It’s time to reform government surveillance, so say the internet’s tech giants. Following the stream of NSA spying revelations from The Guardian; AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo have joined forces to urge Barack Obama and the US Congress to tighten the laws regarding spying on individuals. In an open letter released
What’s happening? The rage continues today in advance of Ipsa’s expected recommendation that MPs should get a 11 per cent pay rise to take their pay to £74,000 in the next Parliament. This follows a consultation paper Ipsa released in July, with five key recommendations: Increasing MPs’ basic pay, and then linking their salaries to
Following George Osborne’s 2013 Autumn Statement this morning, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the Chancellor’s announcements, the reaction he received in the House of Commons, how Ed Balls responded to the statement, the winners and losers and what we can expect to see on tomorrow’s front pages. You can subscribe to
‘Nothing’s funny any more’ has become the daily mantra of this magazine’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath. Thanks to Leveson, political correctness, taste and common decency, lampooning public figures in particular has become more difficult than ever. Hugo Rifkind still has the right idea. From the despair of trying to conjure up a column for the
What do the Liberal Democrats and Ukip have in common? According to the second round of Survation’s constituency polling, they are both locally outperforming their national trends. Thanks to the Ukip donor Alan Bown, we can see how the seats of Great Grimsby and Dudley North would vote, were there a general election tomorrow: These
It appears Laura Sandys has made the right decision to stand down at the next election. A new poll from Survation targeting her South Thanet constituency suggests that if a general election took place tomorrow, the Tories would fail to hold onto the seat. In the constituency once represented by Jonathan Aitken, the Conservatives have
Are there truths in modern Britain we can’t speak about? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Spectator columnist Rod Liddle discusses his cover feature on why we are so reluctant to talk about certain topics. Was Dominic Grieve right to apologise for his comments last week? Is this a case of political correctness getting worse? And is
Boris Johnson prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable. He stuck to that theme tonight with his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he argued that greed isn’t a bad thing. He said: ‘But I also hope that there is no
Trying to clone Silicon Valley has been a cornerstone of this coalition’s business policy. Rohan Silva, until recently the PM’s policy guru, spent several years in government and opposition creating the ‘Silicon Roundabout’, an attempt to provide a new leg for the UK’s economy in East London. Depending on who you believe, the East London
The Met Police took 166 of London’s traffic junctions hostage this morning. After a recent spate of cycling fatalities across the capital, a ‘major road safety operation’ kicked off today, with 2,500 police officers on the streets ‘making busy London junctions safer’. Codenamed Operation Safeway, the Met are watching for anyone committing an offence on
Ravers of London rejoice — 24-hour tubes at the weekend are finally on their way. TfL has announced today that trains on the Victoria, Central, Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines will run constantly from Friday morning till Sunday evening. The all-night drinkers of the capital have long wondered why it wasn’t possible to keep the
Why did no one realise that Reverend Paul Flowers was a preacher behaving very badly? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the author and publisher Melanie Phillips and the Conservative MP Jesse Norman ask why a man, who didn’t know one end of a balance sheet from the other, was given so much power over financial institutions
Despite ‘the age of austerity’, Britain still has a debt problem. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Centre for Social Justice. It suggests that personal debt in the UK has reached a record high of £1.4 trillion, or 90 per cent of the UK’s economic output last year. That’s not happened overnight;
More details of the split Eds have emerged. As Guido reports, Balls has never been to the pub with Miliband, nor knows ‘if he likes the pub or not’. And, in her Times column today (£), Rachel Sylvester reveals that High Speed 2 is another diving line between Labour’s big beasts: ‘There is clear disagreement
It’s tough in Scotland. Faced with the prospect of a bitingly cold winter, fuel poverty and abandoning the Union, some of its residents have taken extreme measures to survive. ITV News reports that Darrel Piper of Dumfries has decided to heat his home with Christmas decorations instead of paying to run his heating system: ‘The
Ukip’s treasurer will be beaming this morning, thanks to Paul Sykes. The Yorkshire millionaire — whose wealth is estimated to be over £600 million — has, according to Philip Johnson in today’s Telegraph, promised to ‘do whatever it takes’ to ensure that the party tops the polls at the 2014 European elections. The Tories won’t
The Tories’ attempts to erase their own online history are wider than first thought. After ‘cleaning up’ their website by hiding pre-2010 speeches and announcements, The Guardian’s Alex Hern reveals that the WebCameron videos have been made private on YouTube: ‘Now it has emerged that every video on the Conservatives’ YouTube page that dates from before
Voters in the North love Tory policies but hate the Tories. That’s the headline from some new YouGov polling on what voters in different parts of the country feel about the political parties and their policies. An overwhelming majority of voters in the North support cutting net immigration, same-sex marriage, the benefits cap, Help to
Is Britain on the verge of an energy crisis? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Mail on Sunday’s David Rose discusses how Britain’s choice green energy over efficient energy has put us on a path to disaster, and why it is politicians, not the Big Six energy firms, who are blame for the
Remember Cameron’s hug a husky speech? Or his lecture on ‘the need recast politics for the digital age?’ Well, good job you do because the Tory party has been trying to purge their online history, according to Computer Weekly. As Mark Ballard explains, someone at CCHQ has used a robots.txt file to block Google (and
