The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 15 May 2014

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said on television that he was ‘bullish’ about negotiating change for Britain in the European Union, but that there would be a referendum on membership by the end of 2017 ‘whether or not I have successfully negotiated’. In a telephone poll by Lord Ashcroft the Conservatives were found to be ahead for the first time since 2012, on 34 per cent, with Labour at 32, Ukip 15 and the Liberal Democrats 9. An ICM poll said much the same. In the first quarter since visa restrictions were lifted, 140,000 Romanians and Bulgarians were employed in Britain, not counting dependants. Unemployment fell by 133,000 to a five-year low of 2.2 million. The FTSE rose to its highest since 1999, at 6,873.08.

The Spectator

Four stories the EU would like the right to have forgotten

From our UK edition

Memory holes The EU wants to introduce a law which would force Google to delete from its searches old information that individuals and organisations would prefer forgotten. Some things that come up when you write ‘EU’ and ‘scandal’ into Google: — A 2009 EU document advising officials to write two minutes of every meeting: a full one and a ‘neutral’ one, with the juicy bits taken out, in case it has to be released in a Freedom of Information request. — European Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s £24,600 hotel bill for a four-day stay in New York. — A former European commissioner’s appointment of her dentist as a highly paid adviser on HIV/Aids.

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: How schools fail boys, Jonathan Croall answers Keith Baxter, and why atheists should love the C of E

From our UK edition

Why girls do better Sir: Isabel Hardman notes that girls now outperform boys at every level in education (‘The descent of man’, 3 May), implying that this is a symptom of a wider cultural malaise. In fact, boys lost their edge in 16+ exams in 1970, long before their advantages in other areas began to disappear. ‘Child-centred’ reforms were already well advanced when the infamous Plowden report was published in 1967, and informal practices such as ‘discovery learning’ and ‘whole language’ gave girls a decided edge. This was conclusively demonstrated in trials conducted between 1997 and 2005 by the Scottish Office.

The Spectator

When judges go to jail

From our UK edition

Judges in jail Barrister and part-time judge Constance Briscoe was jailed for 16 months for perverting the course of justice in charges related to the Chris Huhne affair. She is far from the first judge to end up behind bars. — In 2009 Marcus Einfield, a former judge at Australia's federal court, was given three years for lying over a speeding offence: he said he had lent his car to a friend who in fact had been killed in a car accident three years earlier. — Just last week Kazakh judge Kuplash Otemisova was jailed for four-and-a-half years for 'making a wrong court ruling', by releasing a Russian businessman who had been convicted of ordering murder.