All too often, the Prime Minister recently lamented, Britain’s public servants are happy languishing in the ‘tepid bath of managed decline’. There is, however, one area in which Britain’s public servants are dynamic, innovative and world–leading: at spaffing gazillions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on wasteful projects which are variously inane, insane and indefensible. The
I am delighted that The Spectator is launching a campaign to highlight the grotesque levels of financial waste in government. Of course public sectors worldwide have always defaulted towards profligacy – but we are in different territory now. Our GDP per capita is declining: through immigration, the population is growing faster than the real economy
Cape Town How damaging will South Africa’s Expropriation Act be? The legislation, which allows the state to seize private property without compensation, was signed late last month by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The act is consistent with the Marxist ideology of the South African Communist party, an ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). It’s
At the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, where ghosts of British nabobs look out over the racecourse, my neuroscientist wife spoke to an audience of businessmen in support of Robin Sengupta, a pioneering Newcastle neurosurgeon. He has founded a world-leading Institute of Neurosciences in Kolkata where richer patients subsidise poorer ones. After a morning meeting doctors
Working at The Spectator brings you into contact with intriguing people. One who stands out is John R. Bradley. He started writing for this magazine in 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring, having accurately predicted the Egyptian uprising three years earlier in his 2008 book Inside Egypt: The Road to Revolution in the
It’s a summer’s day in Suffolk, some time in 1992. My best friend Rebecca and I are both 14 and lying on our backs in a field. We have a packet of ten Silk Cut between us, and we are practising blowing smoke rings that will make us irresistible to boys. Everyone we fancy smokes:
Donald Trump told reporters this week that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to free some of the Israeli hostages in Gaza. But, he went on, ‘they’ll never give it to me’. Trump’s chances of putting on white tie and tails in Oslo have receded to a distant speck with his plan to
A few weeks ago, a couple of men with ladders started work on a former bridal boutique at the end of my road. I’ve no idea how old the building is. Its pitched roof and intricate gable and the sort of pattern brickwork no one seems to bother with these days suggest it’s Victorian, but
If something can be squeezed into a jar with brine, Polish grandmas will do it. Walk into the kitchen of the average babcia and you’ll see jars lining the shelves filled with mysterious experiments, as if in an old-fashioned Slavic science lab. Here are pickled cucumbers, pickled peppers, pickled mushrooms, pickled cabbage and pickled beetroot.
