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The Spectator
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Spectator letters: On wind turbines, Churchill’s only exam success, and the red-trousered mayor of Bristol
When the wind blows Sir: Clare Oxford’s piece (‘Gone with the wind turbines’, 12 April) is both timely and sad. Those who applaud the use of these infernal machines are prone to eulogise their efficiency by saying (in the same annoying, dumbed-down way in which commentators always compare the size of something with the number of football pitches it equates to — presumably on the basis that a normal person is unable to conceive of anything larger) that the number of machines to be erected ‘could provide power for x thousand homes’.
Portrait of the week | 16 April 2014
Home Nigel Evans, who had resigned as deputy speaker before being cleared of a bundle of rape and sexual assault charges against men, questioned the right of the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue cases that were ‘decades’ old and said that people should not have to spend their life savings defending themselves. Sajid Javid was appointed Culture Secretary, with additional responsibility for equalities, while Nicky Morgan was made women’s minister, with the right to sit in the cabinet when she is sent for.
Vladimir Putin knows what he stands for. Do we?
Possibly because his oratory is no match for his much-displayed pectoral muscles, the speeches of Vladimir Putin are seldom reported at length in the West. But as a means of understanding the manoeuvres in eastern Ukraine this week, there is no better starting point than the speech he made to the Duma when the Russian parliament annexed Crimea. Lest anyone thinks his words have been enriched by an over-imaginative reporter, the translation is provided by the Kremlin itself.
Runaway runners and other other sporting refugees
Done a runner Mami Konneh Lahun, a 24-year-old athlete from Sierra Leone, went missing after finishing as the 20th-placed woman in the London Marathon. She is not the first athlete to have done a runner. — In the 2002 Commonwealth Games, 20 of her compatriots failed to return home. — After the London Olympics, 21 athletes went missing, including seven from Cameroon and three from Sudan. — The entire Eritrean football team failed to go home after a fixture in Kenya in 2009. — But the gold medal for asylum-seeking goes to 40 Nigerians who went missing after travelling to Britain in a stated attempt to qualify for the Open Golf Championship. Royal visits The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited New Zealand.
Books and arts – 16 April 2014
