Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. He writes on Substack, at Ross on Why?
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Is there any more evil influence on the world than Gail’s the bakery? It has thrown thousands of poor people out of their homes by gentrifying their neighbourhoods; it has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working owners of independent coffee shops by drawing away business; it has scorned the poor by throwing away its
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It was reported over the weekend that the government has dropped ‘the right to switch off’ from its Employment Rights Bill. Such a right, it has been widely asserted, had appeared in Labour’s manifesto for last year’s general election, promising that employees would be granted a legal right to ignore their boss’s emails outside their
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This week: Nigel’s gang – Reform’s plan for power.Look at any opinion survey or poll, and it’s clear that Reform is hard to dismiss, write Katy Balls and James Heale. Yet surprisingly little is known about the main players behind the scenes who make up Nigel Farage’s new gang. There are ‘the lifers’ – Dan
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The Forcan Ridge off Glen Shiel can be a tricky place this time of year. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but the rocks in places were encased in ice. Without crampons, an ice axe and a head for what you are doing there are plenty of opportunities to fall to your death, but
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Energy bills may be going up and the economy may be flatlining, but not for long. Thankfully, the government’s Climate Change Committee has the answer. In a press release introducing the committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget, published this morning, interim chair Piers Forster declares: ‘The committee is delighted to be able to present a good news
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Among the big, bad oil companies in borstal for environmental offenses, BP has long been the relatively benign one, the class pet. Remember how former chief executive Lord Browne two decades ago promised to take the company ‘Beyond Petroleum’ to a golden future of clean energy? In 2004, in a forerunner of the ESG indices
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If you live opposite the vacant site in Northumberland that was supposed to become the Britishvolt ‘gigafactory’ pumping out batteries for the electric car industry, or near the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight where half the 600 workers have been told they face redundancy, you might just struggle to believe that
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I am not sure about the capacity of AI to take over the world and suppress humanity, but big tech certainly has the ability to spark a trade war. There is a fuss brewing right now over an encryption system known as Advanced Data Protection available on iPhones and other Apple devices. Several weeks ago,
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So much for ‘dry’ and ‘no buy’ January. The UK public seems to have thoroughly rebelled against efforts to persuade them to work off the excesses of the festive season. In particular, we seem to have stuffed our faces somewhat. The retail sales figures put out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning
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It is one of the world’s great mysteries: if wind and solar energy are supposed to be so cheap then why does the UK – which generates a higher proportion of its electricity from wind or solar than virtually any other developed country – have higher electricity prices than any other member of the International
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Hereditary peers are for the chop, but life peers still have their uses. Last October the process of ennoblement allowed Keir Starmer to appoint a minister of state for investment in rapid preparation for his investment summit of that month. Finding no-one on the green benches who took his fancy, he turned to Poppy Gustafsson,
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The decision by Donald Trump to hold peace talks with Russia on ending the Ukraine war – without Ukraine actually being present – is starting to look even more disgraceful. It transpires that the war was not the only item on the agenda in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. A significant part of the day’s business
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Is it any wonder that the economy is struggling in spite of an apparently booming jobs market, with employers finding it difficult to hire recruits and average earnings rising by 5.9 per cent in the past year? Here is a shocking statistic which goes a long way to explaining the apparent paradox: there are now
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Several weeks ago, just in advance of Donald Trump’s second presidency, there was a mass withdrawal of US financial institutions from Mark Carney’s Net Zero Banking Alliance – which committed members to adopt policies of reducing lending to fossil fuel companies and to take other measures aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Are UK banks now
It’s America that has quietly raced ahead this century
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The government says it wants to stop the ‘blockers’ which are holding back Britain’s economy. It also says it wants to boost the nation’s energy security. How convenient, then, that along comes a project which could achieve both at the same time. The only trouble is that it is something which will drive Ed Miliband
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I am sure that Nigel Farage would love the opportunity to embarrass Labour and the Tories as much as he can in May’s local elections. But sorry, Angela Rayner is right – for once – to delay local elections for a year in some areas so that local government can be reorganised and many councils
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Wes Streeting is offended by NHS staff promoting ‘anti-whiteness’ – as should any taxpayer who has not succumbed to the racist ideology of critical race theory. A social media post from a counselling psychologist with the East London NHS Foundation Trust sought an assistant on a year-long placement, describing herself as someone ‘who integrates anti
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At last, some news of an industry in Britain that is flourishing. Unfortunately, it is one that is helping to suppress growth in every other sector of the economy. I am sure that the lawyers who have brought a case involving 60,000 female workers at Asda think they have won a famous victory after an
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No doubt Keir Starmer wants us to think he is being ‘grown up’ in accepting an invitation to dinner at an EU summit. But it is actually the reverse: he is behaving like a toddler in danger of being enticed into a stranger’s car by a bag of sweets dangled out of the window. As
