The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: A defence of nursing assistants, a mystery shotgun, and a response to Melanie Phillips

From our UK edition

Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support shown to patients is humbling. It is also worth noting that showing patients a lack of compassion has wider consequences. We know for instance that around 13,000 cancer patients feel like dropping out of treatment each year because of how they are treated by staff. In other words, it could risk their lives. It is unfair to say, however, that the nurses who used to be ‘angels’ have been replaced by the ‘mechanistic bureaucrats’ of assistants.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 August 2014

From our UK edition

Home The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge joined 50 heads of state at the St Symphorien cemetery near Mons to commemorate the invasion of Belgium in 1914. The Prince of Wales attended a service at Glasgow cathedral; the Duchess of Cornwall attended a service at Westminster Abbey where a lighted flame was put out at 11p.m., the hour that Britain had declared war on Germany on 4 August. Many people in Britain kept one light burning for an hour that evening. The Queen attended a private service at Craithie church, near Balmoral. In the grassy moat of the Tower of London, 888,246 ceramic poppies were being planted, one for each British and Colonial death in the first world war.

The Spectator

Sorry, but trains can’t really replace welfare lines

From our UK edition

George Osborne proposed an attractive idea this week: that spending on state benefits should be diverted into new infrastructure in the North. His conceit was that while welfare spending produces no economic return, spending public money on new high-speed railways and the like will inevitably boost the economy. We can’t fault the former assertion: that paying people to be idle is a drain on the public purse. But we take issue with the notion that infrastructure will always serve to boost the economy.

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Podcast: Boris is back, Baroness Warsi’s resignation and the demise of the ‘nice girl’

From our UK edition

Here comes Boris! After he announced yesterday that he will stand as an MP in 2015, the next Tory leadership fight has just begun. Now that Boris is back in the fray, and making Eurosceptic noises, he has an excellent chance of making it to No. 10 – to assume what he believes is his rightful destiny — the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Freddy Gray presents this week's podcast, and talks to Harry Mount about how Boris's parliamentary campaign might play out. Isabel Hardman also examines the possible constituencies he might pick. The other major political story this week was Baroness Warsi’s shock resignation. But was it political or poisonous? Douglas Murray believes Warsi was over-promoted and incompetent, and is glad to see the back of her.

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: A lesson from history

From our UK edition

A letter to the editor from the 8 August 1914 Spectator, from Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer: ‘Sir, - A septuagenarian may perhaps profitably remind his countrymen of events which happened some fifty years ago, and of which the present generation may possibly be unmindful. In 1866 Napoleon III. allowed himself to be lulled into security by Prussian assurances, and stood aside whilst Austria was crushed at Sadowa. He paid dearly for his neglect four years later at Sedan.

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: ‘Why has it come?’

From our UK edition

From ‘Topics of the Day’, The Spectator, 8 August 1914: ‘How does it happen that within a week Germany and Austria-Hungary are at war with France, with Russia, with Britain, with Servia, with Belgium, and that it is exceedingly likely that to the list will have to be added Holland, Switzerland, and Denmark, and later Italy, Roumania and Greece? ‘…Our answer is one which we feel bound to give because we believe it, even though it may seem to a section of our readers unjust to Germany.