The Spectator

Monday

The Spectator

The View from 22 special — Fuel Wars: how to get the best deal for the consumers

From our UK edition

In association in Centrica How can consumers ensure they are receiving the best possible deal for their energy bills? In this special View from 22 podcast, the Spectator's political editor James Forsyth discusses issues within in the energy market and some potential solutions for getting the lowest possible energy bills. Is shale gas the answer? Do green subsidies need to be cut? And is the government doing enough to help the consumer? Joining the panel are the Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP, Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden and member of the Select Committee on Climate Change, Peter Moorey, Principal Advocate for Which? Consumer Review services and Ian Peters, the Managing Director of British Gas.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 11 April 2013

From our UK edition

Health tourists must pay Sir: The extent of the use made by non-entitled patients from abroad (‘International Health Service’, 6 April) should come as no surprise. This increasing stream of information demonstrating the volume and variation will cause even louder gasps and shock. The NHS is the standard-bearer of the politics of equality and, like all great collective institutions of the left, however altruistic, is fundamentally corrupt. The corruption is so insidious that only those inside gain insight after the collapse. In the health service there are often concealed two or more levels of care with varying degrees of competence.

The Spectator

Mrs T’s unfinished business

From our UK edition

Soon after Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative party she came for lunch at The Spectator and our then proprietor, Henry Keswick, wanted to offer his congratulations — and his advice. It was time to crush the trades unions, he told her. ‘Mr Keswick,’ she replied. ‘You have spent the past 14 years in Hong Kong, where such things may be doable. I have spent them in Britain, where things are very different.’ She was advocating a simple principle: practicality comes before ideology. The only point in fighting battles is to win them. Her victories were so decisive and spectacular that it is possible — as we have seen in the last few days — to dwell almost entirely on them (and those who didn’t like them).