Barlow 2
The Spectator
Thursday
Jeans
Rowing
Spectator letters: America as a genetic experiment, and a gypsy reply to Rod Liddle
The American experiment Sir: One can test Nicholas Wade’s hypothesis that social and political life is genetically determined (‘The genome of history’, 17 May) by constituting a nation along European lines, admitting immigrants from all over the world, and measuring the extent to which these immigrants assimilate to the dominant culture. That experiment is called the USA, and the evidence from that country suggests that within a generation or two these immigrants hold social opinions more like those of other Americans than natives of their ancestral countries. Cultural inheritance therefore outweighs genetic inheritance in the political sphere, and historians may rest easy.
A Romanian neighbour? Most people wouldn’t even notice
Parliamentary privilege Some facts and figures about the European Parliament, according to the parliament: — The parliament annually costs €3.10 per citizen in EU member states (compared with €7.30 for Westminster). — It received 1.4 million visitors over the past four years, with 790,400 visiting the Parliamentarium. And some facts from Single Seat, the campaign for the parliament to stop shuffling between Brussels and Strasbourg: — It costs an extra €180 million a year to have more than one seat. — The Strasbourg parliament building is empty 317 days a year. — Hotel prices in Strasbourg increase 150% when the parliament is in town. Raising the floor Ed Miliband has pledged to link the minimum wage to average earnings.
The slow death of Nato
The Cold War was won by 26 words contained within article five of the Treaty of Washington, which founded Nato in 1949: ‘The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’ There was no wriggling and no qualification. The message to Stalin was perfectly clear: you nibble at one inch of Western Europe and you won’t just get an ad hoc response from war-weary Europeans; you will have to face a nuclear-armed Uncle Sam. The last time Britain held a Nato summit, in 1990, the organisation was triumphant.
Portrait of the week | 22 May 2014
Home Demand for housing posed ‘the biggest risk to financial stability’ according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. House prices rose by 8 per cent in the year to the end of March, according to the Office for National Statistics, and in London the increase was 17 per cent. The annual rate of inflation rose to 1.8 per cent in April from 1.6 per cent in March, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index; it remained at 2.5 per cent as measured by the Retail Prices Index. The underlying annual profits of Marks & Spencer fell by 3.9 per cent to £623 million, putting them behind the £695 million reported by Next. The mummified body of an eight-stone baby mammoth, 42,000 years old, went on show at the Natural History Museum.
