Fraser Nelson

The early departure of Robert Hannigan as GCHQ chief, announced today, marks not so much the end of an era as the transition between eras. The agency's famous HQ in Cheltenham, a metallic doughnut the size of Wembley Stadium, might look futuristic but was designed in the late 1990s before anyone worked out just how much data the intelligence services would have to intercept and analyse. Or how much of espionage would involve codebreaking, and on such an unprecedented scale. The workload exploded as it opened in 2003 and suddenly a GCHQ designed for 5,000 staff looked too small. New ways of working were needed. Hannigan was brought in, as outsiders occasionally are to GCHQ, to administer some course correction.

Your average milkman has more wealth than the world's poorest 100 million people. Doesn’t that show how unfair the world is? Or given that the poorest 100 million will have negative assets, doesn’t it just show how easily statistics can be manipulated for Oxfam press releases? They’re at it again today: the same story, every January. “Almost half of the world's wealth is owned by just 1% of the world's population” it said in 2014. It has done variants on that theme ever year, each time selling it as a new "big" story. All the time peddling the impression that inequality is getting worse, that the rich are engorging themselves at the expense of the poorest.

Michael Gove never intended to make his most famous remark. In an interview during the EU referen-dum campaign, the then justice secretary was told that the leaders of the IFS, CBI, NHS and TUC all disagreed with him about Brexit. He had tried to reply that people have ‘had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong’. But he was picked up mid-sentence by his appalled interviewer. ‘Had enough of experts? Had enough of experts?’ Gove’s partial quote was held up to ridicule, as if it embodied Trump-style populist rage; the battle of emotion against reason.

Think of the scandals of the last two decades; think of who exposed them. That’s why we need to protect press freedom and why, if you haven’t already done so, you should email to register your objection to the notorious Section 40 of the Crime & Courts Act. The consultation ends at 5pm tomorrow. If activated, it would mean that publications who refuse to bend the knee to a state-sponsored regulator would pay the legal costs of anyone who sues them – right or wrong. When Tim Yeo was exposed by the Sunday Times, he sued – even though every word of their exposé was correct. The newspaper fought him because under the basic laws of justice, if the complainant is proved to be wrong, you don’t pay a thing.

If you’ve enjoyed The Spectator’s website this year, you’re in good company. Some 22 million have visited our website this year, a record high, and they have read 70 million articles between them. As the below graph shows, this is another record. The odd thing is that we did not, this year, set out to increase traffic. On the contrary, we have tightened our metered paywall. We offer only a few free articles every month before asking people to subscribe to read more. We judge online success not so much by the traffic total (a figure grossly inflated by one-off visitors) but by new subscriptions. Our aim is quite simple: to grow our family of subscribers and to serve them as well as we can.

The new issue of the Spectator is out today, and hopefully those who buy their copy shops will have more luck than they did with our Christmas special issue. That seemed to sell out rather quickly, which isn’t a good sign. It’s our job to spot when sell outs are likely to happen, to restock the shelves and make sure everyone who wants a copy can do so. For whatever reason, that didn’t seem to happen as it should have done this time around. I’d like to apologise to Christopher James, who sent this distressed Tweet when he couldn’t get a copy in in Euston station, one of the places in London. There were similar stories of woe across social media. Londoners seem badly hit in general...

Perhaps the worst excuse for Britain's massive international aid budget is that the cash will stem immigration pressures because richer countries emit fewer emmigrants. As economists cal tell you reverse is true: emigration is an expensive journey and when the poorest countries become wealthier, more people can afford to make it. So Priti Patel was not quite right when she told the Independent's website that... ...tackling the global challenges of our time such as drought and disease which fuel migration, insecurity and instability is the right thing to do and is firmly in Britain’s interest. Tackling drought and disease is, unquestionably, the right thing to do. But the link to migration is rather more complicated.

Christmas is three days away, those heading off to relatives are starting to pack. Booze, books – and, I’d like to propose, one other item: the Spectator’s books podcast. Tis the season for finding a podcast, falling in love with it and downloading several episodes to listen to during a long drive (or lazy afternoons). Advances in technology mean you don’t have to listen to whatever nonsense might be on the radio. A good podcast can take you straight into conversations you’d love to have - which is what The Spectator's books podcast does. Each week Sam Leith, our brilliant literary editor, talks to authors about their ideas, approaches to their work, about maths, poems, science, the joy of museums and whether Roald Dahl was a hero or a turd.

Since my blog about the new threat to press freedom yesterday, and the notorious Section 40 being consulted on by the government, responses have been coming in thick and fast. A few of you have copied me in to emails sent to Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, many of them rather brilliant. More importantly, I've been contacted by a software designer who has agreed to make a form that we can use to send a template response to the government's consultation. This leaves us with one question: what form of words? One form has been created, here. But all you really need to do is mention Section 40 and a new Leveson report and officials are obliged to record your response. Here are three responses.

The Prime Minister’s office is a small, unimpressive room in 10 Downing Street with miserable views and unexceptional furniture. Since moving in, Theresa May has spruced it up — but only a little. There is now a large glass meeting table; her predecessor preferred to chat on the sofas. She has also delved into the government art collection to retrieve two pictures of Oxford, where she honed her interest in politics and met Philip, her husband. She has also picked a painting of an English country church (she is of course a vicar’s daughter), and that’s about it. It’s a place for work and — very occasionally — interviews. We meet a few weeks after Mrs May won The Spectator’s Politician of the Year award.

When we redesigned The Spectator six years ago, we spent months working on the launch issue and there was one name we wanted on the cover more than anyone else’s: AA Gill. These six letters could make you smile all on their own. They were a guarantee of wonderfully entertaining writing, gorgeous, unusual turns of phrase and, always, originality and spark. He was rather expensive; we couldn’t afford him very often. But always worth the money, when we had it. It surprised me, at first, to see that he'd phone in his copy, and dictate it. He had written it down, he’d tell me, but it would make no sense to anyone: he was dyslexic, which made the whole process harder. I always thought that this also helped explain why his writing flowed with such gorgeous distinction.