Spectator

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Situations vacant

I hope CoffeeHousers will forgive me for using the blog to advertise jobs, but we have some vacancies: Production Manager, Special Assistant to the Chairman and Researcher. Applications to editor@spectator.co.uk, saying in the heading which job you are interested in (update: applications for the researcher job are now closed. Everyone should have been sent details; email us if you haven’t been). Here are the jobs: 1. Researcher, who knows how to work Excel and has an inexhaustible capacity for digging and hard work in general. This is a research job, not a journalistic job, and may suit someone who’d otherwise be looking for work in a think tank. The two most important

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Introducing our first ebook: Margaret Thatcher in The Spectator 1975-1990

No publication understood the Thatcher project better than The Spectator. We backed her for the leadership in 1975 when no other national publication would. We understood her opportunities, foibles and genius when many of our rivals were baffled by this coarse-sounding lady and her popular appeal. We have put together 21 essays from the period into our first-ever ebook: Margaret Thatcher in The Spectator 1975 – 1990. It’s available today on the Kindle, for just 99p. It begins with Patrick Cosgrave advocating Thatcher as Tory leader, then gives a six-month and one-year progress report. Ferdinand Mount describes the uneasiness that followed the 1979 triumph. Then, as now, The Spectator was

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The renewal of the class system

Fun can be had by playing with the BBC’s new class calculator. The calculator, which was designed with the help of several eminent sociologists, replaces the 3 classes with seven stratifications, drawing on social criteria (such as taste, accent and hobbies) as well as more tradition measurements (such income group and upbringing) to determine membership. Toby Young writes about the demise of the three classes in tomorrow’s magazine. Here is a preview of what he has to say: ‘One advantage of moving beyond the socio-economic definition of class is that you end up with a less inflammatory portrait of modern Britain. Yes, the social elite are quite numerous, but it’s better

Tuesday

Camilla Swift

Introducing Spectator Play: Audio and video for what we’ve reviewed this week

Did you catch Dr Who over the weekend? Clarissa Tan, who wrote our latest TV column, was surprised that the Dr had to contend with ‘something in the wi-fi’. How’s wi-fi for a thoroughly modern enemy? Here’s the prequel to this week’s episode, The Bells of Saint John: Clarissa also watched Rachel Johnson learning to be a Lady. It might sound like a bit of a drag, but ‘what could have turned out to be a rather prissy affair turns out to be a fun watch’. Johnson tries to master riding side-saddle, and ponders why etiquette lessons are becoming more and more popular. Here’s Johnson describing what makes a 21st

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Eric Hobsbawm: a life-long apologist for the Soviet Union

In last week’s Spectator, Sam Leith reviewed Eric Hobsawm’s Fractured Times. Our ex-political editor and drink critic Bruce Anderson thinks Leith has missed a basic point about Hobsbawm’s career. Here is Anderson’s riposte in full: In his review of Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘Fractured Times’ (Spectator, 23 March). Sam Leith misses the basic point: the basic treason. Throughout his career, Professor Hobsbawm was an apologist for the Soviet Union. This was forgivable in the 1930s, During that desperate decade, many thoughtful people despaired of liberal democracy and believed that they had found solace in Moscow. But after 1945, as the evidence mounted, Eric the Red kept the faith. Towards the end of his life, he said

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Quietly, Cameron is preparing for his next big fight: the battle for Portsmouth

From tomorrow’s Spectator. Downing Street aides nervously run through the symptoms: a flat economy, poor press, leadership mutterings. Then they say, ‘It’s just mid-term blues, isn’t it?’ A second later, they add nervously, ‘It’s nothing more serious than that, is it?’ The truth is, nobody can be certain. There’s no reliable way of distinguishing mid-term blues from something politically fatal. Part of the problem is that few Tories have anything to compare their current mood with. After 13 years in opposition, only a handful of them have been in government before, let alone in the mid-term doldrums. When I put this argument to one veteran of the Thatcher years, he

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: the police have offered to HELP Trenton Oldfield protest at the 2013 Boat Race.

Trenton Oldfield, the Australian who was fished out of the Thames last year when disrupting the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, is now out of prison and has written a piece for tomorrow’s Spectator about his experiences. In it he reveals that the Metropolitan Police have offered to help him protest at the 159th Boat Race taking place this weekend. This is what he has to say: ‘Throughout the week, via lawyers, I have received some elegantly crafted emails from Scotland Yard’s Liaison Gateway Team (‘a small unit of officers dedicated to facilitating peaceful protest’). They ask how they can help me organise a protest at the university boat race this year.

Friday

The Spectator

Budget 2013: The Spectator briefing

On Wednesday evening, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth presented The Spectator’s Budget Briefing at the Savoy Hotel. Here is the handout that accompanied their presentation: Here’s the presentation with accompanying audio (click here to view full screen):

Thursday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Debate: Britain’s future lies outside the EU (with audio)

It was a clash of the Euro titans at our latest sell-out Spectator debate: “Britain’s future lies outside the EU”. Nigel Farage led the team for the motion and the former president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, led the opposition – with Andrew Neil in the chair. Patrick Minford and James Delingpole supported team Farage, while Steve Richards and Richard Ottaway MP spoke for the EU. And there was all to play for.  On the way into the debate, the vote was: For: 196     Against: 105     Undecided:  99 After the speeches – and Q&A – there were no more undecideds and the votes fell as follows:- For: 247     Against: 123      Everyone came

Thursday

Steerpike

Footsie at the FT

Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: How much would you stump up for the Economist? Most of us would draw the line at a fiver, but I’m told that Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York, is drawing the line at £300 million. Bloomberg is busy relocating to London and he’s poised to snap up the Financial Times later this year. But the Pink ’Un comes with a 50 per cent share in the Economist. And the small print conceals a pesky restrictive covenant that prevents the owner from replacing the editor. This is proving a drag for Bloomberg, who admires the Economist’s boss, John Micklethwait, but who sees little

Monday

Steerpike

Looking after Bruce Willis

Mr Steepike recommends this snippet about everyone’s favourite ageing action hero from Olivia Cole’s Hollywood Notebook in this week’s issue of the magazine: ‘To anyone wearing heels after a couple of cocktails, Soho House’s marble staircase is a potential death trap. And it’s risky even if you’re not in heels, to judge by the behaviour of Bruce Willis’s entourage. In the early hours, spotting the Talent holding court a couple of steps up, an assistant screamed, ‘Get him off the stairs! Get him off the stairs!’ They must need sedation when is called upon to do actual stunts.’ Subscribers, you can read the rest of the column here. Non-subscribers, you

Friday

Steerpike

The Adventures of Ed

Steerpike is back in this week’s edition of The Spectator. Here is a sneak preview, as ever: ‘Ed Miliband, meeting Denmark’s prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, gobbled up his Danish pastry double-quick so that he could immortalise their interview on Twitter. ‘Discussed growth, living standards and how to make Europe work for its people,’ he told his followers. The technical term, ‘people’, here refers to beneficiaries of the gargantuan EU bureaucracy like Glenys and Neil Kinnock who, by an apt coincidence, are the parents-in-law of Ms Thorning-Schmidt. Mr Miliband then sprinted off to a top-level seminar on innovation. This prompted another newsflash. ‘Hearing about Laila Ohlgren who invented the call button

Friday

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Leveson debate special

The Spectator hosted a sell out debate on Thursday night on the motion ‘Leveson is a fundamental threat to the free press’, and you can now hear what happened. As Fraser reported yesterday, it was a lively affair, with the motion carried albeit with a significant swing to those speaking against. Although the quality is not as good as we had hoped, you should still be able to follow what happened.  You can hear the individual speakers at: 2:30 – Richard Littlejohn (for) 11:25 – Chris Bryant (against) 23:26 – Guido Fawkes (for) 32:21 – Max Mosley (against) 40:44 – John Whittingdale (for) 51:50 – Evan Harris (against) 1:05:13 – Questions

Thursday

Steerpike

Alan Rusbridger’s new playmate

Steerpike is back in this week’s magazine. As ever, here is your preview: ‘While losses mount at the Guardian, the editor, Alan Rusbridger, has fallen in love. He keeps ordering the sub-editors to find space for articles about his new Fazioli piano. Cheeky responses have appeared on the website. ‘We always wondered how you filled your days and how you spent your fortune,’ wrote one indignant hack. ‘Now we know.’ Faziolis cost at least £50,000 and a friend at the Wigmore Hall tells me professionals won’t go near them. ‘They’re for loaded amateurs who think a pricy instrument will make up for clumsy fingerwork.’ Rusbridger recalls an early tryst with

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The Spectator: the case for subscribing

For three months now, we have been operating without a paywall throughout the website. It has, as we had hoped, brought thousands more people to The Spectator who have discovered the most entertaining and best-written magazine in the English language. From now, we’re offering a limited number of free magazine pieces per month and asking those who want more to join us and subscribe – from £1 a week. We’re pretty confident that, if you read five of our pieces, you’ll be hooked. Our blogs will remain free, and I know not all CoffeeHousers are fans of the concept of paid content but it’s working — for us at least.

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

Can you help Andrew Mitchell?

Andrew Mitchell, formerly of DFID, urgently needs Coffee Housers’ help. It seems he won’t believe DFID wastes money, unless he sees actual, concrete examples. Last week, in the magazine, we ran a foreign aid special in which Jonathan Foreman and Justin Shaw  showed us how and why we waste so much on ineffectual aid. In principle of course aid is a wonderful idea, but it can also be a blight: propping up dictators and entrenching corruption in the countries that are struggling most. We identified two major concerns: A lack of DFID due diligence The daft ring-fence around aid ­ 0.7% of GDP ­ which means the DFID has its

Steerpike Steerpike

The rumble of the Thunderer

Steerpike is back in this week’s Spectator, and here’s a little taster from Wapping: James Harding, the ousted Times editor, left with a £1.3 million payoff in his pocket and the praise of Fleet Street ringing in his ears. But why did he go? A chap who polishes the executives’ shoes at News International tells me that just before the hacking scandal blew up, Rupert Murdoch was planning major changes at the Times. He’d decided to pull the newspaper out of the Press Complaints Commission, just as Richard Desmond had done with the Express. Then he’d pull it out of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which he felt didn’t reflect

Monday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s books of 2012, pt 3

2012 is done. Here is the final selection (published in the magazine last month)  of the Spectator’s best books of the year. Happy 2013. Susan Hill Spitalfields Life by The Gentle Author (Saltyard Books, £20). The writer started a daily blog about his life in Spitalfields — people, jobs, buildings, street life, monuments. A whole piece of London is here, ghosts of Spitalfields’ past haunting the vibrant present. It is unlike any other book. Two excellent thrillers by two rising stars. Safe House by Chris Ewan (Faber, £14.99) is set on an Isle of Man as you never imagined it and has one of the best new heroines for a

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s books of 2012, pt 2

2012 is very nearly finished. Here is a selection (published in the magazine last month) of the Spectator’s best books of the year. Matthew Parris There’s been a fad for publishing ‘biographies’ of entities that are not human beings: everything from longitude to the mosquito, and the format can prove forced. But Robert Shepherd’s Westminster, A Biography: From Earliest Times to the Present (Bloomsbury, £20) chooses a subject with a beating heart. Westminster has developed a most distinct personality since its birth as a swampy Bronze Age island, and Shepherd explains, describes and charts it with great scholarship, of course, but with a smile and a quizzical eyebrow. I love

Thursday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s books of 2012, pt 1

2012 is drawing to a close. Here is a selection (published in the magazine last month)  of the Spectator’s best books of the year. A.N.Wilson Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie (Bloomsbury, £14.99). At last, an Anglican Father Brown. Runcie has sensibly set his detective stories in the 1950s, before the boring era when DNA and science spoilt the poetry of crime investigation. Canon Chambers, a self-effacing, clever clergyman with a taste for pubs and shove-halfpenny, and an agonised capacity to fall in love with women, is surely a bit as Archbishop Runcie must have been when he came out of the Guards and took orders?