The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

How long have we spent failing to upgrade the A303 past Stonehenge?

From our UK edition

Deal or no deal Have public sector workers had a worse deal in recent years than private sector ones?  – Between 2007 and last year mean public sector pay declined by 0.9% in real terms, while mean private sector pay rose by 4%. However, for most of that time public sector workers were ahead of private sector ones. It was only after high inflation took hold in 2022 that public sector workers fell behind. – Public sector workers at the lower end of the pay scale have done relatively much better. Those at the 25th income percentile have seen incomes increase by 16% in real terms since 2007. Those at the 75th percentile have seen incomes fall by 8% in real terms. Men’s mean income fell by 11% in real terms, women’s rose by 3%. – Since 2010, nurses (-6.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Another ‘Squad’ member axed

Missouri trims Bush Talk about Squad goals: another of the most progressive members of Congress lost her Democratic primary last night, as Cori Bush was beaten by Wesley Bell in the race for Missouri’s 1st district.Bush first won her seat after playing a prominent role in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the post-George Floyd protests in St. Louis — with one local particularly pleased to see the back of her.“Bye bye Cori Bush,” tweeted Mark McCloskey, co-star of the infamous viral gun-toting photo with his wife Patricia, taken as they faced down the Bush-led protest outside their house. “You may have torn down my gate, but the people of St. Louis tore down your career. And I ‘spat on your name.

Adrian Buckner

well met last night

From our UK edition

Two tables pushed together, the beer coming in timely and convivial rounds. A song, a chorus joined and hilarious failures at games we played. And then you plucked from the air an offence in a foreign theatre of war and I caught in your group-beguiling tone, the note of the Commissar prepared to burn a village, its music halls and fields of play.

The Spectator

Letters: you can have a ‘good’ divorce

From our UK edition

Splitting the difference Sir: Hannah Moore’s article ‘Split personalities’ (27 July) is brutal. ‘There’s no such thing as a kind divorce,’ she writes. Ms Moore cites Amicable, the company I co-founded after my own long, painful divorce, as promoting the impossible idea of a ‘successful divorce’. Unless you have been divorced, it is hard to understand the pain and soul-searching that ending a marriage entails. Emotionally, psychologically and financially, it tears you apart. Divorce can reduce unhappiness and remove unbearable pressure from families. In broken relationships, the only thing worse than breaking up can be staying together, especially for the children. Do you really want to role-model ‘put up or shut up’ to your kids?

Monday

The Spectator

Doug Emhoff knocked up nanny during affair

Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, admitted this Saturday to cheating on his first wife following an explosive report that he once got their nanny pregnant. “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,” Emhoff said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN. The report indicates that more than a decade ago Second Gentleman Emhoff cheated on his then-wife with a blonde nanny, Najen Naylor, who taught at the Willows, a Californian private school attended by his two children.

Friday

The Spectator

Evan Gershkovich is free

An emotional scene unfolded at Joint Base Andrews last night, with the surprise return of a number of American hostages after a prisoner swap with Russia and Belarus. Among those returned were Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, Radio Free Europe correspondent Alsu Kurmasheva and former US Marine Paul Whelan. The returned hostages were greeted by their families, along with President Biden and Vice President Harris. Harris exchanged what are technically her first remarks with the press since becoming the presumptive nominee: “This is an extraordinary day and I’m very thankful for our president.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Why marriage matters

From our UK edition

Pretender to the crown Sir: Kate Andrews combines detail and analysis with a sprinkling of satire to devastating effect in her article on Kamala Harris (‘Trump’s new rival’, 27 July). The news anchor she describes in the first sentence (‘I’m struck just in your presence’) is more partisan than journalist, and would give Ofcom good reason to clutch its pearls if they popped up on GB News. Here is someone who identifies as, but isn’t actually, a news anchor. Rather like Harris, who identifies as a politician but hasn’t gone to the trouble of securing any actual votes. Perhaps this is why the Democrats have the overwhelming support of Hollywood, whose whole business is, after all, pretence.

The Spectator

2662: OOVIIXVII – Solution

From our UK edition

Seven unclued lights, MOORE, CONNERY, LAZENBY, NIVEN, DALTON, BROSNAN, CRAIG, are the names of actors who played the eighth one, BOND, in films. The title, translated from Latin, reads ‘007 x 7’. First prize Louise Rhind-Tutt, Glossop, Derbyshire Runners-up A.

The Spectator

Which countries have doped the most at the Olympics?

From our UK edition

Hole lot of history What was the original black hole? Although the term has been in use since the 1960s for a collapsed star from which no light can escape, its origins lie two centuries earlier with the Black Hole of Calcutta. In 1756 the East India Company was seeking to reinforce its fortifications at Fort William in the city. When the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, heard about it he raised an army of 50,000 men and, with the aid of 500 elephants, marched on Fort William. While most of the British fled to ships in the harbour, 146 were rounded up and imprisoned in a hole measuring 14ft by 18ft, in 40°C temperatures. Only 23, it was recorded, came out alive – although some now doubt that so many could have been fitted into such a space.

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves has proved that strikes pay

From our UK edition

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were adamant that economic growth would be their first priority in government. It is hard to square that with the decisions the Chancellor has announced this week. The Chancellor claims to have discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances, yet she has created the largest part of that sum by deciding to spend £9.4 billion on inflation-busting pay settlements for public-sector workers without asking for reforms in return. This, it seems, is the first Reeves doctrine: pay now to avoid strikes later Junior doctors are to receive a rise of more than 20 per cent, spread over two years. But it is also the way that Reeves has justified the move that may well cause her trouble in the future.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Stabbings in Southport, a £22bn ‘black hole’ and Tory leadership nominations

From our UK edition

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, noted that estimates had been ‘signed off by senior civil servant accounting officers’.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump spars on stage with black journalists in Chicago

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Donald Trump began at this afternoon’s National Association for Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago. ABC News’s Rachel Scott had asked why black voters should trust him in light of his prior attacks on black journalists. “First question, you don’t even say ‘hello, how are you?’” Trump continued. “Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible level.” Trump went on query his opponent Kamala Harris’s racial ethnicity when asked about her being a DEI hire. “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage.

Monday

The Spectator

President Biden’s plan to overhaul SCOTUS

President Biden unveiled his outline for changes to the Supreme Court, which includes term limits for justices and a new code of ethics. He also called for a constitutional amendment saying former presidents do not have immunity from any federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing — a direct dig at the Court’s recent immunity ruling in Trump’s favor. The plan comes amid a series of landmark decisions by the Supreme Court that favored conservatives, such as the overturning of Chevron and rulings on abortion and affirmative action, that sparked Democrats to criticize the 6-3 conservative controlled-court for an alleged lack of impartiality.

Friday

The Spectator

A very bad week for the Secret Service

The Secret Service’s worst week since John Hinckley Jr. failed to gun down President Ronald Reagan continued with some buggy problems just days after the organization’s embattled director announced plans to step down following bipartisan condemnation.Fresh off of failing to adequately protect President Donald Trump from a deranged gunman, the Secret Service failed to secure the Watergate Hotel where Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying and allowed a pro-Hamas organization to pour live maggots all over a room where he was alleged to be dining. “BON APPETIT!! MAGGOTS RELEASED ON THE CRIMINAL ZIONIST’S WAR TABLE!” the Palestinian Youth Movement posted on Instagram, along with a video of insects crawling all over the Watergate’s grounds.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: You can grow to hate Wagner

From our UK edition

Disappearing England Sir: Rod Liddle’s reference to Labour’s intention to build 1.5 million new houses (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13 July), even though there is not a shortage, leads one to worry where they will be located. The green belt was introduced for London in 1938 and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 extended powers with local authorities for self-designation. In 1937, John Betjeman wrote for one of his BBC talks: ‘England is disappearing and there is growing up, where the trees used to be and where the hills commanded blue vistas, another world that does not seem to be anything to do with England at all. This new world lives in ill-shaped brick horrors, for which it has had to pay through the nose.

The Spectator

2661: Spectrum – solution

From our UK edition

The unclued lights are French words or phrases which include a colour: 2, 10/32, 21A/7D, 21D, 28/8, 36/11, 37/8 and 38/15. Bleu at 8 does double duty, and ‘noir’ and ‘noire’ are the two forms. First prize Jeremiah Carter, Cambridge Runners-up Ian MacDonald, East Grinstead, W Sussex; C.R. Haigh, Hassocks, W.

The Spectator

After Rwanda: what will Labour do now?

From our UK edition

Keir Starmer is advertising for someone to head his newly created Border Security Command. The salary is higher than his own: the person in charge of stopping the boats would earn between £140,000 and £200,000. According to the ad, the job of patrolling the English Channel can be done remotely from any one of 12 cities, including Edinburgh and Belfast. It will require coordination with the Home Office, parts of the navy and even MI5. Never mind that this goes on already, with no discernible effect. The key requirement for the job, it would seem, is to be the fall guy, someone ready to take the blame for a policy that is certain to fail. Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ never stood a chance. This was resented by voters.

The Spectator

Has the cruise industry recovered from the pandemic?

From our UK edition

1968 again An incumbent who drops out of the race for re-election and a candidate who gets shot; this year’s US presidential election bears similarities to that of 1968. Lyndon Johnson had won the 1964 election by a landslide and was expected to win another term. But in April 1968 he withdrew from the race, under pressure over the Vietnam war and his own failing health. Vice president Hubert Humphrey was immediately touted as Johnson’s successor, although Robert Kennedy put up a strong showing in the primaries before being shot soon after winning the nomination for California. He died a day later. Less remembered about the 1968 election is how close Ronald Reagan came to being the Republican nominee – 12 years before he eventually succeeded.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: IT meltdown, riots in Leeds and the wrong kind of pandemic

From our UK edition

Home Britain enjoyed its share of the worldwide failure of 8.5 million computers reliant on Microsoft, through a faulty update of the CrowdStrike antivirus software. On the first day, 167 air departures were cancelled in the United Kingdom – 5.4 per cent of those scheduled. (Worldwide it was 5,078 – 4.6 per cent of those scheduled.) Doctors’ appointment systems stopped working and customers at Gail’s bakery could not pay for their pains au chocolat. BT was fined £17.5 million for a ‘catastrophic failure’ on 25 June last year that led to 14,000 999 calls not being connected. National debt, which fell from 251.7 per cent of GDP in 1946 to 21.6 per cent in 1990, had risen by June this year to 99.5 per cent.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Inside Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress

Today Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first world leader to address a joint session of Congress four times, surpassing the previous record jointly held by him and Winston Churchill. And the anti-Israel protesters, not unlike the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, drastically inflated their numbers ahead of Wednesday’s proceedings. Despite concern that more than 10,000 anti-Israel protesters would descend on the nation’s capital, only a small group that carried Hamas flags and shut down multiple streets showed up. That’s not to say there was no drama, however. There was “absolute chaos” in the streets of the capital by the protesters who did show, with some activists pepper-sprayed and arrested by the Capitol Police.