The Spectator

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The Spectator

Letters | 19 November 2015

From our UK edition

The NHS and politicians Sir: The NHS is indeed in need of fundamental reform, but Max Pemberton’s excellent article (‘The wrong cuts’, 14 November) exemplifies why politicians are least well qualified to conduct it. The public loves the NHS and has every reason to distrust political meddling. NHS England should become a public corporation with a five-year charter similar to that applying to the BBC. Of course politicians must decide the total budget and agree the strategic goals, but that is a far cry from deciding the pay and hours of every category of staff. Politicians have no managerial skills and should leave that to the professionals.

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How they tried (and failed) to make ‘La Marseillaise’ nicer

From our UK edition

Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been so popular. In 1992 a Committee for a Marseillaise of Fraternity was founded to campaign for a change to the words, written as a war hymn by an army captain while French troops were besieged by Prussians at Strasbourg 200 years earlier. The campaign failed, despite the support of Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the then president. The suggested new lyrics began: Arise you children of the Motherland Let’s sing together for Liberty Liberty, oh dearest liberty Your bloody ramparts have fallen The brothel demographic Cynthia Payne, who was jailed for keeping a brothel where elderly men paid for sex with luncheon vouchers, died.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 November 2015

From our UK edition

Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been prevented in the past six months. He met President Vladimir Putin of Russia at a G20 meeting at Antalya in Turkey. Mr Putin said: ‘We should join efforts in preventing terror. Unfortunately our bilateral relations are not of the best.’ Mr Cameron said in the Commons: ‘Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake… we need to deal with it not just in Iraq but in Syria too.’ He said funds from maintaining defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP would go to special forces, drones and fighter aircraft. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ would be able to recruit an extra 1,900 officers to their 12,700 staff.

The Spectator

A better way

From our UK edition

To say that the Paris attacks could have happened in Britain is not enough. Such attacks are being attempted here with terrifying regularity —seven have been thwarted so far this year alone. MI5’s official assessment is that a terrorist attack on British soil is ‘highly likely’. Our security services have so far been very good at keeping us safe. But as the IRA famously put it, spies have to be lucky all of the time, terrorists have to be lucky only once. So it is impossible for Britain to view events on the continent with any sense of complacency. Still, the Prime Minister was justified in pointing out last week that the more we learn about what happened in Paris, the more it justifies the policies that Britain has pursued.

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Listen: Is the BBC a national treasure? With Melvyn Bragg, James Purnell and Rachel Johnson

From our UK edition

Last night Spectator Events hosted a discussion at Church House, Westminster about whether the BBC really is a national treasure. Speakers included Melvyn Bragg, author and broadcaster, James Purnell, director of strategy and digital at the BBC, Andrew Bridgen MP, Meirion Jones, investigative journalist, Robin Aitken, author of Can we trust the BBC? and Rachel Johnson, author and broadcaster. The discussion was hosted by Andrew Neil. Both entertaining and informative, the discussion touched upon a number of different areas, including whether the BBC should reduce its print content, whether a 'liberal' bias exists and whether the BBC can actually be reformed.

The Spectator

The French way of war

From our UK edition

From ‘The Example of France’, The Spectator, 20 November 1915: France is an example to the world and to posterity of how a nation can bend itself to the work in hand, and labour with its whole body, its whole mind, and its whole soul. The more we know of the splendid details of this devotion the better. We think that we Englishmen know a good deal more of the ways of devotion than we are generally credited with, and we are learning daily in a geometrical progression. But even so, we cannot fail to help ourselves by watching and admiring the wonderful performance of a people whose circumstances brought them more quickly and more really into contact with war than we ourselves were brought… Beyond the rampart which we defend lie the barbarians yearning to advance.

The Spectator

A further selection of books of the year — the best and most overrated of 2015

From our UK edition

Daniel Hahn  I suspect many people won’t bother to read Katherine Rundell’s The Wolf Wilder (Bloomsbury, £12.99) because it’s a children’s book. Don’t be one of those people. You’d be depriving yourself of a ferociously paced, brilliantly imagined piece of gorgeous, immersive storytelling — and really, why would you want to do that? Set in Russia a century ago, it’s the story of a girl and her friends (some of whom are wolves) forced to be brave, and to right some great wrongs. We began 2015 with the introduction to another bright new talent, following the publication of The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Portobello, £12.99), superbly translated by Deborah Smith.

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Cameron’s snooping law would not help our spies. Why does he pretend otherwise?

From our UK edition

Should the Investigatory Powers Bill be rushed through parliament in the wake of the Paris attacks? David Cameron seemed to suggest so this morning, when he said that the bill was part of his 'full spectrum' response. Britain will be responding to the Paris atrocities, he said, and this… '…means boosting our counter-terrorism capabilities. We should think, absolutely, the bill we’re taking through parliament to strengthen our capabilities to intercept the communications of terrorists is a vital part of this.' Asked if he wanted to speed it up, he replied: 'we ought to look at the timetable'. But why? The Investigatory Powers Bill will confer no new powers on the spies at all – as No10 confirmed in a briefing to journalists this afternoon.

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