The Edition: why Britain stopped working
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the podcast this week: the cost of Britain’s mass worklessness.
According to The Spectator’s calculations, had workforce participation stayed at the same rate as in 2019, the economy would be 1.7 per cent larger now and an end-of-year recession could have been avoided. As things stand, joblessness is coexisting with job vacancies in a way that should be economically impossible, writes Kate Andrews in the cover story. She joins the podcast alongside Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), to debate the problems plaguing Britain’s workforce. (03:11)
Also on the podcast: Lara and Will discuss some of their favourite pieces from the magazine, including Mark Mason’s piece on anti-depressive quality of cricket and Anne Robinson’s fantastic diary. (18:29)
Then: In the arts section of the magazine, Calvin Po writes the lead. He asks whether a Labour government will allow architects to reshape houses as part of their flagship housebuilding plans. Telegraph columnist and author of Home Truths Liam Halligan joins the podcast to discuss Labour’s plans, whether they are realistic and if we can start to build better and more beautifully under a Labour government. (21:32)
And finally: In his column this week Rod Liddle says that smartphones are all too successful and advocates for banning them altogether for children. Interestingly, he argues that we give children smartphones not for their convenience, but for the convenience of parents. He joins the podcast alongside Miranda Wilson, co-founder of Teched Off, a group which campaigns to keep young people safe online. Our editor Fraser Nelson also stops by to give his thoughts. (33:38)
Hosted by William Moore and Lara Prendergast.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
If there are any areas of the magazine that you are particularly interested in or any questions you have for Will and Lara, please email: podcast@spectator.co.uk. We will try and answer as many as we can in next week’s episode.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. |
| 0:07.6 | Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12 week subscription, in print and online, plus a £20 £20,000, Amazon gift voucher, absolutely free. |
| 0:17.3 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:28.9 | Hello and welcome to a slightly new format for the edition podcast. We're going to be talking a little bit more about the magazine, as per usual, but trying to give some insight into the thought process behind putting the spectator to bed each week. |
| 0:42.8 | I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's Executive Editor. |
| 0:45.9 | And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. |
| 0:51.8 | Will, so it's Wednesday afternoon. |
| 0:53.8 | We went to press earlier today at 1.30. Our cover line this |
| 0:57.7 | week is Work Fast, Kate Andrews and Max Jeffrey on the new jobs crisis. So, Will, why don't we |
| 1:04.7 | start by casting our minds back to Monday when we decided this cover? How did we come up with it? |
| 1:13.2 | Well, I think the amount of people in this country who are on out-of-work benefits is something which our editor, Fraser Nelson, |
| 1:17.6 | I think it's fair to say it's a topic which exercises him rather a lot. And I don't think it takes |
| 1:23.6 | much of a push to get him to what to write about it or have it written about in the |
| 1:28.4 | page of The Spectator. And with the budget coming up and everything, it seems like people are |
| 1:33.6 | starting to ask questions about why this country is in a recession, what's caused that? And |
| 1:38.7 | it's the sort of elephant in the room, I think, which a lot of politicians don't want to address. |
| 1:43.4 | Labor don't want to address it. They've got no answer for it. Tories don't know what to do about it. |
| 1:48.1 | So it is not really being talked about as it should. So here we are to talk about it. There's one |
| 1:54.3 | thing that I would love to point out, because it's just one of those little funny quirks, which is |
| 1:58.9 | that Kate and Max have written these pieces for the magazine, |
| 2:02.6 | they've actually shared a cover line once before in History of the Spectator, and by an odd twist |
| 2:07.8 | of fate, or perhaps symbolic of our lack of ideas when it comes to coming up with headlines, |
... |
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