The Spectator

Who cut more coal: Thatcher or Wilson?

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) 
issue 14 August 2021

Woolly thinking

There were protests in Whitehall to save Geronimo, an alpaca due to be put down after testing positive for tuberculosis. How many alpacas are there in Britain?

— The British Alpaca Society claims to have 1,500 members who between them own 45,000 alpacas.

— The society’s annual show can attract as many as 600 animals for display.

— The wool from the animal, a native of South America, was introduced to Britain in 1836 by Sir Titus Salt, the industrialist and founder of Saltaire, the model villagein West Yorkshire.

Cool reception

Some of the less-reported findings from the IPCC report on global warming:

— ‘In recent decades the number of deep extratropical cyclones has increased over the southern hemisphere while the number of deep cyclones has decreased in the northern hemisphere.’

— ‘Since the 1970s a worldwide weakening of surface wind has likely occurred over land, particularly marked in the northern hemisphere, with low confidence in a recent partial recovery since around 2010.

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