Home Thousands of farmers protested in Westminster against inheritance tax on farms. Tesco, Amazon, Greggs and 76 other chains belonging to the British Retail Consortium said that costs introduced by October’s Budget ‘will make job losses inevitable and higher prices a certainty’. The annual rate of inflation rose to 2.3 per cent from 1.7 a
The 14 unclued lights can be constructed using only the letters in ‘THE SPECTATOR’, as indicated in the preamble. First prize Belinda Bridgen, London NW8 Runners-up J. Bielawski, Southport; Hugh Green, Petersfield, Hampshire
Those in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill insist they’ve addressed critics’ principal concerns and that ‘stringent safeguards’ are in place. But it is impossible to see how this could be the case. If suicide is institutionalised as a form of medical treatment it is inevitable that vulnerable people will feel
Home Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury, after not reporting to the authorities what he knew in 2013 of the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth QC (who ran Christian summer camps in the 1970s and 1980s and died in 2018). An independent review by Keith Makin found last week that Smyth abused more than
I arrived in Lhasa by train in freezing weather. From what I’d heard, my father would be there. Outside the gaping entrance all was dark,snow falling quietly like owls’ feathers. In the bustling concourse, doubling as a market, just as I’d feared, my errant father was nowhere to be seen. I knew he was dead
Arch rivals Justin Welby served longer as Archbishop of Canterbury than any of his four immediate predecessors, but others have served far longer. The longest since the Reformation was Randall Davidson, who held the position between 1903 and 1928, when he retired aged 80 – becoming the first not to die in post. Before the
Unhealthy debate Sir: Matthew Parris is absolutely right to say that the time has come for facing populists with honest argument (‘In defence of the liberal elite’, 9 November). This call would be all the more persuasive if it were not embedded within the rotten foundations of current lamentable public discourse. Honest argument presupposes the
The unclued lights reveal phrases beginning (or, with 8, ending) with the numbers 1 to 10. The red and yellow squares reveal two members of LES SIX, the solution at 45 Across. First prize Jenny Mitchell, Wells, Somerset Runners-up Sean Smith, Southport; Rupert Cousens, Oxford
This has been the year of ejection elections. Across the democratic world, incumbents have been thrown out and insurgents have triumphed. And nowhere has the establishment been so humbled, the insurgency so resurgent, as in the US – still the world’s greatest democracy. For Democrats, it is mourning again in America. Just as in 2016,
Home Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservative party, appointed a shadow cabinet. She made Robert Jenrick, whom she beat for the leadership, shadow justice secretary; Dame Priti Patel, shadow foreign secretary; Chris Philp, shadow home secretary; Mel Stride, shadow chancellor. Alex Burghart was given Northern Ireland and the Cabinet Office, with Laura Trott
The beach magician’s vanished, gone home. Now it’s my sleeping cousins’ turn to disappear. Out of the creaking depths of old deckchairs their teenage spirits rise, drift down to the shore. The mackerel are in. Helen’s in blue, Cat in her yellow dress. The harbour’s a pond, the moored boats nailed to their
Zero-sum game Sir: Though troubled by the impact of Budget measures on employers and economic growth, I am more baffled by the regressive nature of those measures on the most vulnerable sectors – retail, hospitality, social care and students (‘Tax, spend, borrow’, 2 November). While the employer of a full-time employee earning £50,000 a year
Peter Parker The New Zealand novelist Catherine Chidgey ought to be much more celebrated in this country than she is. Do not be put off by the fact that The Axeman’s Carnival (Europa, £14.99) is narrated by a magpie; whimsy is entirely absent from this highly original, thrillingly dark and often very funny novel. The
The Spectator Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, in partnership with Rathbones, celebrate the passion and creativity of British entrepreneurs. From hundreds of entries we have narrowed down to some 50 finalists across the United Kingdom. In this episode, the judges discuss the innovators within the Manufacturing and Engineering category – 3D printing hydraulic systems, making
31 min listen
The Spectator Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, in partnership with Rathbones, celebrate the passion and creativity of British entrepreneurs. From hundreds of entries we have narrowed down to some 50 finalists across the United Kingdom. In this episode, the judges discuss the innovators within the Business Services and Logistics category – the companies that help
The journey was that of the Owl and the Pussy-cat, by Edward Lear. OWL appears diagonally backwards in the bottom right of the grid. First prize J. McClelland, Bangor, Northern Ireland Runners-up Paul Elliott, London W12; Rex Anderson, Coleraine, Northern Ireland
The first fiscal event to be delivered by a female Chancellor of the Exchequer is a landmark moment, but in every other regard this Budget was a return to the familiar, and failed, approach of Labour governments past. This was the Life on Mars Budget – a journey back to the 1970s, only without the
Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeatedly mentioning an inherited ‘£22 billion black hole’, raised taxes by £40 billion in the Budget, while saying she was abiding by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’. A big hit came from increasing employers’ contributions to national insurance; the threshold at which
Working people Government ministers may have had trouble defining what was meant by ‘working people’ in the Labour manifesto, but where did the idea of classifying people who earn their living as a distinct group come from? – According to the OED,the term ‘working class’ has been traced back to the 1757 edition of the
The survey says Sir: David Butterfield’s 21 years of experience of higher education (‘Decline and fall’, 26 October) chimes with my 35. But the decline in the rigour of university education which he so deftly describes has not been entirely self-willed. Successive governments have championed a consumerist understanding of higher education. Students have become consumers