The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Discovering Europe

From ‘A Converted Peace-Man’, The Spectator, 28 August 1915: We have brought the present war upon ourselves in a great measure by the obstinate refusal of the great mass of English politicians to recognise that Europe is a fact, and a very momentous fact, and that to ignore it as they did was a piece of extraordinary folly. We have been cured of that folly now — by a very rough exercise of political surgery, and all that is left for us to do is to take care that we never blind our eyes in the same fashion again.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 20 August 2015

The morality of the A bomb Sir: In questioning whether we should celebrate VJ Day (Diary, 15 August), A.N. Wilson is confusing ‘why’ with ‘how’. The debate on the rights or wrongs of the nuclear attack will continue probably until long after the grandchildren of the last survivors have passed on. What should not be forgotten is the necessity to defeat the cruel, expansionist, militaristic regime that arose in Japan between the wars. Something happened to Japan during that period. The treatment of Allied prisoners of war and the atrocities in China during the second world war are well documented. What is less well known is the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war during the first world war.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 20 August 2015

Home Andrew Burnham described calls from Yvette Cooper, a rival candidate for the Labour leadership, for him to withdraw from the contest as ‘quite strange’. The problem was how to prevent Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger, from being elected by the alternative vote system by 610,000 party members and registered supporters. Gordon Brown, the former disastrous Labour prime minister, contributed by making a 50-minute speech in a small room at the Royal Festival Hall, during which he paced up and down continuously for an estimated 1 mile 1 furlong 5 chains and did not mention Mr Corbyn’s name. Kezia Dugdale, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, was elected leader of the Scottish Labour party; the party has only one seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

The Spectator

Get fracking

Over the past week, the government has finally made a decisive move to kickstart a fracking industry in Britain. Licences have been issued for shale gas exploration and the planning process streamlined so that in future, if local councils fail to make decisions within 16 weeks, the communities secretary will step in and adjudicate. It’s excellent news that the years of prevarication over shale seem finally to have come to a close, and greatly to the credit of our Climate Change Secretary, Amber Rudd, and Communities Secretary, Greg Clark. But the dismally slow speed at which our much-vaunted ‘shale revolution’ has taken place will end up costing this country.

The Spectator

Barometer | 20 August 2015

No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually assaulting children because he was asexual. How many adults do not experience sexual attraction? — A 2004 study by Anthony F. Bogaert, of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, analysed responses to a British questionnaire ten years earlier. Of 18,000 respondents, 195, or just over 1%, had agreed with the statement ‘I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all’. — A 1983 study by a student at the University of Michigan classified 5% of males and 10% of females as asexual. Unaccountable spending The EU declined to offer a breakdown of the £86m spent by staff on EU credit cards.

The Spectator

Field studies

From ‘Education and the War’, The Spectator, 21 August 1915: War is a time in which a shortage of labourers can least be borne with. The land must not go untilled, the seed must not remain unsown, or the crops unharvested. Many of these services can be rendered by children whose schooling is not yet over. Care must be taken that the teachers do not lose sight of them, and that days, or parts of days, shall still be spent in the old way. But if this is secured, the child of twelve will not be wholly a loser by the change. He will gain in health by being more in the open air, and in skill by being early taught the elements of the industry by which in most cases he will eventually have to live.

Sunday

The Spectator

A Twitter snapshot of the Labour leadership struggle

Who would win the Labour leadership contest if it were decided by the number of Twitter followers? Jeremy Corbyn 94,200 Andy Burnham 85,400 Yvette Cooper 72,800 Liz Kendall 35,900 And the nascent Tory leadership battle? Boris Johnson 1.43m* George Osborne 135,000 Theresa May 0† *For @MayorofLondon; his personal handle has another 73,200. †She doesn’t tweet.