As the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben, observed this week, there is a bizarre dislocation between the government’s pronouncements on climate change and its attitude towards spending on flood defences. Only a month ago, David Cameron was at the Paris climate summit lending his weight to apocalyptic warnings of flood and
Home Thousands of houses were flooded in York, Leeds, Manchester and other parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, after weeks of repeated flooding in Cumberland and Westmorland. On the River Foss in York, a flood barrier was lifted to avoid even more houses being flooded by keeping it in position. Tim Peake, the British astronaut in
Disappointingly, the recent film about Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, does not include the thing about him which most struck me in Walter Isaacson’s biography: Jobs habitually parked in disabled parking bays. Naturally, this is something that I (in company with many drivers, I suspect) long to do whenever disabled spaces are the only available parking,
In Living with Difference, a think-tank report on the problems raised by a multi-faith UK, the chair Baroness Butler-Sloss says that the recommendations amount to a ‘new settlement for religion and belief in the UK’ and are aimed at providing space and a role in society for all citizens, ‘regardless of their beliefs or absence
In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment Allowance for businesses cut from £500,000 to £200,000. Deposit Guarantee Limit for savers — the sum which the government will refund to savers after a bank collapse — is cut from £85,000 to £75,000. Drink
From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 1 January 1916: The opening of a new year is a time for taking stock of our situation. When we look back upon the beliefs and predictions of a year ago, we have to admit that there have been many disappointments and that unforeseen things have happened; but war would
What Blair omitted to say Sir: Mr Blair’s latest in these pages, like his recent Foreign Affairs Committee appearance on Libya, papers over so much history that one hardly knows where to start (‘What I got right’, 12 December). His own Libyan history will do. We all know the ‘deal in the desert’, whereby Gaddafi
