Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator

Really? Blimey. It’s been going quite a while you know…

“Do Blackburn and Dale not know anyone at all outside their bubble? ”

I should have thought that was obvious. The being very behind the times and not understanding things the Major government did (DDA 1995 is another glorious example) are also touchstones.

I suspect some of it is deliberate mental airbrushing of the period from 1990-2005, i.e. from when Thatcher went to when the Tories became electable again.

“Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator…”

Well it’s been going since 1828 old fruit and is the country’s oldest political journal.

For one involved in politics, your ignorance is astonishing. Or is it?

I think the author of this post was trying to be funny Stepney. Unfortunately it just looks stupid, especially as the Speccie walks all over the dull-as-dishwater New Statesman week in, week out.

Ignoring the Spectator is to be commended. Once upon a time it was a serious publication but it has become increasingly loopy over the last few years. It really resembles one of those crazy American propaganda rags now. Sad.

“Until recently I was only barely aware of a magazine called the Spectator…

…Have they never heard of Google?”

Hmmm. Nuff said.

The coffee house is festooned with deluded rightwing nerd-ery.

I’ve challenged some of Fraser Nelson’s stuff on there before. Nelson shoehorns and bends statistics in an endless quest to make it seem like conservative economics “works”.

Love the front cover posted above. If ever an image showed how gratuitously the Right misunderstands our relationship with th EU, that is it.

In Private Eye this week, the Things You Seldom See cartoon was this:

“Did you see that interesting article in the Spectator this week?”

Must be doing something right:

Just last year its ABC average circulation was almost 77,000 — the highest ever sale in the magazine’s 180-year history and the 12th consecutive half-year increase.

Before people here started highlighting some of the more bizarre articles from the Spectator, I was aware of only two factoids about it:

1) It is a right-wing, Tory-supporting magazine
2) Boris used to edit it

I suspect this counts as “barely aware”, and I’m not sure why I would’ve needed to know more.

as for #6, if Paul had written an article complaining that the Spectator wasn’t as good as it used to be, that’d be a fair comment. But he didn’t. Dale et al did write an article suggesting nursing training is going down the pan, without really knowing anything about the subject.

This isn’t about political bias. OK, the Spectator’s right wing and anybody who read it would have borne that in mind. But under Boris it was quite a worthwhile read. Under the current lot it’s become rubbish. The same thing has happened to the Telegraph. It’s all about appeasing the Barclay brothers and no-one there cares about the facts.

What I love is the comment above which are basically saying “Yeah, but the New Statesman is worse” – missing the point just a bit. Or the ones complaining that someone has only barely heard of the Spectator. Again, style over content seems to be a constant theme on the Right.

Out of curiosity, where has the edit function gone on the comments?

The Spectator inhabits Planet Melanie.

Planet Melanie is a special planet.

How did this turn up here? Must have a word with the editor bloke.

Yes, the first bit was supposed to be a passing joke, but I’m a socialist so clearly can’t do that kind of thing very well.

I was also intrigued by Melanie Phillips’ view that nurses train for degrees, not because of its move towards higher education started under a Major government, but because of ‘ultra-feminist orthodoxy’.

It’s true. She really said that.

The Spectator used to be a good read whatever its politics but it has gone downhill. It had a rather languid, superior public school tone, but there were witty and clever writers working on it, with a fine command of irony. Now the most read writer on its online edition is the mad humourless wing-nut Melanie Phillips. It’s gone from being gentleman’s club to Daily Mailers frothing in the saloon bar. I’d have thought the old guard would consider her (gulp!) rather American in her puritan earnestness and insane lack of proportion.

It’s all Melanie’s fault. Her malign taint has seeped into the very blood of The Spectator, and turned its formerly pompous-but-readable academic tone into one of debased, irrational hysteria.

How else do we explain Fraser Nelson’s late conversion to vaccine and AIDS denialism?

Melanie is a disease. A virus. She destroys all she touches with her lunatic tendrils. She is no friend of left or right. She is the bringer of journalistic death.

KB player @17:

I agree, from what I’ve seen (I did in fact keep a bit of an eye on it previously, despite my poor humorous protestations to the contrary).

And there’s the worst part. If it’s getting worse, not bothering with basic research anymore and simply aping a rightwing American style, but ALSO (as Stepney happily notes above) increasing its circulation year on year to its highest ever (while solid fact reporting local/regional newspapers of the fact bemoaned by Mobiot in CiF a couple of days back go down the swanny, for example), then it’s all bad news.

And when Sky becomes Fox…………….

Martin @18: Well I wouldn’t go that far, though actually, now you mention it….

I don’t what’s worse, the quality of journalism at The Spectator or comments 1, 3, 4, 6 & 9.

It’s a toss up…

“seemingly unaware that the move to nurse training within higher education rather than hospital-based schools of nursing, started in 1992.”

It probably goes back before then. I started my physics degree in 1983 and at the same time a mate of mine started a nursing degree. I remember when he first said that he was doing a degree I commented (in my youthful ignorance) that I thought that nurses “just learnt it on the job”. Quite rightly, he put me right on that one.

Richard @22: You’re right that there were degrees in nursing in the 1980s in a couple of places (one of the University of London Colleges rings a a bell), but 1992ish (might have have ‘91) was when Project2000 – the systematic move towards Higher Education for nurse training – began.

Which planet do Spectator writers inhabit?

Planet Andrew Neil I guess, as he is the genius behind the Barclays rags.

And Neal has a degree in winuttery in all its forms. Heavily promoting the discredited ‘bell curve’ when he was at the Sunday Times. In addition, he pushed the HIV is not aids theory that came from the nuttiest of wing nuts.

American wingnuttery is his specialty. How the BBC can turn over it’s political coverage to thi fool I don’t know.