Stop health tourism
Speaking after the Stafford hospital scandal in 2010, the then newly appointed Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, grandly announced plans for…
High life
The wind is maddening and constant, and gets stronger as the sun falls below the horizon. The streets are lined…
Long life
I’m going off Jeremy Corbyn. He seems more and more pleased with himself by the minute. But I understand why…
Long life
I’m going off Jeremy Corbyn. He seems more and more pleased with himself by the minute. But I understand why…
Low life
Toby goes to bed at 10 o’clock sharp every night otherwise he gets irritable. Toby sleeps on the bed always.…
Low life
Toby goes to bed at 10 o’clock sharp every night otherwise he gets irritable. Toby sleeps on the bed always.…
Taleban
Toxic virus or Taleban: it’s funny how the mild-mannered Liz Kendall has attracted for her Blairite associations the most violently…
Real life
Surely it can be no coincidence that the road by which one enters St George’s Hospital, Tooting, is called Effort…
Nuclear reaction
The 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has produced some predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about the horrors of…
Nuclear reaction
The 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has produced some predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about the horrors of…
Free markets and dumb luck
The greatest mistake made by conservatism was its overly close relationship with neo-classical economics. This was a marriage of convenience:…
Boris’s waiting game
While the Labour party rakes over its past in an effort to find a policy for its future, the commentators…
Barometer
Caught working The government announced a crackdown on illegal workers. How many illegal workers are caught in Britain? — From…
Diary
Should we have celebrated VJ Day? Hearing the hieratic tones of the Emperor Hirohito on Radio 4 the other day,…
Boy soldiers
From ‘What will they do with it?’, The Spectator, 14 August 1915: It is true that in a good many cases…
Portrait of the week
Home The Metropolitan Police encouraged people to celebrate VJ Day despite reports in the Mail on Sunday (picked up from…
Great expectations
Trainwreck is a romcom as written and directed by Amy Schumer, the American comedy prodigy whose Comedy Central sketch show…
I reshot Andy Warhol
It’s one thing to make the most boring film in cinema history — at least you can kid yourself at…
Afterthoughts
The blackness that sweeps along the stage behind Sylvie Guillem’s disappearing figure in the Russell Maliphant piece on her farewell…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
Bridge
I hadn’t realised quite what a thriving bridge scene Manchester has until spending a weekend there recently. I went with…
The martyrdom of Bronwyn
The destruction of Bronwyn Bishop’s career stands as a stain of shame on this parliament. The entire affair exposes the…
The clock that stopped: the victory of nuclear arms and defeat of nuclear power
‘I visited the black marble obelisk which marks the epicentre of the explosion, and I saw the plain domestic wall-clock…
The feminists who fell for a bleeding hoax
Did you know that tampons were just another brutal expression of the oppressive patriarchy? I must confess that I didn’t…
