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1 month ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Katy Balls |Michael Simmons
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall but his spirit lives on. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has repurposed Cummings’s call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ as a plea for ‘innovators and disruptors’. Downing Street this month launched an ‘AI Ideas’ competition in pursuit of bright sparks. A hackathon will follow. In No. 10 and 11, aides channel Cummings’s language as they talk of acting as an...
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Katy Balls |Michael Simmons
Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall but his spirit lives on. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has repurposed Cummings’s call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ as a plea for ‘innovators and disruptors’. Downing Street this month launched an ‘AI Ideas’ competition in pursuit of bright sparks. A hackathon will follow.
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2 months ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Simmons
All too often, the Prime Minister recently lamented, Britain’s public servants are happy languishing in the ‘tepid bath of managed decline’. There is, however, one area in which Britain’s public servants are dynamic, innovative and world–leading: at spaffing gazillions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on wasteful projects which are variously inane, insane and indefensible. The
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
spectator.com.au | Michael Simmons
Eyebrows were raised in the House of Lords this week as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee heard evidence that the Ministry of Justice is having to recruit from overseas to staff Britain’s overcrowded jails.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Simmons
Eyebrows were raised in the House of Lords this week as the Justice and Home Affairs Committee heard evidence that the Ministry of Justice is having to recruit from overseas to staff Britain’s overcrowded jails.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Simmons
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, born two weeks after the first iPhone was unveiled, stormed the Professional Darts Corporation world championships last week to become, at 17, the sport’s youngest ever world champion. How Littler behaved after his win shows how different young sports stars are today. Littler didn’t celebrate by going out drinking; no hotel rooms were trashed. Instead, within hours of his quarter- and...
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
spectator.com.au | Michael Simmons
Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler, born two weeks after the first iPhone was unveiled, stormed the Professional Darts Corporation world championships last week to become, at 17, the sport’s youngest ever world champion. How Littler behaved after his win shows how different young sports stars are today. Littler didn’t celebrate by going out drinking; no hotel rooms were trashed.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Simmons
Muhammed topped the list of most popular boy’s baby names in England and Wales last year, knocking Noah from first place. The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics this morning, show that Muhammed was the most common name given to newborn boys last year; 4,661 boys were named Muhammed with 4,382 Noahs. The year before there were 4,586 Noahs and 4,177 Muhammeds. When you analyse the names by different spelling, though, it becomes clear just how popular the name is.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Michael Simmons
Muhammad topped the list of most popular boy’s baby names in England and Wales last year, knocking Noah from first place. The figures, released by the Office for National Statistics this morning, show that Muhammad was the most common name given to newborn boys last year; 4,661 boys were named Muhammad with 4,382 Noahs.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Michael Simmons
There are not many phrases that offend me more than ‘pigs in blankets’. The correct name for this dish is, of course, kilted sausages. In fact, the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage has many incorrect names: the Irish go with kilted soldiers while the Germans call them Bernese sausages. The Americans for some reason wrap hotdogs in croissant pastry and call them saucisson en croûte, as though they’re some kind of European delicacy, à la Escoffier.
