Tensions between Roma migrants and communities in Sheffield have risen this week, and the city’s most prominent MPs have voiced their concerns. Yesterday, Sebastian noted David Blunkett’s warning about the possibility of riots unless migrants change their behaviour. Today, Nick Clegg has echoed Blunkett by calling for migrants to moderate their ‘intimidating’ and ‘offensive’ ways.
Sir Bruce Keogh’s anticipated review into accident and emergency has been published today to a chorus of praise and boos. The Mail describes it as a ‘sticking plaster’. The Independent is cautious. The Guardian is critical. And the Telegraph and the Sun are more positive. Sir Bruce Keogh gave a masterly performance on the Today
The energy debate is in stasis. Everything, it seems, hangs on the contents of the Autumn Statement. EDF has announced a price rise; bills will go up by an average 3.9 per cent, which is considerably lower than the rest of the Big Six. Yet the company made clear that maintaining low prices will depend on George
David Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet yesterday evening rehearsed some basic political arguments that will be honed between now and 2015. Cameron made a decent assault on Labour over the cost of living: ‘There are some people who seem to think that the way you reduce the cost of living in this country
Britain is to deploy one warship, the Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, which is currently on station near Singapore, and RAF support aircraft, including one Boeing C17 transporter, to the Philippines. The US has deployed a carrier group. It will take HMS Daring 5 days or so to reach its destination. It will provide engineering
The parliamentary standards commissioner’s inquiry into Nadine Dorries’s appearance on I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here was evidently an eventful process. Here are the headlines from the report: 1). The standards committee, the cross-party panel of MPs which sanctions MPs after the standards commissioner has reported, ordered Dorries to apologise to the House of Commons
The Telegraph reports that the Relationships Alliance, which is to launch in the House of Commons, warns that the ‘disintegration of romantic, social and family relationships costs the average taxpayer around £1,500 a year’. Apparently this amounts to £50 billion a year. The story is of course familiar, even if the figures involved are new. Broken relationships can
There are two important NHS stories in the papers today. First, the Times reports (£) that A&E departments are facing severe pressures because of historic staff shortages. The paper notes: ‘Half of all senior doctor posts go unfilled at accident and emergency departments, putting unsustainable pressure on life-or-death care. The College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) says
Theresa May accepted her Spectator Politician of the Year award with the quip: ‘It used to be a joke that I lock them up and Ken Clarke lets them out, now they say I lock them up and Chris Grayling throws away the key.’ The right wing press, as Ken Clarke is given to calling
There’s a rumour doing the rounds that Anna Soubry’s comments on immigration during Thursday night’s edition of Question Time did not come as a surprise to Tory High Command. Apparently, Soubry refused to take direction from the party machine and made clear that she would say, more or less, what she said. Coalition has certainly
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is an art show largely without art (at Manchester Art Gallery until 19 January 2014, then touring). No matter: Jeremy Deller, the curator, has found some surprising knick-knacks to illustrate how the Industrial Revolution has influenced popular culture. For instance, he plays rediscovered factory songs on a gloriously
‘I was mad with jealousy,’ said Gwyneth Williams, the controller of BBC Radio 4. ‘I am mad with jealousy,’ she corrected herself, and I believed her. We were discussing Tom Stoppard’s Darkside, a radio play written to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon. The play, which was perhaps
An old journalist told me that there was a time when people used to know the names of national newspaper editors. It’s a mark of Fleet Street’s decline, he said, that Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian and Paul Dacre of the Mail are the only well known editors today. He added that Rusbridger is famous
Here is the revised Royal Charter on press regulation agreed by the three parties. It replaces the draft published in March this year. It begins: NOW KNOW YE that We by Our Prerogative Royal and of Our especial grace It seems that Parliament would bring down 300 years of free expression using a principle that parliamentarians like Pym, Hampden, Haselrige,
The Snowden files continue to dominate the news today. Vince Cable has said that the Guardian newspaper had provided a ‘considerable public service’ by publishing Edward Snowden’s leaked material. This contrasted with Nick Clegg’s effort on LBC Radio yesterday (above). Clegg said that it was important to have a debate about technology and privacy, before
listen to ‘Tony Hall on the future of the BBC’ on Audioboo Tony Hall, the Director General of the BBC, has just laid out his vision for the next 10 years of the BBC. He opened humbly, arguing that the culture of the BBC had to change in the wake of the Savile and pay-off
If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to read Jenny McCartney’s piece in this week’s issue of the magazine. Together with Christopher Fletcher’s personal appreciation of Seamus Heaney published here earlier this week, it is among the most original and thoughtful takes on the late Nobel Laureate’s life and work. It’s typical of Jenny’s
The Guardian notes that Ladbrokes and William Hill share Philip Hensher’s hunch for the Booker shortlist, which is to be unveiled next week. ‘Hunch’ isn’t the right word. Hensher wrote in these pages a fortnight ago: ‘The shortlist should comprise McCann, Tóibín, Mendelson, Crace, House and Catton. House’s novel is the one you ought to
On hearing that Easy Jet had changed its hand luggage allowance, two questions struck me. First, was the airline in league with the luggage makers’ guild? Second, which paperbacks would replace the hardbacks I was going to take with me to the beach? Such considerations may strike you as ‘old world’, a bit last century.
For the first time in years, I thought of Tony Hancock. In the ‘Blood Donor’ episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, Hancock exits a doctors’ surgery singing the words ‘coughs and sneezes spread diseases, catch the germs in your handkerchief’ to the tune of Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles. I have only seen this clip once or twice, but
