2446: Spring time solution
The omitted letters reveal SATURDAY THE TWENTY-NINTH OF FEBRUARY TWENTY TWENTY. First prize Lewis Osborne, Newton Mearns, Glasgow Runners-up G.H. Willett, London SW19; Ian Graham, Holt, Norfolk
The Spectator
Saturday
Wednesday
The lockdown list: books to read during quarantine
From our US edition
Daily reading recommendations from The Spectator’s writers and editors
Monday
The Spectator launches new website to mark its 10,000th issue
Today The Spectator launches a new website, designed to showcase its world-class journalism, popular podcast channels and 24/7 news coverage and commentary. The website has been designed in advance of our 10,000th issue, as The Spectator – the oldest magazine in the word – becomes the first publication in history to reach this milestone The
Saturday
Is Boris about to abandon his own debt rules?
It’s always tempting for governments to respond to economic trouble with a debt-fuelled spending splurge, but it’s a notoriously blunt tool. The root of the current problem is not financial panic but a rational response to the coronavirus. People are travelling less, staying away from shops and the workplace, delaying various projects, and they will
Letters: The BBC licence fee is an anachronism
Coronavirus predictions Sir: While precautionary advice regarding the coronavirus should be followed, Ross Clark is right (‘Feverish imaginations’, 29 February) to urge an open mind on the doomsday predictions which are edging us towards panic. In 1996 the then government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Kenneth Calman, predicted that 500,000 people could die within a few
Portrait of the week: Panic buying, Budget announcements and farewell to Harry and Meghan
Home At the beginning of the week 319 people in the United Kingdom had been found to be suffering from the coronavirus Covid-19, with five deaths by Monday evening; by the next day there were another 54 cases and another death. Of the total, 91 were in London. Testing was extended to anyone hospitalised with
2445: in other words II
41/1A/10 is MISQUOTATION. 1D/24/33, 15, 34, and 38/16D are examples of common misquotations. First prize Dianne Parker, Dover, KentRunners-up Vincent Clark, Frant, East Sussex; Robin Vick, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex
Wednesday
The great Tory Budget giveaway
It’s always tempting for governments to respond to economic trouble with a debt-fuelled spending splurge, but it’s a notoriously blunt tool. The root of the current problem is not financial panic but a rational response to the coronavirus. People are travelling less, staying away from shops and the workplace, delaying various projects, and they will
Full text: Rishi Sunak’s Budget statement
Rishi Sunak unveiled his first Budget today. The Chancellor has promised a £30bn war chest for tackling coronavirus. There is also £6bn of new funding for the NHS, a new £2.5bn pothole fund and £5.2bn for flooding defences. Here is his full speech: I want to get straight to the issue most on everyone’s mind–
Budget 2020: as it happened
Rishi Sunak has unveiled his first Budget. The Chancellor has promised a £30bn war chest for tackling coronavirus. There is also £6bn of new funding for the NHS, a new £2.5bn pothole fund and £5.2bn for flooding defences. Here are the main headline announcements: A promise to increase public spending by 2.8 per cent – the OBR says
Monday
Full text: Labour's suspension letter to Trevor Phillips
News broke this morning that the former head of the Equalities Commission Sir Trevor Phillips had been suspended from the Labour party over allegations of Islamophobia. Phillips has spent his career documenting the realities of race and integration in British life. The think tank Policy Exchange has now released the correspondence between Sir Trevor and
Saturday
Portrait of the week: Coronavirus plans, Boris’s baby and Priti Patel under fire
Home After a Cobra emergency meeting about the coronavirus Covid-19, when the number of cases in the United Kingdom had reached 40, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said that they had ‘agreed a plan so that as and when it starts to spread — as I’m afraid it looks likely that it will — we
Letters: We need career detectives, not fast-tracked officers
We need career detectives Sir: Your lead article (Trial and error, 29 February) rightly condemns Tom Watson for pressurising police into investigating the spurious allegations of Carl Beech. What should urgently be abandoned is the fast-tracking of police officers into senior positions, and the promotion of uniformed inspectors into detective ranks without them having the
The Tories cannot afford a war with the civil service
Thirteen years ago, when John Reid became Home Secretary, he declared the ministry he presided over ‘not fit for purpose’. He was talking about border control but he might well have been referring to the department in general. When Theresa May became PM, things at the Home Office went from bad to worse. Her paranoid
Barometer: Is climate change making the weather more windy?
Heathrow’s nine runways When was a third runway for Heathrow first proposed? Heathrow was always planned to have multiple runways. On 10 April 1946, before the airport was even open, the Minister for Civil Aviation, Lord Winster, announced that the then London Airport was to have nine runways. Six would be in a Star of
2444: Ones in the country solution
The unclued answers are all words inChambers, having their origin in Indonesia (clued by wordplay in the title). First prize Kailash Vernalls, Thame, OxonRunners-up Paul Davies, Reading, Berks; Mrs J. Smith, Beeston, Norfolk
Tuesday
Full text: Boris Johnson releases coronavirus battle plan
The government has released its official action plan to deal with the coronavirus epidemic, warning people that ‘we are all susceptible to catching this disease’. During a press conference at Downing Street this morning, the Prime Minister told reporters that the government’s plan involved four phases: ‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’. Boris Johnson said: ‘Let me be absolutely clear
Saturday
The ‘Westminster paedophile ring’ is a lesson in how not to carry out a police investigation
A cornerstone of any -functioning democracy is the separation of police and the courts on one hand, and government and parliament on the other. Where the latter are charged with making the law, they should never, ever be allowed to interfere with the enforcement of that law. Politicians have no power to tell the police
Portrait of the week: Weinstein convicted, Harry and Meghan answer back, and coronavirus spreads in Europe
Home The government told Britons returning from 11 quarantined towns in northern Italy to isolate themselves, for fear of spreading Covid-19, the contagious coronavirus fever. Random testing began at 11 hospitals. Thirty British and two Irish passengers from the cruise ship Diamond Princess quarantined at Yokohama had been flown to Britain and sent for another
Letters: How to really revitalise the North
Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with decentralisation of authority. Thus it is adrift to imply that Edinburgh has benefited from a conscious decentralising of powers from central government. It was simply that Scotland as a whole got devolution and Edinburgh