The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

Barometer: Who can use the word ‘royal’?

From our UK edition

What a hole The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other things which have been claimed to be linked to cancer in the past fortnight: A hole built into the wall of a NatWest bank branch in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, became an unlikely tourist destination with five-star reviews on TripAdvisor. Some other surprising attractions: — The Bude tunnel is a 230-yard Perspex tunnel linking a supermarket to its car park in Bude, Cornwall. It started to gain five-star reviews when it was decorated with Christmas lights.

The Spectator

2443: Middle of the road solution

From our UK edition

Each unclued light is a genus name of a TREE (i.e. ‘middle of the road’ = (s)TREE(t)). Cornus was also allowed at 2 Down.First prize John Honey, SurbitonRunners-up Ben Stephenson, London SW12; D.

Sunday

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The UK is booming – despite Brexit

From our UK edition

After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe? Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is rising still. Unemployment in the UK is at its lowest since 1974. Unemployment in Wales is at its lowest since records began.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Cabinet reshuffle, another royal divorce and coronavirus hits iPhones

From our UK edition

Home The Budget, still scheduled for 11 March, had to be rewritten after Rishi Sunak was made Chancellor of the Exchequer when Sajid Javid resigned rather than agree to his special advisers being sacked and provision being pooled between No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street. Questions were asked about how far this was the work of Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. In the cabinet shuffle, Julian Smith was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Brandon Lewis. Suella Braverman replaced Geoffrey Cox as Attorney General; she had recently written an article regretting that ‘decisions of an executive, legislative and democratic nature have been assumed by our courts’.

The Spectator

Britain is booming – despite Brexit

From our UK edition

After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe? Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is rising still. Unemployment in the UK is at its lowest since 1974. Unemployment in Wales is at its lowest since records began.

The Spectator

Barometer: Who actually goes on a cruise?

From our UK edition

Breeding controversy A Downing Street aide, believed to have been recruited as a result of Dominic Cummings’s advert for ‘weirdos and misfits’, resigned after it was revealed he had spoken favourably of eugenics in the past. Where did eugenics come from?— The term was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. As well as studying meteorology and introducing the first weather map to the Times, he proposed experiments to test the heredity of intelligence — including the somewhat unethical proposal of separating twins at birth. The weak, he proposed, should be prohibited from breeding. Galton himself failed to have any effect on the gene pool because, in spite of 43 years of marriage, he never fathered a child. Right as rain?

The Spectator

2442: Don’t nod solution

From our UK edition

ROTAVATOR (4A), NAURUAN (12), DEED (25), DEIFIED (36), MALAYALAM (39), REIFIER (4D), TERRET (15D), and REPAPER (18) are palindromes as is 2442, the NUMBER (3) of the PUZZLE (30), and its title.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Letters: How to make a cup of tea

From our UK edition

No defence Sir: Jon Stone (Letters, 15 February) recalls the horrors and miseries of being subjected to bombing from the air. How right he is to do so. The deliberate burning and crushing of civilians in their homes is a revolting and indefensible form of warfare. It is no surprise that Hitler used it. What is surprising is that people in this country continue to make excuses for our own use of this method, which was actually far more extensive and deadly than the German bombing of the United Kingdom. There are no such excuses. Those who fall back on utilitarian justifications will also find that these do not work. The bombing of Germany failed on its own terms.

Monday

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Full text: Top UK Brexit negotiator David Frost on his plans for an EU trade deal

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson's top Brexit negotiator David Frost gave a major speech at ULB Brussels University on Monday evening where he set out the British government's plans for a UK-EU trade deal. This is an edited transcript of his speech: Thank you much everyone for that very kind introduction. It is a really huge pleasure to be here at your university. I would like to say thank you also to the Institute for hosting me, and your distinguished President, Ramona Coman, for being kind enough to host me here tonight. Your institute here has really made a huge contribution to the study of European politics and European integration – and long may that continue.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Britain rules on coronavirus, HS2 is approved and Bernie Sanders powers ahead

From our UK edition

Home The Department of Health classified the novel coronavirus (named by the World Health Organization Covid-19) as a ‘serious and imminent threat’ to public health so that, under the 1984 Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, quarantine could be made compulsory. There were 93 British citizens in quarantine at Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral and 105 from a later evacuation flight in a conference centre in Milton Keynes. Steve Walsh, a gas salesman from Hove in East Sussex, was found to have picked up the virus in Singapore and unwittingly infected 11 people at a French ski resort. One of them was a locum GP at the County Oak medical centre in Brighton, which was temporarily closed. British Airways cancelled flights to and from Beijing and Shanghai until 31 March.

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Letters: Britain can be zero carbon – but only by becoming poorer

From our UK edition

A green and poor land? Sir: Your editorial (8 February) is a timely warning about what the government’s headlong drive to carbon zero really means. We seem to be intent on wrecking our economy in order to further reduce our 1 per cent portion of the world’s greenhouse gases. But while we are scrapping our petrol and diesel cars along with our gas heating and cooking, Asian countries are building coal-fired power stations because the 21st-century world needs electricity and that is the cheapest and quickest way to provide it. Their emissions are already many times higher than the UK’s. This problem is surely what the UN’s climate change conference in Glasgow in November should be dealing with.

The Spectator

With Sajid Javid gone, will Boris now start a Gordon Brown-style spending splurge?

From our UK edition

The nature of the Johnson government is still not clear, but has become more so with the announcement this week that HS2 is to go ahead in its entirety. Until recently, it had seemed that the project would be, if not dropped altogether, cut back in order to rein in its ever-accelerating budget. This is what most Tory MPs,cabinet members and even the Chancellor had wanted. But instead, the Prime Minister has decided that it will be built in its full £106 billion form. Not only that, he threw in £5 billion for buses and cycleways, as well as the promise of a £39 billion high-speed line from Manchester to Leeds. And, perhaps, a £20 billion road bridge connecting Dumfriesshire with Northern Ireland. The ability to think big is generally a positive trait.

The Spectator

Barometer: The brands regretting calling themselves ‘Corona’

From our UK edition

Going viral A few of the businesses which chose ‘Corona’ as a brand name and now have a bit of an image problem: — Corona beer — brand of lager owned by Anheuser Busch InBev. — Corona Energy — gas and electricity supplier to businesses and the public sector. — Corona Pine Furniture — range from Mercers Furniture of Rotherham. — Corona ‘the 2D game engine’ — software for designing video games. — Corona, the ‘lemon capital of the world’, a city of 160,000 people 45 miles from LA. — And one which changed its name in time: Corona lemonade — South Wales manufacturer taken over by Britvic in 1987 and rebranded.

The Spectator

2441: To and Fro solution

From our UK edition

FRANCIS THOMPSON, born in PRESTON, wrote THE HOUND OF HEAVEN and a poem, AT LORD’S, remembering the run-stealers that flicker to and fro, and his HORNBY and his BARLOW LONG AGO. First prize D.

Thursday

Monday

Saturday

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Letters: Innovation has been stifled in Britain for too long

From our UK edition

The chance to fail Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘Risky business’ (1 February) offers a variety of reasons why innovation has been stifled in Britain for too long. As an educator, I would like to add two factors that I encounter on a regular basis: the tremendously suffocating grip of insurance companies, which turns the safest idea into a discouraging risk-assessment exercise, and the desire of parents to protect their child from any failure. There are understandable reasons why insurance companies and parents act like this. However, in schools and at home it prevents necessary opportunities to test and try, fail, learn and improve, and try again.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Britain leaves the EU, coronavirus evacuations and a great day for Trump

From our UK edition

Home The United Kingdom quietly left the European Union at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a speech about trade negotiations: ‘We have made our choice — we want a free trade agreement, similar to Canada’s but in the very unlikely event that we do not succeed, then our trade will have to be based on our existing withdrawal agreement with the EU.’ Britain would also pursue trade deals with other countries. The government brought forward from 2040 to 2035 a ban on selling new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars. David Cameron, the former prime minister, declined an offer from Boris Johnson to head the UN climate change summit in Glasgow in November.

The Spectator

Boris must have the courage to spell out the true cost of ‘net zero’

From our UK edition

After being sacked as the chairman of the COP26, the UN climate conference which is to take place in Glasgow later this year, Claire Perry O’Neill did not lose any time in settling scores. Boris Johnson, she said, does not ‘get’ climate change. In a sense she is right — but not in the way she thinks. The once-sceptical Prime Minister has been acting with the zeal of the converted on climate change and is all set to achieve ‘net zero’ UK climate emissions by 2050. Whether he ‘gets’ what this promise will require is another matter. This week, for example, he posed with Sir David Attenborough in the Science Museum to announce plans for the coming COP26 summit, pledging that Britain will take global ‘leadership’ in cutting carbon.

The Spectator

Barometer: Is the Wuhan coronavirus really that deadly?

From our UK edition

Mumbo jumbo The Prime Minister called opposition to imports of US-produced food ‘mumbo jumbo’. The expression was introduced to the English language in 1795 by Mungo Park in his Travels in the Interior of Africa. It was his way of writing down ‘Maamajomboo’ — the name used by the Mandinka people of West Africa for a pagan god, played by a male dancer, who was sent to intercede in disputes between the multiple wives of local men. Mumbo Jumbo would decide which woman was guilty, then strip her naked and scourge her with a rod. It is a wonder that Boris’s enemies haven’t seized upon his use of the expression as yet one more example of politically incorrect language. Health check Deaths from coronavirus reached the 490 mark.