Charity 3
The Spectator
Thursday
Smoking 5
Valentines
Floods of incompetence – why Chris Smith should resign from the Environment Agency
[audioplayer src='http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_6_February_2014_v4.mp3' title='Fraser Nelson discusses the Environment Agency:' startat=1350] Listen [/audioplayer]When Prince Charles arrived in Somerset to meet some of those caught up in the disaster which in five weeks has drowned 50 square miles of that county in floodwater, a reporter asked him whether he blamed the Environment Agency. Judiciously, he replied, ‘You may well think that — I couldn’t possibly comment.’ Later, having spoken to several of those intimately involved in this crisis, he hinted rather more plainly at his own view by saying, ‘The tragedy is that nothing happened for so long.
Spectator letters: Bernard Jenkin and the cabbies fight back, rising school fees, Nigel Lawson on aid
Private pain Sir: A line in Alec Marsh’s article (‘Britain’s one-child policy’, 1 February) caught my eye; that school fees have ‘almost doubled in the past decade’. I recently found an 1823 bill for an ancestor’s attendance at dame school (broadly equivalent to a prep school) that was approximately £3 a term for full boarding. In the 1970s, seven generations later, my own prep school fees were just over £300 a term. Whilst this represents, in nominal terms, a little more than a doubling every generation; in real terms the growth in school fees over the 150 years averages less than 10 per cent a generation.
Barometer: When Britain was good at the Winter Olympics
Our first winter Hopes will not be high for a big haul of British medals in Sochi, but we have not always been Cinderellas at winter sports. In the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix in 1924 Britain sent 44 competitors, more than any other country, and ended up sixth in the medals, above the host nation, France. — There were bronze medals for the men’s ice hockey team and the less-than-elegantly named Ethel Muckelt. The men’s four/five-man bobsleigh won a silver. The men’s curling team won gold — although the medals were not presented until 2006 after a campaign by Scottish newspapers. — One of the curling team, Major D.G. Astley, achieved a unique honour.
Portrait of the week: water, water, everywhere
Home The Somerset Levels continued to wallow in floods. The Environment Agency was widely blamed for not having dredged channels, and for putting the welfare of water voles before flood prevention. Its chairman, Lord Smith of Finsbury, said there were ‘tricky issues of policy and priority: town or country, front rooms or farmland?’ The Prince of Wales visited the area. At the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford, 5.78 inches of rain fell in January, the most since its records began in 1767. Cuadrilla said it would drill and frack for shale gas at Roseacre Wood and Little Plumpton in Lancashire. Two men found 300 medieval silver coins in a field near Kirkcudbright. Lloyds Banking Group set aside another £1.
Books and Arts – 6 February 2014
Monday
Michael Gove’s speech on improving schools – full text and audio
This morning Michael Gove gave a speech at the London Academy of Excellence on improving ‘bog standard’ state schools.
