The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 January 2013

Aid waste Sir: In Andrew Mitchell’s response to my article ‘The Great Aid Mystery’ (5 January), he asks ‘what about the 11 million children in school who wouldn’t be there’ if it weren’t for DFID’s aid efforts. It would be hard to come up with a more representative example of the dishonest marketing rhetoric that

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 17 January 2013

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, brought forward his speech on new relations with the European Union from 22 January when it was realised that it was the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty between Germany and France. Britain went to war in Mali by sending two transport planes in support of the French invasion

The Spectator

Just the tickets

Kingsley Amis was never a fan of the Arts Council. Writing in this magazine almost 30 years ago, he described it as a ‘detestable and destructive body’ whose grants and bursaries ‘in effect pay producers, painters, writers and such in advance’. This, he wrote, ‘is a straight invitation to them to sod the public, whose

The Spectator

Barometer | 17 January 2013

Equine dining Horsemeat was found in hamburgers sold by Tesco, among others. Why did eating horses become a taboo? — In the 8th century Pope Gregory III instructed St Boniface, missionary to Germany, to forbid the eating of horseflesh to those he converted to Christianity. — There has been no tradition of eating horsemeat in

Wednesday

The Spectator

Rod Liddle on Moore, Burchill and Featherstone’s lovely bitch fight

In tomorrow’s Spectator, Rod Liddle gives his verdict on the social media storm caused by Suzanne Moore and then Julie Burchill. Liddle suggests that until the ‘entire bourgeois bien-pensant left’ self-immolates, leaving a slight scent of goji berries, bystanders can ‘enjoy ourselves watching them tear each other to pieces, mired in their competing victimhoods seething

Saturday

The Spectator

Mali: a Coffee House briefing

David Cameron has today confirmed that UK troops will offer logistical “assistance” to those of France now fighting Islamic insurgents in northern Mali.  The below briefing outlines developments there so far. 1) The Basics ·       Mali is a landlocked West African former colony of France, with a population of 14.5 million, half of whom live below

Thursday