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The Spectator

5 December 2015 Aus

The real victims of climate change

In trying to protect ‘our grandchildren’ from climate change, politicians are hurting the poor. They shouldn’t

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Mission Innovation

A warm, fuzzy pat on the back for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who went to Paris and – thus far…

Australian Columnists

Columnists Australia

Business/Robbery etc

The altruistic evil of green economic terrorists

Diary Australia

Australian diary

It is not often that I feel sorry for a politician however Bill Leak’s portrait of Bill Shorten as a…

Australian Features

Features Australia

Triggs-er warning

The president of the Human Rights Commission must live in a moral galaxy far, far away

Features Australia

Muslim blackmail

Too many within the Islamic community, wittingly or otherwise, promote the jihadist mindset

Features Australia

Going coal turkey

Wealthy greenies demanding the third world go without coal is immoral and hypocritical

Features Australia

An interview with Peter Hitchens

There is a certain contradiction to Peter Hitchens: on the one hand, he’s an author and journalist of immense energy…

Features Australia

The camp of the saints (part II)

Forty years ago, the French author, Jean Raspail, wrote a confronting novel about a third world invasion of Europe. His…

Features Australia

The Liberals’ Rudd

The Turnbull coup has finished off one Liberal leader and put paid to two others

Features

Features

Silent strongman Sergey Shoigu is the real force behind Russia’s military aggression

The mysterious defence minister is now favourite to succeed Vladimir Putin as president

Features

Cooler heads

At last, cooler heads are prevailing

Features

Strange young things

Young activists fight like vipers to get close to power . . . and it’s all a huge myth

Features

The real victims of climate change

In trying to protect ‘our grandchildren’ from climate change, politicians are hurting the poor. They shouldn’t

Features

Send in the street pastors

They are invaluable back-up to the police, calming things down with kind words — and chips

Features

Could I have prevented a Kray murder?

Even if I could, I don’t regret remaining silent. Prison reform means accepting some failures

Features

The Corbyn crack-up

Labour is all at sea. Chaos and panic reign. Will its leader be able to take the strain?

Will Father Christmas bring that drum kit?

Features

Christmas lists

His ideas are so much more fun than Eartha Kitt’s

The Week

Leading article

It is time to join the fight against IS in Syria

This is an issue of solidarity with our European allies

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week

Home The House of Commons voted on air strikes in Syria. Labour MPs had been allowed a free vote by…

Diary

Diary

On being a climate-change apostate; Cardinal Roger Harrabin; a ghostly encounter; Keith Vaz; cows

Barometer

Barometer: Who was the first warmist?

Plus: what scientists believe about climate change; which countries emit the most per capita; and pleasant climate summits

Ancient and modern

Puppet statecraft

What are MPs for when the 250,000 who voted for the left-winger as their leader now dictate Labour party policy?

From The Archives

Let unions pay MPs

From ‘Payment of members’, The Spectator, 4 December 1915: If the country could be polled at the present time, there is…

Letters

Australian letters

Mal content Sir: Would The Spectator Australia please reduce the level of Turnbull Hating indulged in by its regular contributors.…

Columnists

World Politics

After Labour’s Syria shambles, step forward Major Dan

This former paratroop officer would be an instant fix to Labour’s damaged reputation for patriotism and willingness to keep the country safe

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes

And: something to bear in mind about the Tory bullying scandal; and why it is wrong for Christians to eat their wives

James Delingpole

A different species of argument

They are capable of emotion, but only when it suits their predetermined agenda of things that matter

Any other business

After the Black Friday flop, shops can get back to what they do best

Plus: the riskiest bit of Osborne’s Autumn Statement; and more tales of business banking

Books

A portrait by Edward Savage of the Washingtons at home, with two of Martha’s grandchildren, adopted by her after the death of their parents

Lead book review

George and Martha Washington were an odd first First Couple

But the towering general and his diminutive, homely wife were devoted to one another, as Flora Fraser reveals in her dual biography

Paratroopers are dropped to reinforce trapped French troops at Dien Bien Phu, 1954

Books

Hubris made the 20th century the bloodiest in history

Alistair Horne’s survey of 20th-century warfare illustrates how often daring didn’t win

Books

General Anders to the rescue

Norman Davies tells the stirring tale of the ragtag Polish army that marched thousands of miles to aid the Allies at a critical juncture of the second world war

Portrait of Richard III by an unknown artist

Books

Richard III: a bad man — and even worse king

David Horspool’s biography provides a devastating indictment of the tyrannical murderer who lost his throne, his life and his dynasty

Books

Shakespeare with or without the waffle

Two new books take a radically different approach, but the lively 30-Second Shakespeare beats the academic ‘alternative biography’ hands down

Guy Burgess

Books

James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies

According to their latest biographies, two of the cleverest men at the heart of the Cambridge spy ring failed to achieve anything — or even caused much damage

Books

The real gardeners’ questions answered

Ken Thompson’s The Sceptical Gardener explodes many hoary myths, while giving serious (and often humorous) advice

Books

A companion for life

Graham Johnson’s unrivalled three-volume commentary on the song cycle will be your companion for life

Books

Bad news from paradise

J.J. Robinson fears that the paradise that was once the Maldives may be lost forever to Islamism

Portrait of the Duke of Buckingham by Peter Paul Rubens

Books

O this white powder!

Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell revisit a very cold case and suggest that the Duke of Buckingham may have made a fatal mistake

Books

A lonely ice maiden

Rupert Thompson’s mysterious ice maiden, drawn to living in an Arctic wasteland, has had a frozen existence from the start

Gladstone silences the Irish press for inciting Fenian violence. Cartoon from Punch, 9 April 1890, by John Tenniel

Books

Cultivating the fourth estate

According to Paul Brighton’s Original Spin, the highly moral Gladstone was a far cannier manipulator of the media than the flamboyant Disraeli

Books

A lofty, lusty Laureate

Mark Fisher pays tribute to Carol Ann Duffy — a true Romantic poet who looks set to become a great one

‘Vampire’, woodcut by Edvard Munch (1902)

Books

Multi-fanged

Nick Rennison’s The Rivals of Dracula shows that many Victorian and Edwardian novelists tried their hand at this staple of Gothic horror

Arts

Bryan Stanley Johnson with a first edition of ‘The Unfortunates’

Arts feature

New word order

Peter Robins reports on a site-specific transformation of The Unfortunates by the literary innovator B.S. Johnson

Opera

Lost in translation

Plus: David McVicar kills Glyndebourne’s touring Entfuhrung by kindness

Dance

Bird brained

Twee and fake can be beguiling in ballet, but it’s not in this Two Pigeons revival

Exhibitions

In a class of their own

Plus: at Pallant House Gallery, several masterpieces by the unclassifiable David Jones

Steely, erotic, indomitable: Gemma Chan as Ruth in ‘The Homecoming’

Theatre

Men behaving badly

Plus: Patrick Marmion has created a bleakly hilarious account of rock-star psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s at the Arcola

Towering will-o’-the-wisp: Agyness Deyn as Chris Guthrie

Cinema

The still point

The lyricism of director Terence Davies is unlike the work of any other British director and worth celebrating

Radio

There will be blood

Plus: Radio 3’s Northern Lights season begins with the broadcast of a classic 1967 ‘contrapuntal radio documentary’ by Glenn Gould

Television

Beyond a joke

Plus: two properly great sitcoms, Detectorists and Catastrophe, reach the end of their second series

Culture Buff

Culture buff

We are now officially in summer and the beach season. The importance of the beach in our national self-image the…

Life

High life

High life

He tells it like it is — and the proles love it

Low life

Low life

The only way to write on a typewriter is with your trousers on fire — and very refreshing it is

Real life

Real life

A wild goose chase on the M6 toll road then the police threw the book at me

Long life

Long life

We are addicting to celebrating — even when we have nothing to celebrate

Bridge

Bridge

If you don’t play bridge, you really should avoid gatherings of bridge players — you’ll find us excruciatingly dull. I’ve…

Chess

London Classic

The annual London Classic, inspired and organised by the indefatigable Malcolm Pein, is now underway at London’s Olympia. The website…

Chess puzzle

Chess Puzzle

White to play. This position is from Edward Lasker-Thomas, London 1912. This is one of the most famous combinations ever…

Competition

Railway rhythms

In Competition No. 2926 you were invited to submit a poem about HS2. The idea for this challenge came to…

Crossword

2240: Various sources

In each of eight clues, one letter has been cut from the definition part; the cut letters spell a word…

Crossword solution

To 2237: Experimental

The publication is 11A. Other unclued lights are all anagrams (‘new’ versions) of scientists: 14A SEABORG; 22A EINSTEIN; 23A PASTEUR;…

Status anxiety

The politics of envy has failed

Except under non-leftie Tony Blair, the party has not won a decisive election victory for nearly 50 years

Drink

An overflow of bookshelves, a huge kitchen, a cellar, music, dogs, hens, donkeys children . . . all the ingredients for civilised life

Trenchering in western England, where one local vicar, a notorious naturist, has taken to ­wearing a green collar

Mind your language

Mind your language . . . on commit

The ‘committing’ that women are said to find so hard to extract from men has popped up in the past 30 years