David Blackburn 
Revive the Snooper’s Charter? It’s already obsolete
The political response to the Woolwich murder is following two broad patterns. On the one hand, the party leaders make dignified, calm statements, tending almost to the banal. There was,… Continue reading
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Cricket is more than a game
Does this advert ring a bell? It showed a handsome young man hitting a cricket ball far into the distance. It appeared on the Tube last spring. The tagline read:… Continue reading
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Interview with a writer: Evgeny Morozov
Evgeny Morozov is an iconoclast. He believes that technology, if abused or misused, has the potential to make society less free. His latest book, To Save Everything , Click Here,… Continue reading
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The power of Granta’s gift to British writers
Philip Hensher was one of Granta’s 20 under forty in 2003, so what does he make of the new list? Writing in this week’s Spectator, he says that there are… Continue reading
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Wisden finally merits the epithet ‘Cricket Bible’
The man who christened Wisden ‘The Cricket Bible’ had little religion. Wisden is an unprepossessing sight: a 1,500 page tome surrounded by a flame-yellow dust jacket covered in mud brown… Continue reading
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Why don’t Labour talk about welfare reform?
Philip Collins is shackled by the epithet ‘Tony Blair’s former speechwriter’; shackled because his columns prove him to be his own man. His latest (£) is a carefully argued critique… Continue reading
60 Comments![tory-poster[2]](http://cdn2.spectator.co.uk/files/2013/04/tory-poster2-140x91.jpg)
The Tories steal the Lib Dems’ best clothes with new poster
This poster will, I am sure, have the Lib Dems hopping about with fury. The Tories have hi-jacked a key Liberal Democrat policy: raising the personal allowance. Perhaps this is… Continue reading
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Nuclear weapons, Scotland and the future of the United Kingdom
David Cameron – who, in case you’d forgotten, leads the Conservative and Unionist Party – made a rare visit to Scotland yesterday. He spoke about defence. His message was clear:… Continue reading
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The Philpotts – what happened to Labour’s view that we should be tough on the causes of crime?
Several Labour MPs have expressed their disapproval of George Osborne’s comments about the taxpayer funding Mick Philpott’s lifestyle. For example, Andy McDonald, MP for Middlesbrough, said that welfare is a ‘completely… Continue reading
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George Osborne dips Mick Philpott into the welfare debate
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has just made a statement about Mick Philpott; the man convicted of the manslaughter of 6 of his children; the man who also lived off… Continue reading
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The renewal of the class system
Fun can be had by playing with the BBC’s new class calculator. The calculator, which was designed with the help of several eminent sociologists, replaces the 3 classes with seven stratifications,… Continue reading
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The world should see that North Korea is no laughing matter
I found myself snorting with derision last night while watching a news bulletin about the Korean situation. The sight of a Gummy Bear like Kim Jong Un vowing to obliterate… Continue reading
27 Comments George Osborne’s benefits speech – full text
George Osborne’s speech is below. As you will see, it is a bold defence of the government’s policies on tax and welfare, including the 50p rate cut. There was a… Continue reading
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Mixed messages on the minimum wage
The government has managed to upset its own apple cart while trying to walk in a straight line. The indefatigable Paul Waugh inquired about rumours that the government was considering… Continue reading
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George Osborne launches welfare counter-attack
The petition to get Iain Duncan Smith to live on £53/week has amassed more than 122,000 signatures. And counting, quickly. The petition was inspired by IDS remarking, on yesterday’s Today programme,… Continue reading
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Council tax increases, but might councils spend more wisely?
One development that IDS and George Osborne did not dwell upon in their Telegraph piece mentioned earlier was council tax, which, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is due to… Continue reading
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Osborne and IDS promise a ‘better deal’ for working families. But a better deal is not necessarily a good deal
As Fraser says, the welfare changes, cuts to legal aid and so forth, which have come into force today, have got a universal thumbs-down in the left-wing press. I expect… Continue reading
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Sir Andrew Motion, there’s much more to rural life than housing
Five years of living in squalid parts of London has made me appreciate my rural upbringing. I grew up on a small farm on the borders of West Sussex, Surrey… Continue reading
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What to do about Syria? Easter edition
This morning’s Times reports (£) of the arrest of a former US serviceman, Eric Harroun, suspected of assisting Jabat al-Nusra, a jihadist insurgent group in Syria. He has been charged… Continue reading
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William Hague works on the government’s women problem
It beat the baseball cap. William Hague’s trip to the DRC and Rwanda created several wonderful photo opportunities with no less a figure than Angelina Jolie. It would be wrong… Continue reading
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