The Spectator

Friday

The Spectator

David Cameron’s delayed EU speech: extracts

From our UK edition

By the time the Prime Minister cancelled his Europe speech yesterday evening, extracts had already been briefed to journalists. A new date has yet to be announced, but here are the extracts that have been released: Britain should play an active part in Europe: 'I want to speak to you today with urgency and frankness about the European Union and how it must change – both to deliver prosperity and to retain the support of its peoples. 'I come here as British Prime Minister with a positive vision for the future of the European Union. A future in which Britain wants, and should want, to play a committed and active part.' Now is the time for change: 'Why raise fundamental questions about the future of Europe when Europe is already in the midst of a deep crisis?

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 January 2013

From our UK edition

Aid waste Sir: In Andrew Mitchell’s response to my article ‘The Great Aid Mystery’ (5 January), he asks ‘what about the 11 million children in school who wouldn’t be there’ if it weren’t for DFID’s aid efforts. It would be hard to come up with a more representative example of the dishonest marketing rhetoric that is the standard aid industry response to outside questioning. Not only is there the inevitable reference to children, there’s also a classic bogus statistic.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 17 January 2013

From our UK edition

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, brought forward his speech on new relations with the European Union from 22 January when it was realised that it was the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty between Germany and France. Britain went to war in Mali by sending two transport planes in support of the French invasion directed against Islamist groups. The rights of a British Airways employee, Nadia Eweida, had been violated by her being forbidden to wear a cross at work, the European Court of Human Rights ruled.

The Spectator

Just the tickets

From our UK edition

Kingsley Amis was never a fan of the Arts Council. Writing in this magazine almost 30 years ago, he described it as a ‘detestable and destructive body’ whose grants and bursaries ‘in effect pay producers, painters, writers and such in advance’. This, he wrote, ‘is a straight invitation to them to sod the public, whose ticket money they are no longer obliged to attract, and to seek the more immediate approval of their colleagues and friends instead.’ Thus state funding ends up strangling the very culture it purports to foster, leaving the country poorer artistically as well as financially.