The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Wind and bias, and the Scots at war

From our UK edition

Caution over wind Sir: While the broadcast media have assailed their audiences with simplistic yet blanket coverage of the floods crisis, it behoves Christopher Booker to provide a long overdue critical perspective of the Environmental Agency (‘Sunk!’, 15 February). The two main tenets of his article have been ignored by most, if not all, other journalists. With something approaching delicious irony we are then treated in the same issue to a self-serving missive from the Renewables UK boxwallah Jennifer Weber (Letters, 15 February).

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 20 February 2014

From our UK edition

Home It would be ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible’ for an independent Scotland to join the European Union, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said on British television. Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said that if an independent Scotland was not allowed to use the pound, it would cost the rest of the United Kingdom £500 million in transaction costs per year, and Scotland would refuse its share of the national debt. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warned that uncertainty produced by a referendum on EU membership would mean that businesses held off from making investment. The Unite union called off a strike at the Faslane and Coulport naval bases in the Clyde.

Thursday

The Spectator

Britain needs small government, not weak government. That means strong flood defences

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_February_2014_v4.mp3" title="Christopher Booker discusses the failures behind the floods" startat=61] Listen [/audioplayer]There is nothing inevitable about the by now familiar sight of residents being towed away from flooded homes, of shops and businesses submerged, and all the misery and economic turmoil which follows. A short hop across the North Sea is a country which has been having much the same weather as we have recently and has even more low-lying land vulnerable to flooding. Yet there has been a remarkable lack of footage of Dutch homeowners being forced to gather their possessions and flee their homes. Why?