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The Spectator

14 August 2021 Aus

Zero-sum game

Why the government won’t talk about the real costs of decarbonisation

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Australia

Leading article Australia

Mandy & the IPCC

Floods, hurricanes, disaster, disease, drought, rising sea levels: you name it, it’s all there in the latest doom-laden tome from…

Australian Columnists

Brown Study

Brown study

The Commonwealth government is at it again, doling out money for a fashionable cause and without any need being demonstrated,…

Latham's Law

Latham’s law

Rupert, keep an eye on your bunny rabbit Obsessiveness is one of the most fascinating and under-reported aspects of human…

Australian Features

Features Australia

What did you do in the Cold War, Xi?

Future revisionists will have a field day

Features Australia

Boris in not-so-hot water

The Johnson government’s green policies are in tatters

Features Australia

The National Cabinet is a disaster

The PM has created a presidential role for himself

Features Australia

Freedom on the march

Why I will continue protesting against the lockdowns

Features Australia

Caught with their pants down

National Cabinet’s Faustian bargain

Features

Features

How the ‘Nixon shock’ reshaped our economy

Fifty years on, we’re still counting the cost of the ‘Nixon shock’

Features

The great holiday Covid test rip-off

The great holiday Covid test rip-off

Features

Cuomo, Trump and the secret of eternal political life

There are many in Donald Trump’s inner circle who have tried to read his mind these past four years, together…

Notes on...

Will Sizewell C see off the avocet?

There are many reasons why birds disappear — and why they return. The avocet, however, is probably the only one…

Features

Who’d want to move to America now?

Why would anyone move to the US?

Features

In defence of net zero: yes, we can afford it

Ending emissions will cost less than tackling Covid

Features

The true cost of net zero

Why the government won’t talk about the real costs of decarbonisation

The Week

Ancient and modern

The timeless appeal of Latin

The government’s promise to fund a pilot scheme promoting the teaching of Latin in secondary schools is music to the…

Barometer

How many alpacas are there in Britain?

Woolly thinking There were protests in Whitehall to save Geronimo, an alpaca due to be put down after testing positive…

Letters

Letters: Why aren’t Italians fighting for their liberty?

Wage concern Sir: Martin Vander Weyer’s call for higher wages to end the shortage of British HGV drivers (‘Your country…

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week: Cameron’s cash, A-grades abound and Tower Bridge won’t budge

Home With less frightening domestic data on the coronavirus pandemic to ponder, subjects such as the rivalry between Boris Johnson,…

Diary

Why shouldn’t we worship the NHS?

For obvious reasons, stocks in ex-editors of The Spectator are experiencing an all-time low. But my own complaint is with…

Leading article

Working from home is a decision for businesses, not government

After seizing so much power during the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s government is having trouble working out where its remit now…

Columnists

The Spectator's Notes

What ministers won’t admit about A-levels

The tale of A-levels shows how ministers can sometimes find themselves in a position when it is simply too dangerous…

Columns

Why vaccine passports are pointless

Despite having mocked app-happy Albion in my last column, I finally downloaded the NHS app. (Lest I seem a raging…

Columns

Will anyone publish my rabbit tale?

The literary sensation of the season is apparently a book called The Constant Rabbit, by Jasper Fforde. In brief, a…

Columns

The National Trust has lost the language of architecture

Press officers, breathe easy. This is not another column attacking the National Trust. Actually, I tell a lie. It is.…

Columns

How to burst the grade inflation bubble

The Tories regard a return to rigorously marked exams as one of their big achievements in education. In 2010, the…

Any other business

Why filling Santa’s sack will cost more this year

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey looks increasingly uncomfortable as inflation notches upwards from ‘nothing to worry about’ towards the…

Books

Australian Books

Hooray for Hollywood

Real cities have something else, some individual bony structure under the muck. Los Angeles has Hollywood – and hates it.…

More from Books

The poet with many lives

This is an ingenious and infuriating book about an ingenious and infuriating writer. I first encountered Fernando Pessoa in the…

More from Books

Keeping yourself angry, the Hare way: We Travelled, by David Hare, reviewed

A character in David Hare’s Skylight claims she has at last found contentment by no longer opening newspapers or watching…

More from Books

Oliver Cromwell: ruthless in battle – but nice to his men

One of the first retrospective accounts of Oliver Cromwell’s early career, Andrew Marvell’s ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from…

More from Books

How we did the locomotion: A Brief History of Motion, by Tom Standage, reviewed

Audi will make no more fuel engines after 2035. So that’s the end of the Age of Combustion, signalled by…

More from Books

The roots of conflict: The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak, reviewed

The Island of Missing Trees feels like a strange title until you realise how hard Elif Shafak makes trees work…

More from Books

David Keenan, literary disruptor in chief

Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in…

Lead book review

Churchill as villain – but is this a character assassination too far?

Revisionist biographies of Churchill are nothing new but this one lays the hostility and contempt on with a trowel, says Andrew Roberts

More from Books

Nazis and Nordics: the latest crime fiction reviewed

Social historians of the future may look back at the reading habits of this era and conclude that we were…

More from Books

Borges: the man and the brand

‘The story that Jay Parini recounts in Borges and Me is untrue,’ a recent letter in the TLS claimed, ‘and…

More from Books

More than one bad apple: the sorry demise of English cider

Can you imagine if, in the 20th century, wine producers in France had switched from a product made (almost) entirely…

More from Books

It all started with Dracula

The title of the journalist Paul Kenyon’s second book on crazy leadership, Children of the Night, leaves the reader in…

More from Books

The musical gravy train: Leaving The Building, by Eamonn Forde, reviewed

Musicians cast a long cultural shadow. Politicians may wield considerable power in their time, but although today’s young people are…

Arts

Australian Arts

Aden Young

No one has any guarantee of seeing Sigrid Thornton in Lifespan of a Fact with the Sydney Theatre Company now…

Television

A total mess: BBC2's The Watch reviewed

Last Sunday on Channel 4, a man called Eric Nicoli proudly remembered ‘the bravest thing I’ve ever done’. In November…

Arts feature

The death of the Edinburgh Fringe

Lloyd Evans finds the newly returned Edinburgh Fringe quieter, more low-key — and all the better for it

Theatre

Sinatra, Bacon and a YouTube star: Edinburgh Fringe Festival round-up

Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…

The Listener

Hugely unmemorable: Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever reviewed

Grade: C+ Time to get the razor out again — Billie’s back. The slurred and affected can’t-be-arsed-to-get-out-of-bed vocals. The relentless,…

Cinema

The best Cold War thriller I've seen that I fully understand: The Courier reviewed

The Courier is a Cold War spy thriller and the prospect of a Cold War spy thriller always makes my…

Exhibitions

Glorious: Bernardo Bellotto at the National Gallery reviewed

What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…

Radio

Why do I find sketch shows – even the better ones – so embarrassing and charmless?

On sketch shows, the wisdom once was that you needed a punchline. That is, a slightly hammy, summative sign-off to…

Life

Aussie Life

Aussie Life

At time of writing, Australia is sixth on the Tokyo medal ladder and with only one day of competition left…

Aussie Life

Aussie Language

In December the various dictionaries will announce their choice for the Word of the Year title. For a while I…

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How do I stop my husband repeating himself?

Q. A very old friend has rented a holiday house and invited my husband and me to stay. The property…

No sacred cows

I took my wife to a Millwall match – and it didn’t go well

The fighting started just as Caroline turned right on to the Uxbridge Road after emerging from QPR’s stadium on Loftus…

Drink

The wine that made me change my mind about Valpolicella

There was a marvellous general of yesteryear called George Burns. He had a good war and a splendid peace. He…

The Wiki Man

Why cocktails are superior to wine

I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…

Mind your language

The dramatic evolution of ‘actor’

‘That chap in Line of Duty. That’s what I’d call a bad actor,’ said my husband with vague certainty. He…

Real life

Why I’m thanking God, my immune system and garlic

‘Contact a GP if you’re worried about symptoms four weeks after having Covid.’ That was the NHS quote on the…

Competition

Spectator competition winners: Nursery rhymes for the pandemic

In Competition No. 3211 you were invited to submit a nursery rhyme inspired by the pandemic. When I set this…

Crossword

2519: Not so up-to-date

One clued solution can precede each unclued light (four of two words and one of three), all to be found…

Crossword solution

2516: Such childish vocabulary - solution

The unclued lights are the nouns from the opening sentence of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. TAFFETA was…

Low life

From ferreter to animal-rights champion

I was sitting quite still at the typewriter when a plump mouse emerged from under the fridge and crossed the…

Chess puzzle

No. 666

White to play. Abdusattorov–Durarbayli, Sochi 2021. The endgame looks tricky, but White found a way to force a quick mate.…

High life

The Olympics have become a celebration of human frailty

Coronis Embracing one’s vulnerability seems to have replaced the higher, faster, stronger ethos of the Olympics. The very frailty that…

Chess

Calculated risks

Two years ago, the brilliant young Polish player Jan-Krzysztof Duda made a baffling decision. In the second game of his…

Bridge

Bridge | 14 August 2021

Most of us have lost a year and a bit, but hopefully we will get back to normal (bridgewise) fairly…