Tray
‘What’s this Eurocentric crap doing on my desk?’
The Spectator
Thursday
Letters | 22 October 2015
Scotland isn’t failing Sir: It will take more than Adam Tomkins descending from the heights of academe to persuade the Scots that education, health, policing and everything else in Scotland is failing (‘The SNP’s One-Party State,’ 17 October). Scots aren’t stupid: they have heard all this before from the unionist press, and they don’t believe it.
The human factor | 22 October 2015
Just over 30 years ago, Margaret Thatcher’s government decided to look at local government finance. A young aide, John Redwood, outlined ‘some kind of poll tax which is paid by every elector’. Discussions continued, and bright young men (including the young Oliver Letwin) assured the Prime Minister that the figures would all stack up. Unpopular
Portrait of the week | 22 October 2015
Home Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, came, with his wife Peng Liyuan, a folk singer, for a state visit to Britain, to address both Houses of Parliament and to stay at Buckingham Palace. Tata Steel announced the loss of 900 jobs in Scunthorpe and 270 in Lanarkshire. This followed the liquidation of SSI, Britain’s
The clock towers bigger than Big Ben
Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the 232ft Spasskaya Tower. Clock has a diameter of 20ft. Big Ben: Installed on 315ft Elizabeth Tower. Clock faces are 24ft across. Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York: 700ft high (although the clock is only two-thirds
Revenge and Edith Cavell
From ‘Reprisals’, The Spectator, 23 October 1915: The Germans lately executed Miss Cavell, a good and brave English hospital nurse, on a charge of harbouring fugitives. Are Englishmen prepared for such reprisals as this execution suggests? … Is there a single Englishman, no matter how many public meetings he has attended in support of reprisals, and no matter how
Wednesday
Exclusive: Boris declares that Japan is relaxed about Britain leaving the EU
Boris Johnson has recently returned from a tour of Japan. His diary of the trip appears in this week’s issue of The Spectator: Frankly I don’t know why the British media made such a big fat fuss last week when I accidentally flattened a ten-year-old Japanese rugby player called Toki. He got to his feet.
Thursday
Hipster
'Let’s go somewhere else — this place has turned into a hipster hangout.'
Party 3
'Sigh. One of these days we'll come home to find they've had a wild party.'
Party 4
‘Please like me and share me.’
Queen 3
Witch 5
‘I won’t believe you’re innocent until you’ve been accused by Tom Watson.’
Parrot
'You'd better go, he'll be home soon ... you’d better...'
Bears 4
'Oh, just the usual Nordic noir: a seemingly run-of-the-mill porridge theft leads to the discovery of a serial killing, people trafficking, drug dealing, paedophile conspiracy.'
Looks Familiar
'Looks familiar — was he on "I'm a Celebrity", "Big Brother" or "Strictly"?'
Mother 3
'It's another of those extremely obscene and threatening phone calls. Do something — she’s your mother.'
Waterstones
‘We decided to focus on coffee.’
Pollock 2
Gun Store
Roadshow
'How much did you pay for it?'
