Camilla Swift is the supplements editor of The Spectator.
We are famously a nation of animal lovers, so I suppose it’s not too surprising that one in two British households owning some form of pet. There are an estimated £20 million pets in the UK, so pet-related industries are not a bad area to be involved in. (This number, by the way, doesn’t include
We hear it all the time that millennials are too busy spending to bother saving. Those of us who live in expensive cities like London, spend so much on rent that there’s no hope of ever being able to afford a house of our own. So why bother saving at all? Much better to spend
Almost every day a new email pops into my inbox from the website ‘change.org’. One day they’ll be asking me to sign a petition to free Nazanin Ratcliffe, the next to lower the age for bowel cancer screening. Once you sign one, the requests keep coming. But the other day, one in particular caught my
On Friday, RBS announced plans to close 259 of its bank branches. That’s a quarter of its outposts. 62 of the closures are Royal Bank of Scotland branches, while the other 197 are NatWest. This isn’t the only announcement of bank closures in the past couple of days, either. Lloyds are also closing 49 branches,
So, Princess Meghan it will be. No, I know that won’t be her name officially. But we all know that whatever Meghan Markle’s official title ends up being (right now, it seems most like she’ll become the Duchess of Sussex), ‘Princess Meghan’ will be her unofficial title in the press. The news of Harry and
You’re probably sick of hearing that Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis – we’ve all heard it said so many times. Over the last few months, Theresa May has been focusing on the topic; claiming that our housing market is ‘broken’, promising to take ‘personal charge’ of the problem. ‘We must get
Do you know what your partner earns? And if you don’t, is that a problem? If it’s just a matter of whether or not you go Dutch on the next date, then perhaps it’s not all that important. But when it comes to joint bank accounts, or a joint mortgage, then that becomes a whole
A few weeks ago, Mike Fotis wrote of the depressing future of UK banking for those living in rural areas, or who are unable to use technology. Understandably – and for most customers, sensibly – many banks are focused on improving their online services and apps. The problem is that as they do this, bank
It’s interesting that everyone is making such a fuss about this ‘dangerous wild lynx’ that has escaped from a Welsh animal park. Various reports have described it as ‘fearsome’ warning that it ‘could eat pets’ and be ‘aggressive if cornered’. The park itself – Borth Wild Animal Kingdom in Ceredigion – says that: ‘There have
Scotland’s whisky industry is the UK’s single largest food and drink export, accounting for almost a fifth of Britain’s the sector’s exports. It’s also the number one internationally traded spirit in the world, and changes in the market can, therefore, cause something of a stir in the UK exports market. That’s why today’s statistics from
This Sunday – 29th October – the clocks go back, giving us an hour longer in bed, but darker evenings. This might be a blessing for many of us (yes, I would rather get up at 6am than 5am, thanks very much), but the darker evenings can also be a blessing for burglars. I learnt
The T-charge – short for Toxicity Charge – comes into force in central London today. It’s part of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan’s, plan to improve air quality in the capital, and it mainly applies to vehicles registered before 2006. Rather than banning ‘high polluting vehicles’, he hopes that the charges will discourage people from
No matter how much disruption people might claim that Brexit is bringing to the British economy, in Newmarket at least, the markets don’t seem too bothered. Newmarket is the horse racing capital of the UK, if not the world. And every October thoroughbred yearlings – that is, horses who are classified as being one year
Yesterday, Ross Clark argued over on Coffee House that the government’s Clean Growth Strategy – that is, a promise to insulate a million of the leakiest homes with the aid of £3.6 billion raised through the Energy Company Obligation (aka, a levy on all energy customers’ bills) – was a dubious government target. The strategy, while
Norway It might seem strange for someone who is half-Norwegian to decide on Scandinavian studies at university. But having lived in the UK my whole life, I wanted a better understanding of Scandinavia, its language, and its culture. In four years, I learned plenty of useful skills, such as the ability to read fuþark runes
The White Cliffs of Dover are, arguably, one of Britain’s most famous sights – immortalised of course by Dame Vera Lynn. So no wonder, then, that when the National Trust decided to launch a fundraising campaign to help them raise £1 million to secure a 700,000 square metre area of land on top of the
Housing – and specifically the dearth of reasonably priced housing – is an issue that crops up again and again in the political conversation. Young people are being priced out of the housing market; even where new housing is being built, very little of it could be classed as ‘affordable’. So today’s news that the
The ‘smart meter revolution’ is well and truly upon us, thanks mainly to a government campaign urging us all to have one installed in our homes. The £11bn campaign requires all energy suppliers to offer households a smart meter – which, in theory, should allow people to see exactly how much energy their house is
How much time would you say you spent in your car per week, on average? Of course it’s something that varies hugely from person to person, but I’d put money on the fact that it’s more time than you might think. Recent research shows that the average UK driver spends 8 hours a week in
As a new school term starts, this often spells an expensive shopping list for parents. School uniforms that no longer fit, new schoolbooks and lunchboxes; research shows that the average parent spends £170 on each of their children at the start of a new school year. But although much of that spending can’t be avoided
