4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
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0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews. |
0:06.2 | Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online, |
0:11.5 | along with a free £20 £10,000 or waitrose voucher. |
0:15.0 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
0:31.8 | Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shed a little light from the thought process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. |
0:37.0 | I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. |
0:39.4 | And I'm Lara Prendergars, the Spectator's Executive Editor. |
0:43.3 | In this week's episode, we launched the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or Spaff. |
0:49.7 | We debate whether surrogacy is a lifeline or a sham, and we ask whether smoking is sexy again. |
1:03.8 | First up, British taxpayers' money is flung at a myriad of inane and insane initiatives. |
1:13.1 | Well, so declares Michael Simmons in his cover piece for The Spectator this week. Michael is the Spectator's data editor, and he |
1:18.1 | uncovers the most absurd and egregious examples of Britain's bureaucratic bloat. So, taking |
1:24.5 | inspiration from Elon Musk's Doge, or Department of Government Efficiency in the States, |
1:30.3 | Michael argues that we should have our very own version. |
1:33.8 | And so, the Spectator is launching Spaff, or The Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding. |
1:41.5 | Accompanying Michael's piece is Theo Agnew, who was the government minister for efficiency |
1:46.0 | and transformation, a title which he himself describes as Pythonesque, from 2020 to 2022. In his piece, |
1:53.9 | Theo explains why his mission was always an impossible task. Theo and Michael joined us to discuss. |
1:59.8 | I started by asking Michael where the inspiration |
2:02.1 | for Spaff came from. For anyone who's been following anything that's happened since the US election, |
2:07.8 | it's Elon Musk's Doge, or Department of Government Efficiency. And Elon Musk, for those who don't know, |
2:14.2 | has basically been unleashed by Donald Trump to just go around |
... |
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