The Spectator

Monday

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 27 February 2012

...here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson says that the government should raise the income tax threshhold and let youth prevail. James Forsyth explains why Nick Clegg wouldn't be averse to a Boris victory in May, and details the two types of Tory modernisation. Peter Hoskin watches David Willetts try to dampen the flames around Les Ebdon, and reports on the ruckus over Lords reform. Rod Liddle recommends the ‘the best bit of writing I’ve seen for a bit’ (and it's from The Spectator, natch). Alex Massie has some Saturday Morning Country for your listening pleasure. The Spectator Book Blog features Alistair Darling as its latest Bookbencher.

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 25 February 2012

Forfeiting the VCSir: Although Charles Moore (Notes, 18 February) is correct to say (quoting Colonel Tim Collins) that a holder of the Victoria Cross cannot be stripped of it whatever subsequent disgrace he suffers, he could have added that this is so only thanks to royal intervention. Early in the last century, some functionary proposed, in a characteristic display of official spite, that VCs should lose the decoration if they were convicted of a serious offence. This came to the attention of King George V, whose sense of decency, just as characteristically, was outraged. As he protested, the VC was awarded for supreme gallantry, which nothing could subsequently efface.

The Spectator

Barometer | 25 February 2012

Animals in courtA group of US scientists has demanded that a Declaration of Cetacean Rights be incorporated into law. There have been animal welfare laws since at least 1635, when an Irish statute prohibited pulling wool off a live sheep. But no country has yet gone as far as to grant animals rights, in spite of several legal challenges. — A US court threw out a case in 2011 brought by pressure group Peta, which argued five orcas were illegally enslaved. — In 2009 the Israeli Knesset rejected an attempt by an MP to rename an Animal Welfare Bill the Animal Rights Bill. — The Spanish parliament’s environment committee recommended in 2008 that primates be granted limited rights, but the suggestion has not been taken up.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 25 February 2012

HomeImmigration officials did not check the details of 500,000 people entering Britain by Eurostar trains, and left unread the biometric chip in passports of people entering the United Kingdom on 14,812 occasions in the first half of 2011, according to a report by John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, told Parliament that the UK Border Agency would be split in two, with the UK Border Force becoming a separate law-enforcement body.