Camilla Swift

Read and write things. Otherwise, on a horse 🏇🏽💨

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

They talk about encouraging farmers to reinstate hedgerow. Encouraging wildlife; wildflowers

This hedgerow wasn’t perfect. It was established & had heaps of wildlife. Torn out by @HorshamDC

Depressing? Criminal more like

@HorshamTories @wscountytimes @WSCCNews @DefraNature

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

‘Heavily topped tubers’ is surely one for @secondmentions

[David Redvers @dredvers]

This is how you deal with the issue of retraining racehorses. Incentivise horsemen and women and the horses will do the rest.

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

@MrHarryCole @TheSun @ryansabey @kateferguson4 @JackElsom @martinabettt @hoffman_noa @SophiaSleigh 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

[Joe Stanley @JoeWStanley]

Government’s own newly released figures illustrate this.

For eg; 25-45% of English farms LOST money in the last year. Many more worked <minimum wage.

The view of most farmers as wealthy, landed gentry is wrongheaded. This is bad, damaging policy.

3/3

https://t.co/1Hh6aC07I4

[Joe Stanley @JoeWStanley]

If we want to talk about gaslighting, this would be a better example.

The many farmers working at a loss to provide cheap food (as demanded by govts since 1945) will wonder how to pay a massive cash tax on a land asset from negative cash flow without selling that asset.

2/3

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

My Farewell to The Spectator
1/2

It is with great sadness that I write to tell you I am resigning as Chairman of The Spectator, with immediate effect. I made it clear many months ago that I would step down when a new owner took over. That time has now come. 

It has been my immense privilege these past twenty years to have served as your Chairman. During that time we have transformed the oldest magazine in the world, established in the age of the quill pen, into one of the most successful publications of the digital age, growing revenues rapidly across all digital platforms while still maintaining a very healthy print circulation. 

In recent years The Spectator has never been more profitable, its reach never wider, at home and abroad (helped by our splendid Australian and American editions), and its journalism (under the peerless Fraser Nelson) never better nor more influential than it has been in its almost 200-year history. It is a testament to the efforts of everybody in every department, past and present. You should be proud of what you have achieved. I am certainly proud of you. 

A pertinent indicator of these achievements is that a magazine which was given a notional value of £20m two decades ago has been sold for around £100m today (I don’t know the exact price since, in a fit of pique after we stopped Redbird’s Arab-financed takeover, some of us were excluded from the sales process now coming to an end). But at a time when most “legacy” publications are struggling to retain anything like their pre-digital worth, this is an unprecedented increase in value. 

It is sad, even unfair, that nobody responsible for this success — that is, everybody at 22 Old Queen Street — will share in the upside. That is a result of the strange and surprising circumstances, definitely not of our making, we found ourselves in June 2023. Suddenly and without warning we were placed in receivership because our then proprietors had used us as collateral for massive debts unrelated to us (without ever telling us). They then failed to pay these debts. That explains the purgatory we’ve gone through these past 16 months and the peculiar nature of the sales process, in which those who’ve created the added value do not get to share in it. 

It is a tribute to your professionalism and dedication that, throughout these troubled times, you never missed a beat. You continued to publish in print and online as normal. No reader could ever have guessed the internal turmoil we were going through — at one stage there were more external advisers crawling over us than we had employees — because you never deviated from our high standards. 

My proudest recollection will always be the fact that, at a time when legacy print publications were relentlessly cost-cutting and regularly making huge numbers of good people redundant, I did not preside over a single compulsory redundancy in 20 years. Far from shedding folk we were always expanding and hiring. And we did so in a way that turned what once seemed like a largely Eton-Oxbridge fiefdom into probably the most meritocratic publication in the country.

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

@tonisha_miller @horton_official @MrHarryCole Yes, they are - all red grouse are wild. You can’t farm/release them like pheasants or partridge

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

Doing their bit for democracy #dogsatpollingstations

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

@ArtyBagger But they love wee birds!

[Matt Cross @wildforest_matt]

This is how it's done

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

@JAHeale Fame 🌟

[The Spectator @spectator]

'After this morning’s furore, many people have been asking why there are still horses in London today, and questioning whether they ought to be there.'

✍️ Camilla Swift https://t.co/mgJ2HxrfrN

[British Army 🇬🇧 @BritishArmy]

An update following this morning’s incident with Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment horses in London.

Three of our soldiers are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Our horses are also safe, and are undergoing veterinary care. (1/2)

[Scribehound Countryside @scribehound_ctr]

Skijoring cowboys and eagle hunters, Camilla Swift recommends extreme sports for Scribehounders... What is the most niche sport you know that we would love?

#scribehound #countryarticles #extremesports #sports #skijoring #eaglehunters #polo

[The Spectator @spectator]

'Stay the hell out of it.' Andrew Neil's advice on what the government should do with the media

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

👏 👏 well done!

https://t.co/Letc9ipULi

[Fergal O'Brien Racing @FOBRacing]

“And we’ll repeat the scope on Monday to see if the country is improving”

[Camilla Swift @millsswift]

@chamberlinsport 😂 some of them are quite generous with the weights!

[Derek ‘Tommo’ Thompson @tommoracing]

A weekend of fantastic highs and grave lows in our great sport. To see @lucindavrussell win the Edinburgh National & Scottish Champion Chase, to see @PFNicholls visit @MusselburghRace for the first time & have 4 winners following a tough Saturday but then to see him in tears on receiving the news of Keagan Kirkby’s passing. This is the sport we love &, at a time when the concept of humanity & kindness is poor in so many, it is the horses that guide us back to the basic principles of humanity. We do it for them and they do it for us with their enormous hearts. My heartfelt sympathies to all who have experienced tragic loss this weekend.