The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 24 October 2013

Home The government agreed a guaranteed price for electricity that persuaded a consortium led by the French-owned EDF Energy and including Chinese investors to agree to build the Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset. The strike price agreed was £92.50 per megawatt hour (compared with a current wholesale price of £45). Following an energy price rise by SSE of 8.2 per cent, British Gas said it was to raise prices by 9.2 per cent and NPower by 10.4 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that this was ‘extremely disappointing news’. Sir John Major, a former prime minister, helpfully suggested a windfall tax on energy profits. The Daily Mirror suggested that Mr Cameron was advising people to wear jumpers.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Transcript: John Major calls for an emergency tax on energy companies

Sir John Major told a Westminster lunch this afternoon that the government should impose an emergency tax upon the energy companies to help families keep warm this winter. Here is a transcript of what the former Conservative Prime Minister said: I think when Ed Miliband made his suggestions about energy some weeks ago, I think his heart was in the right place but his head had gone walkabout. But he did touch on an issue that's very important. The private sector is something the Conservative party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it's entirely right to make changes and put it right. Governments should exist to protect people, not institutions, and I very strongly agree with what the Archbishop of Canterbury had to say just the other day.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 October 2013

A fat lot of good Sir: Max Pemberton is right that obesity is a terrible problem in western society (‘The battle of the bulge’, 12 October). But it is not helped by doctors. He seems to think that eating fat makes you fat: ‘While people back then were slimmer, they ate fattier foods.’ He then appears surprised that despite ‘eating better now’ and having access to more gyms and ‘working out more’ (which is arguable), we are not as slim as our predecessors. The plague of obesity seems to have started about 40 years ago, when scientists, funded by margarine manufacturers, came up with the brilliant wheeze that eating animal fat makes you fat and causes heart attacks.

The Spectator

Should ‘Union Jack’ just be used at sea?

Union dispute Pedants suffered a blow as the chief vexillologist of the Flag Institute declared that the Union Jack and Union Flag are interchangeable terms, the latter being just as correct on land as it is at sea. Here are both sides of the argument: evidence for ‘union jack’ being correct only at sea — A ‘jack’ is an old term for the bow flag of a vessel, and was in use before the Union Jack came into being. — A proclamation by King Charles I in 1634 referred only to the ‘Union Flag’. — The royal proclamation on 1801 which added the cross of St Patrick also used only the term ‘Union Flag’.

The Spectator

Global race? Lack of air routes means we’re already on the slow boat to China

Trade missions are almost comically pointless nowadays, as George Osborne’s visit demonstrated this week in Beijing. He is right that there are serious problems in our trade relations with China — an emerging economic superpower that buys more from Switzerland than it does from Britain. In fact, we export depressingly little to any major emerging market. It’s a matter of real concern — but flying off to China won’t fix it. There’s no evidence that trade missions make a blind bit of difference. When Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China in 1972, it did represent an economic breakthrough. It was far harder, back then, for companies to break into well-protected markets — especially if trade was curtailed for political reasons.

The Spectator

The week: Property price record; Lampedusa drownings; ‘basically’ banned

Home Shares in Royal Mail, floated on the stock market at 330p, began trading at 475p. SSE, the energy supplier, raised prices by 8.2 per cent, and other suppliers were expected to follow suit. Ofwat, the water regulator, said it would block Thames Water’s request to increase bills by up to 8 per cent next year. The rate of inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, remained at 2.7 per cent, and, as measured by the Retail Prices Index fell from 3.3 to 3.2 per cent. The average price of a property in the United Kingdom rose to a record £247,000. Unemployment fell to 2.49 million, and those with work rose to a record 29.87 million. Eleanor Catton, aged 28, won the Booker prize with The Luminaries.