Humpty
The Spectator
Thursday
Google is part of the free press. So hands off, Prime Minister
It is not quite clear what Google did to David Cameron, but the Prime Minister seems to be exacting some sort of revenge. First, he wanted them to keep records of their customers’ emails just in case his officials wanted to snoop later. Now he wants the British government to be the first in the free world to censor internet search results. The causes he invokes are undoubtedly popular ones: confronting terrorists, for example, and thwarting pornographers. But it is precisely in moments of populist outrage that liberties are sacrificed — and only later do we realise what we have lost. The digital age is bewildering for governments, especially those not constrained by a constitution. How to respond to the explosion of ways in which citizens can express themselves?
Letters: The EU diplomats hit back at Norman Lamont
EU diplomacy Sir: Lord Lamont’s article ‘The EU’s scandalous new army of overpaid diplomats’ (Politics, 20 July) revisits his oft-repeated views on the European Union. It also shows scant regard for the facts and for the reality of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. The European External Action Service (EEAS) was created by unanimous agreement of all EU governments to project and implement EU policies in the areas covered in the EU Treaties, including trade, aid and the environment, which member states have decided are better done collectively. It has made EU external policy-making more streamlined and cohesive. It in no way duplicates the work of national diplomacies.
Portrait of the week | 25 July 2013
Home The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a boy, weighing 8lb 6oz, an heir to the crown, third in line to the throne. Great public excitement was expressed by taking photographs of an official notice of the birth posted on a gilt easel inside the railings of Buckingham Palace. Bells rang and gun salutes were fired. Mel Smith, the comedian, died, aged 60. Thunderstorms cut off power and disrupted train services after a fortnight of hot weather reached temperatures of 33.5˚C in London, the highest since 2006. Many-fruited beardless moss, found in only four locations in the world, may have disappeared from two places in Cornwall.
Books and arts – 25 July 2013
Friday
The week in books | 19 July 2013
The best way to weather the heat wave is to head for the shade with a copy of the new issue of the Spectator, in which you will you find some diverting book reviews to while away an hour or two. Here is a selection: Philip Hensher treads carefully around Winston Churchill’s imperialism, the subject of Lawrence James’ Churchill and Empire: Portrait of an Imperialist. Hensher writes: ‘It is important for historians to make an effort to understand individuals by the standards of their own day, and not ours. There is a dismal school that finds it rewarding to debate whether Napoleon was homophobic or not, but for the most part we have to try to understand where a figure’s standards of judgment and thought stood in relation to the spectrum of opinion of his own day.
