forecasts that predict 500,000 public sector
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Déjà-lu is a feeling that Spectator subscribers become familiar with. Part of the reason for subscribing (which you can now do from £12, including free iPad access) is to get ahead of the competition – and read today what the newspapers will be saying tomorrow. We’re delighted that the cover story of Thursday’s edition, by Allister
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I’m on the train back from doing Radio Four’s Any Questions – broadcast live from Derby, repeated at 1.10pm tomorrow – where I had a bust-up with Christine Blower of the NUT. CoffeeHousers may recall she was the star of a cover story we ran a few weeks back, about the campaign of bullying and
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Paul Mason’s review of the cuts for Newsnight last night (from 10:20 into the video here) was one of the most powerful critiques of Osborne from the left. His package majored on Osborne’s decision to cut a further £11 billion from welfare and pensions, to soften the departmental cuts. Adopting a rather funereal tone, Mason
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In the end, George Osborne didn’t flinch. The Chancellor is a clever political operator – too clever, sometimes – but the result is a cuts package that has surprisingly broad popular support. And this has been achieved, in part, by including measures that strike the likes of me as economically unwise. So much of this
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Almost every newspaper today leads on the chilling figure of 500,000 jobs to go. This was taken from a briefing paper held by Danny Alexander – a “gaffe” says The Guardian. Indeed: it was top secret – to anyone without internet access. “The OBR’s Budget forecast was for a reduction in public sector workforce numbers
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Even though the SDSR promises that it “will be used by units returning from Germany or retained for other purposes,” the loss of RAF Kinloss will still be a body blow to Moray. For years, it has sustained hundreds of airforce families in Elgin, Forres and Nairn – mine amongst them. And I can picture
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Having been accused of being a “pain denier” by Tim Montgomerie yesterday, I’d like to quickly defend myself. In my News of the World column, I sought to put this in some perspective. I put in the fact that has been reported nowhere: that we know what the cuts will be. Total cuts to government
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The less we hear from Theresa May, the more I worry about the Home Office budget. I’m hearing rumours of her taking a 30 percent cut, which I first dismissed as a piece of expectations management. But now I’m beginning to wonder. We know that defence is settled – about an 8 percent real-terms cut.
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The Fake Sheikh, Mazher Mahmood, has a good wee scoop in the News of the World today. The papers’ reporters posed as would-be immigrants, and heard immigration advisers tell them how to game the system. The quotes speak best for themselves. 1. Official from the International Immigration Advisory Service in Manchester. “Floods have come
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I thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate a selection of a half a dozen pieces in the new edition of The Spectator. I know it is, in many ways, a tough task persuading online audience to part with cash for a magazine (or our new iPad edition, available for free to subscribers) – but this week’s issue
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Anyone who thought the new intake of Tory MPs were a bunch of automatons should take a look at the House of Commons order paper today. MPs have been asked to sign away 60 percent more of British taxpayers’ money to Brussels, in defiance of British public opinion. For years, they have done so without
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Putting Ed Balls into Home Affairs is like trapping a bee in a jar: he’ll come out furious, and anxious to sting. In his new brief, he has immigration. And he’ll know Cameron’s vulnerabilities. The greatest threat facing the coalition doesn’t come from Ed Miliband. It comes from a deep dysfunction in Britain’s economy: that
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Those months of campaigning have finally paid off for Dianne Abbott. She has been made a Shadow Health Minister – which resembles a proper job. She was against the Blair-Milburn reforms in the NHS, regarding them as too pro-market – so let’s see if she keeps this position in opposition, thereby throwing more soil on
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Ten years ago, when I was doing my tour of duty as a reporter in the Scottish Parliament, I had a talk with an SNP figure, who shall remain nameless, about their grand plan. Scotland was to be a nation, and that means its politicians perform in certain ways. They wanted to look like statesman,
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Should families on welfare limit the number of babies they have? Jeremy Hunt suggested so last night – kicking off a debate fuelled by our disclosure in today’s Spectator about just how many out-of-work claimants have 6, 7 and 8+ children. The moral argument is pretty clear. Before a worker wants to expand his
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Eureka, the science magazine from The Times, is in many ways a brilliant accomplishment. Advertising is following readers in an online migration – but James Harding, the editor, personally persuaded advertisers that a new magazine, in a newspaper, devoted to science would work. And here it is: giving the New Scientist a run for its
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This was the perhaps the lowest-octane speech David Cameron has ever given to the Tory conference. He didn’t need to give the speech of his life, for once – so he didn’t. He dutifully ran through all the various points of government policies, but there were too many of what Art Laffer calls MEGO figures
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We have a new facts and figures column in the magazine, Barometer, and I thought CoffeeHousers might like a preview of one of the data series we have dug up for tomorrow’s edition. George Osborne has this week pledged that, from 2013, no family on benefits should receive more than the average family does through
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George Osborne had been expected to subject child benefits to tax. Instead he is to abolish them entirely for higher-rate taxpayers. I’ve spent this morning talking to friends, whose judgment I respect, who are furious about Cameron hitting the squeezed middle. I cannot agree, and here’s why. We are not talking about the “squeezed middle”
