The Spectator

Tuesday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s response to Lady Dorrian’s judgment

From our UK edition

Last week, The Spectator went to the High Court in Edinburgh to seek clarification on the publication of Alex Salmond's written testimony to the Parliamentary Inquiry into how the Scottish Government handled complaints against him (nothing to do with the criminal trial). We published his evidence on our website in January as a public service.  By contrast, and to our surprise, the Inquiry decided that it was unable to consider this evidence, apparently due to a court order protecting the anonymity of complainers.  We welcome Lady Dorrian’s written judgment today which confirms that - as we always believed - the court had no intention of obstructing a legitimate parliamentary inquiry established to investigate government behaviour and hold it to account.

Thursday

The Spectator

Universal Credit and the future of the welfare state

From our UK edition

Amid the many failures of public policy during the Covid crisis, one success has gone largely unnoticed. The Universal Credit system coped with a huge uplift in applications without breaking down. In February last year 2.6 million households were signed up; six months later that had swelled to 4.6 million. Some 554,000 people made new claims in the first week of lockdown, ten times the normal levels. For a benefit which not so long ago was being damned for the poor execution of its rollout, it is remarkable that the system coped. Its unexpected success offers plenty of lessons for the future of the welfare state. The digitisation of the system, controversial at the time, enabled the service to be delivered to those in urgent need of help.

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Portrait of the week: A royal baby, Boohoo buyouts and France legalises lunch al desko

From our UK edition

Home On Sunday 7 February, as the week began, 11,465,210 people in the United Kingdom had received a first vaccination against Covid-19 and 510,057 a second. Those aged 70 or over were invited to book a vaccination online or by telephone if they had not received one. Illegal immigrants were advised to register with a GP without risking deportation. South Africa, possessing a million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, decided to suspend its use after a trial of 2,000 people (42 of whom developed Covid) seemed to indicate that it offered ‘minimal protection’ against mild and moderate cases; no one in the trial was old.

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Letters: How to repair the Church of England

From our UK edition

Save on bishops Sir: The Church of England is once again missing the point if its financial crisis will result in the closure of parish churches and redundancy of clergy (‘Holy relic’, 6 February). Radical action is required, but the focus should be elsewhere. A starting point would be to amalgamate the vast majority of dioceses. Why is East Anglia served by the C of E dioceses of Ely, Norwich, St Edmundsbury and part of Peterborough when the Roman Catholics manage more than adequately with a diocese for East Anglia? Time to unite and benefit from economies of scale. But it should go much further: halve the number of bishops, diocesan and suffragan, and axe some of the non-jobs with fancy names which seem to proliferate in and around the centre.

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How often do tempers flare at parish meetings?

From our UK edition

Temper, temper A Zoom video of a disruptive parish council meeting in Handforth, Cheshire, went viral. It is not the first such incident. — In December 2014 a fight broke out at a meeting of the allotments committee of Brierfcliffe parish council near Burnley, over a former parish councillor’s claim for a right to graze her sheep on council land. — In October 2015 police were called to a parish council meeting in Long Melford, Suffolk, after members of the public in attendance became an ‘angry mob’. — In November, police were called to a meeting at Hindolveston parish council in Norfolk following reports of verbal and physical abuse over a planning application.

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2490: Arrangement – solution

From our UK edition

Suggested by 30 (IKEBANA, or flower arranging), the unclued lights were all anagrams of flowers: 1A gardenia; 18 rose; 22 violet; 24 daisy; 39 lily; 45 iris; 47 orchid; 48 geranium; 8 aster; 12 freesia; 23 lupine; 25D primrose; 28 alyssum.

Thursday

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What were the GameStop investors actually buying?

From our UK edition

Best before The government plans to introduce labels on domestic appliances informing consumers how long they are likely to last. Which appliances have lasted the longest? — In 2017, Sydney and Rachel Saunders of Exeter, both in their eighties, were reported to be getting rid of appliances bought soon after their marriage in 1956 and still working. They included a Baby Belling cooker, bought for £19; a Servis washing machine, bought for £60; and a Burco dryer. — In 2013, a couple from Montgomery in New York state were reported still to be using a General Electric refrigerator which was made between 1929 and 1931. Flu away How many people took up the offer of a flu vaccine this winter compared with last?

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Letters: How to revive Britain’s orchestras

From our UK edition

Good conductors Sir: Yes, it is sad to see talents like Sir Simon Rattle and Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla leaving our shores (‘Rattled’, 30 January) and yes, the Brexit complications faced by British musicians are ludicrous. But both might be bearable if there were sufficient investment in grass-roots music here. At least then we could hope that the gap left by departing maestri would be quickly filled by homegrown talent. Unfortunately, the government continues to turn a blind eye to musical education, despite the many studies evidencing its benefits.

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Sturgeon and the impunity of the SNP

From our UK edition

Scottish politics tends to go through long bouts of single-party dominance. In the 19th century, the Liberals were in charge. After the war, Labour reigned unchallenged, which is why, in 1997, it drew up a devolution settlement on the assumption that Scotland would always be its fiefdom. But Scottish Labour then imploded. The Scottish National party is now the only game in town. Yet there are signs Nicola Sturgeon’s party is stumbling into the pitfalls that await all parties who spend too long in office. Incumbency eventually renders even the most alert and focused political practitioners complacent. Like Scottish Labour before it, the SNP has become arrogant, secretive and controlling. Parties are at their strongest when they can see the potential for their own defeat.

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Portrait of the week: Variants, vaccines and goodbye to Captain Sir Tom Moore

From our UK edition

Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits to take tests after the South African variant of coronavirus was found in these areas. Another mutation was found in the Kent variant. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 31 January, total UK deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 105,571, including 8,242 in the past week. Numbers in hospital fell. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was found to have a substantial effect on the spread of the virus. By Sunday 31 January, 8,977,329 first-dose vaccinations had been given, and 491,053 second doses. All elderly care-home residents were said by the government to have been offered a first vaccination.

Tuesday

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A statement from The Spectator

The American Spectator Foundation has complained that its trademark is being infringed by The Spectator in the United States. The Spectator is the oldest magazine in the world: founded in 1828 and read in America since at least the middle of the 19th century when, alone among influential British publications, it supported the North and the anti-slavery movement in the American Civil War. It has been sold in the US under that name continuously since that time. The American Spectator, previously called the Alternative, was founded in 1967, very much a publishing newcomer compared with The Spectator. It was not the first US publication to refer to The Spectator in its name. Indeed, an earlier journal, also called the American Spectator, was founded in 1932.

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Thursday

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Letters: Don’t overlook the Trumpisms

From our UK edition

Canterbury tales Sir: Having opened my copy of The Spectator upon arrival in the post, I read your article ‘Welby’s gatekeeper’ with interest (23 January). I was surprised and humbled to discover how much power and influence I have over the political engagement of the Archbishop. Let there be no doubt that the Archbishop sets his own agenda. More fundamentally and crucially, I was disappointed to see victims of abuse and wider issues relating to safeguarding being brought in to play in a politically focused piece about the workings of Lambeth Palace. It is a matter of public record that the Archbishop and his team are ready to meet with survivors and have done so regularly.

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Portrait of the week: Vaccine battles, illegal haircuts and Biden’s chat with Boris

From our UK edition

Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the European Union health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, that EU companies would have to ‘provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries’. This came after AstraZeneca was said to be able to deliver by the end of March only 31 million of 80 million doses ordered by the EU. The company, with a factory in England, had undertaken to deliver two million doses a week to the UK. Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for vaccination, said that supplies were ‘tight’ but the mid-February target of 15 million vaccinations would be met. ‘We need to work together rather than use policies of vaccine nationalism,’ he said.

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Are we returning to ‘normalcy’ or ‘normality’?

From our UK edition

New normal Why have so many people started saying ‘normalcy’ rather than ‘normality’? — Normalcy has been traced back to 1857 when it was used in geometry to denote a state where lines were perpendicular to each other. It was rarely used outside mathematics until 1920, when the then US presidential candidate Warren Harding made a speech in Boston referring to a ‘return to normalcy’ following the Great War. He said: ‘America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy.’ He was ridiculed for what was regarded by many as a malapropism. Although ‘normalcy’ is now in common use in the US, it was still the lesser-used word at the last count.

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Quarantine and the freedom paradox

From our UK edition

Who would have thought, this time last year, that the British government would be planning to detain British nationals at the airport and keep them under guard in a hotel room for a ten-day quarantine? It’s quite a departure for a country whose values have always been defined by the defence of liberty. But we’re living in exceptional times, with the Covid death count at more than 100,000 — a bigger hit, as a proportion of population, than almost anywhere else in the world. This requires deep reflection about the mistakes made and the changes needed. When the sick are still dying — at a rate of more than 1,000 a day — it’s hard to have a calm political discussion about what went wrong and how to get it right now.

Thursday

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Letters: The Church of England’s Covid shame

From our UK edition

Paradise lost Sir: After reading Jonathan Beswick (‘Critical mass’, 16 January) I am writing to express the shame I feel as a lifetime member of the Church of England at our Church’s attitude to this pandemic. Here was the greatest opportunity in 70 years to demonstrate care for our fellow people, to advertise our faith and love and to keep the Church in the public eye. I hoped that there would be thousands of Church members flocking to help the lonely and the isolated. But I find my local church locked. This was the chance for the Church to show commitment and sacrifice for the good of the community, to cast aside timidity and get on with normal life, as does the postman, the milkman, the parcel delivery brigade, the health service and many others.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Vaccination, inauguration and a food box denunciation

From our UK edition

Home The government undertook to offer a first dose of vaccine to the adult population of the UK by September. More than four million had now been vaccinated. The campaign was on target to vaccinate 15 million by mid-February. A ten-day trial would see some hospitals open for vaccinations 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Racecourses, sports arenas and even cathedrals such as Salisbury, Lichfield and Blackburn became vaccination centres. St Paul’s Cathedral in London suspended public worship because of the danger of coronavirus, as did more than half of Church of England churches. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 17 January, total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 88,590, including 7,722 in the past week.