21 min listen
On this week's episode, Christina Lamb reads her letter from Kabul about the situation on the ground under the new Taliban control (00:56). Simon Clarke makes the case for Covid boosters (06:19). And Hannah Moore talks about the horrors of so-called 'American' sweet shops in the West End (15:18).
33 min listen
On this week's episode: why is the Prime Minister so desperate to support the assetocracy? In The Spectator’s cover story this week, after Boris Johnson revealed his plan to pay for social care with a National Insurance increase, Fraser Nelson says there has been an inversion of the welfare state. Is it right to ask the working poor to pay more taxes to help cover the social care of people who could easily fund it themselves? Kate Andrews, The Spectator’s economics editor, joins Fraser to discuss. (00:47) Plus, why is our knowledge of Soviet atrocities so poor? Attempting to fix this, James Bartholomew has been interviewing and recording the stories of survivors of Soviet oppression and torture.
The British often complain about an invasion of Americana, from burger joints to twangy accents picked up from television. I love my adopted countrymen, but for an American living far from home, these complaints can be tiresome. However, there is one Yankee invasion I hate as much as the locals do: American candy stores. There are now nine of them on London’s Oxford Street alone. A guy called Chase Manders is to blame; he started importing and selling American candy to Britain 18 years ago and opened Kingdom of Sweets on Oxford Street in 2012. Soon after, stores that once sold knickknacks to tourists started muscling in. I paid a visit to see what all the fuss was about. Could these shops take me back to my childhood? The answer was no.
From our US edition
When I was 16 I told my father I wanted to leave America to go to university in Scotland. His only real concern was the food: ‘I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.’ His run-in with British cuisine was in the 1970s, so little wonder. Sure enough, the food in the student halls of St Andrews was worthy of Oliver Twist. If it wasn’t slabs of fatty gammon, already cold in the tray, it was a tepid, oozing excuse for lasagna, harboring hard lumps of ground beef and grainy béchamel sauce. And then there’s haggis. I loved everything about my four years at the tiny university town on the frigid North Sea coast, except for the food. That all changed when I moved to London, and I have to hand it to them — Londoners do know how to eat well. The world’s cuisine is here.
