Earlier today the Chancellor gave a speech on the economy where he set up a choice for politicians: cut back on welfare, or hurt ‘hard working families’ with tax rises and cuts to services like the NHS.
Simon Hoggart, one of the Spectator's best-loved columnists, died yesterday after fighting pancreatic cancer for over three years. He began writing for the magazine in the mid-nineties, and started the column for which he was most well known in The Spectator – the Wine Club – in 2001. His last column was printed in our Christmas issue. Here are some of his contributions from our archive: Diary, 19 April 1996 'I'm just back from a week in France. Naturally I took a case of non-French wine over on the ferry so as to have something decent to drink. The French are terrifically complacent about their wine, believing that the worst they produce is better than the best from anywhere else.
In one sense David Cameron is lucky that the Conservatives do not enter 2014 with a lead in the polls. If they did, the Prime Minister would be under pressure for stitching up the Fixed Term Parliaments Act with Nick Clegg, thereby denying himself the chance of doing what all strong governments have done over the past 35 years, with unfailing success: going to the country after four years. Barring a vote of no confidence, we already know the date of the next election: 7 May 2015. With the exception of John Major in 1992, no Prime Minister who waited five years has won re-election since Clement Attlee in 1950 — and he only clung to power with a miserable five-seat majority.
Centuries of conflict 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the war which was supposed to end all wars. Has the toll of war since 1918 been lesser or greater than in the century before 1914? 1815-1914 saw the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars (5m deaths), the Zulu Wars (2m) and the US Civil War (750,000). In China, the Taiping Revolution of the 1860s cost an estimated 60m lives and the Dungan Revolution of the 1860s and 1870s 10m. These, along with the Mexican Revolution (1m) and the Paraguayan War (1m) total about 80m. 1918–2013 Mid-estimate for second world war death toll: 55m. A further 7m died in the Russian Revolution. After that the deadliest was the relatively little-known Congo War between 1998 and 2003 which cost 3.5m lives.
In defence of super-heads Sir: I would like to defend head teachers all over the country from the assertions made in Mary Dejevsky’s article (‘Super-heads will roll’, 7 December). The international Pisa studies — which proved how urgently the English education system needs to improve — show that greater autonomy for head teachers within proper accountability structures produces better results for children. That is why this government’s reforms have been designed to transfer powers to heads, away from council control. We’ve balanced this increased autonomy with sharper, stronger accountability.
