The Spectator

On child care Sir: Your recent editorial deplores, among other things, the cost of child care, to which you attribute the loss of female skills to the workplace (11 January). I would agree that pursuing a career is easier if one has no children. I also agree that the cost of child care is a significant drain on the income of young families. I am less convinced by the implicit suggestion that cheaper child care is the solution. I speak from experience and with hindsight. My son was born in 2000. For women of my age and education, at that time it was almost imperative to shove your baby into an expensive nursery and get back to work as quickly as possible. This is what I did — and I can’t say it was a good investment, for me, for his father or for him.

The government has wisely kept away from the Harry and Meghan story so far. Despite that, no one should imagine that the latest royal farrago causes anything other than extreme concern for HMG, which will be worried at the potential for a rogue royal to upset the direction of government policy. There is still much to learn about how the Sussexes intend to conduct their lives, but the couple’s desire to pursue ‘a progressive new role’ will cause alarm in Whitehall. Anything that calls for interpretation risks going wrong. To put this into context it is helpful to look at three examples, one extreme, the others less so. For the first, historians would look to Edward VIII after the abdication. The deeply embittered Duke was a constant worry to the authorities.

The Iranian government has faced growing internal pressure following the downing of a civilian jet last week. The Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down on Wednesday shortly after takeoff, killing all 176 passengers on board. The regime has since taken responsibility for the deaths, blaming 'human error' amid rising tensions with the US following the assassination of Qasim Soleimani. Some have suggested that the regime's tragic error could signal the beginning of the end for Iran's theocratic dictatorship as increasing numbers of Iranians take to the streets. Over the weekend, the British ambassador was arrested while attending a vigil for those who died on the Ukrainian flight, including four Brits.

The new president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen made a speech to the London School of Economics earlier today. During the speech, von der Leyen said: 'Without an extension of the transition period beyond 2020, you cannot expect to agree on every single aspect of our new partnership. We will have to prioritise.' You can listen to the speech and read the full transcript below: Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to be back here at the London School of Economics – a place which brings back so many happy memories for me. The year I spent here taught me so much – both in and out of LSE. As anyone who knew me at the time will tell you, I spent more time in Soho bars and Camden record stores than I did reading books in Senate House Library.

With just 35 minutes of 1999 to go, and as most of the country was preparing to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium, Peter Snow was desperately trying to fill airtime. He was the BBC’s Millennium Bug correspondent on a marathon 28-hour live broadcast called '2000 Today', and every hour or two he would update viewers on which countries had fallen victim while standing in front of a large world map.  The only problem was that the bug did not appear to be striking…anywhere. At the time the bug was a major worry. The concern was that when the date rolled over to 2000, because computers may only store the date as two digits – '99' instead of '1999' – suddenly systems across the world could revert to thinking that it was 1900.