The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 14 April 2016

From our UK edition

In defence of Charles Sir: As a former full-time member of the Prince of Wales’s office, and a part-time equerry for 20 years, I can identify with some of HRH’s interests, just like Geoffrey Wheatcroft (‘How to save the monarchy’, 9 April). In my case we share a passion for churches and other historic buildings. I also share some of Mr Wheatcroft’s frustrations — the chaos of the prince’s office has at times driven me to distraction. As the product of a Yorkshire grammar school, I have never considered myself part of any ‘Highgrove set’: the prince calls me ‘Matthew’, and I call him ‘Sir’.

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 April 2016

From our UK edition

Boss cuts The chief executive of the Co-operative Group, Richard Pennycock, asked for a pay cut, saying his job had got easier now that the business is more steady — not to mention smaller. His basic pay will fall from £1.25m to £750,000 and his overall pay will drop 60%. Some other bosses who have recently taken pay cuts: — Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent took a 42% pay cut last year, with his overall package falling from $25.2m to $14.6m. — Cressida Pollock, CEO of English National Opera, took a 30% pay cut last September, partly in return for her job being made permanent. — Simon Potter, chief executive of Bahamas Petroleum, this month deferred 90% of his pay so the company could continue to invest in spite of low oil prices.

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Portrait of the week | 14 April 2016

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, after spending a week parrying questions about his late father’s investment fund Blairmore, suddenly published a summary showing that on his own taxable income of £200,307 in the past year he had paid tax of £75,898. Downing Street said ‘potential prime ministers’ and chancellors should be expected to publish their tax returns in future. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he had paid £72,210 in tax on earnings or £198,738. Boris Johnson MP said he’d paid £276,505 tax on income of £612,583. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition, had not kept a copy of his tax return, but then got hold of one which showed that he’d paid £18,902 tax on £72,645 income.

The Spectator

Fit to print

From our UK edition

For weeks, Westminster has been full of rumours about the private life of a certain cabinet member. It was said he had started to visit a dominatrix in Earl’s Court but ended up falling in love with her and taking her to official functions. Like a Westminster remake of the film Pretty Woman, in fact, but with the Culture Secretary, John Whitting-dale, playing the part of Richard Gere. There was much comment in Parliament about this, and jokes about what London is coming to if an MP has to travel all the way to Earl’s Court for such services, when they used to be available a stone’s throw away from the Commons. And on it went. The story did not appear in the press for a simple reason: it was, in most part, an invention.

The Spectator

All quiet on the Western Front

From our UK edition

From ‘Observing: an average day’, The Spectator, 15 April 1916: 5.10 a.m. The signaller on duty at the telephone has just said cheerfully, ‘5.30, Sir.’ I agree, and ask him if the wires are all right. They are! 5.50 a.m. Unroll the mufflers round my head and the blankets and kick off the sandbags. Then get off the bed sideways into the water. 8.30 a.m. They have begun. Four ‘whizz-bangs’ have just burst very prettily over a communication trench to our right. Then silence again. 10.25 a.m. We have just had a little excitement. I suddenly saw a German — a rare thing — through the telescope. 2.15 p.m. They are shelling a trench on our left rather persistently, and the batteries behind have begun to retaliate.

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Whittingdale ‘scandal’ shows why Britain’s free press is more responsible than its critics

From our UK edition

For weeks, Westminster has been full of rumours about the private life of a certain cabinet member. It was said he had started to visit a dominatrix in Earl’s Court but ended up falling in love with her and taking her to official functions. Like a Westminster remake of the film Pretty Woman, in fact, but with the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, playing the part of Richard Gere. There was much comment in Parliament about this, and jokes about what London is coming to if an MP has to travel all the way to Earl’s Court for such services, when they used to be available a stone’s throw away from the Commons. And on it went. The story did not appear in the press for a simple reason: it was, in most part, an invention.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 7 April 2016

From our UK edition

Gene genies Sir: ‘The return of eugenics’ (2 April) links a new technology of gene modification to historic dreams of genetic purification. But we are of course more than our DNA; each of us is a unique person, each mortal, and each worth the attention of science and medicine to alleviate our suffering. This means we must not totally ban the technology of crispr-CAS9, which allows specific editing of even a single letter within our 3 billion-letter human genomes, because it opens many doors to medicine. The single distinction that would allow this technology to serve medicine without also bringing down the curse of rational eugenics would be a ban on all manipulation of cells that make sperm or egg cells; that is, the human germ line.

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 April 2016

From our UK edition

Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner, Eve Dawnay, died. Other villages still largely owned by a local squire: — Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, owned by the W.H. Smith family until 2007 when it was bought by the neighbouring Culden Faw estate, which owns 50 cottages in the village as well as the shop and pub. — Bantham, Devon. An estate consisting of 21 houses, a golf course and 589 acres was bought in 2014 by a businessman, Nicholas Johnston, having been advertised for £11.5 million. The National Trust wanted to buy it but were outbid. — New Earswick, York. Still mostly owned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, having been built as a model village by Rowntree on 123 acres he bought in 1901.

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The road to Panama

From our UK edition

The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news that the Central American state is a popular destination for those who dislike paying tax. But to obsess about this aspect of the story, as so many did this week, would be to miss the most striking discovery, which is just how many politicians and government officials have been using Panama to disguise their extraordinary wealth. Few were under any illusions about Vladimir Putin being a good and faithful public servant, yet it comes as a surprise that he appears to have a personal fortune that would have made the tsars look like paupers.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 April 2016

From our UK edition

Home Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, said that the government would like a buyer to save Port Talbot steelworks. ‘We’re going to also have to offer support to eventually clinch that buyer and to give this steel plant a long-term viable future,’ he said. Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Commons Treasury Select Committee, said that he expected to learn by the end of this month the proportion that remained active of the 655,000 National Insurance numbers granted to people from the EU in the year up to September 2015. An online survey by Opinium for the Observer on the forthcoming EU referendum put the ‘leave’ side at 43 per cent and ‘remain’ at 39 per cent.

The Spectator

Zeppelin raids

From our UK edition

From ‘Per Mare, Per Terras, Per Coelum’, The Spectator, 8 April 1916: The very worst the Germans can do in the way of Zeppelin attacks is negligible from the military point of view. They are a great and grim annoyance, but nothing more… A scientific betting man, if asked what were the odds on John Smith or Mary Brown being killed in the next raid, would put it, we presume, at something like a million to one.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 31 March 2016

From our UK edition

Amber warning Sir: James Forsyth’s interview with Amber Rudd (‘The Amber Express’, 19 March) was very revealing, but also slightly disappointing. She is right about the succession of ‘zealots’ who preceded her in setting British energy policy, but after the billions wasted on wind and solar, paid for by stealth taxes added to our electricity bills, and now providing around 2 per cent of capacity, does she still support the drive towards ‘renewable energy’? Britain now has the most expensive electricity in Europe, hardly an encouragement for business investment.

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Barometer | 31 March 2016

From our UK edition

Area of doubt Hillary Clinton has said that if she is elected she will open files on the US military facility in Nevada known as Area 51. Some rumours which will almost certainly not be confirmed: — According to a physicist who claims to have worked there, nine captured alien spacecraft have been examined there. Another says that a small band of aliens works there. They are 5ft high, wear dungarees and came from a planet called Quintumnia, 45 years’ travel time away. — Scientists there are working on a 6,000mph plane called Aurora, a prototype of which has already been flown. — Workers are suing the USAF after their skin turned red and peeled off.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 March 2016

From our UK edition

Home The Indian company Tata decided to sell its entire steel business in Britain, putting more than 15,000 jobs in jeopardy. The buy-to-let business was squashed by the Prudential Regulation Authority imposing more stringent borrowing criteria in parallel with an increase in stamp duty from this month. The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee said that ‘the most significant’ domestic risks to financial stability were connected to the referendum on EU membership. The French utility company EDF agreed to take on part of its Chinese partner’s financial risks from cost overruns in building the Hinkley Point nuclear power station. BHS, the department store chain, attempted to secure its future in the face of a £571 million pension deficit.

The Spectator

Power failure | 31 March 2016

From our UK edition

A fortnight ago, the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, declared grandly that Britain, alone in the world, would commit to a target of reducing net carbon emissions to zero. ‘The question is not whether but how we do it,’ she told Parliament. It is now becoming painfully clear how this target will be reached: not by eliminating our carbon emissions but by exporting them, along with thousands of jobs and much of our manufacturing industry. This week, Tata Steel announced that its entire UK business is to be put up for sale. That came after Stephen Kinnock, whose South Wales constituency includes Tata’s giant plant at Port Talbot, joined a union delegation to the headquarters of Tata Steel in India to beg the company to keep the plant open.

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The Spectator podcast: Eugenics, Tory wars and poetry

From our UK edition

We're delighted to have Berry Bros sponsor our flagship podcast. For some years now their 'Good Ordinary Claret' has been The Spectator's house red, served to all our guests (who are always impressed).  It's just £9 a bottle. Lara Prendergast presents this week's podcast. She speaks to Fraser Nelson about the return of eugenics - which, according to his cover article, is back with a vengeance. He's alarmed - but Toby Young isn't. He says eugenics should be on the NHS so the poor can have more intelligent babies. Next, James Forsyth discusses the latest in the Tory wars over Brexit.

The Spectator

The road to remembrance

From our UK edition

From ‘The “Via Sacra”’, The Spectator, 1 April 1916: When the war is over, France, Belgium, and Britain will be faced with the problem of finding some form of war memorial adequate to the greatest and longest battle of which the world has any record… We propose that a wide Memorial Road should be laid out in the no-man’s-land, the dead ground, between the two trench lines… from the sea to the Alps — a great road with monuments to the fallen, and to the deeds of heroism done by this or that individual company, regiment, brigade, division, and army, scattered along it.