In this week's Spectator
11:41am
The latest issue of the Spectator is released today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online now.
Five articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users:
The idea of President Blair has seen the re-emergence of the Tories’ Blair complex. James Forsyth argues that the Tories’ attempts to scupper the advent of President Blair pay their target the highest compliment; Blair will be flattered.
Christina Lamb has witnessed over 20 years of war in Afghanistan. She has always maintained that the answer to the war on terror’s Afghan dimension was to send more troops. Now, after 8 years of fighting and no end in sight, she has changed her mind. Victory is not an option.
Whether it is the Mayans’ predictions or the soothsayings of bizarre Christian sects, it seemed we doomed to imminent destruction. Rod Liddle wonders where this yearning for catastrophe comes from. It seems to exist inside most of us, even those who are sane.
The only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. Americans taking offence on behalf of poor ‘victimised’ foreigners is offensive — to Toby Young.
And Marianne Gray discovers how Ben Whishaw finds an affinity with the very varied characters he plays.
Additionally, all of last week's issue has now been uploaded to the website. Here is a selection of articles from it:
Douglas Davis asks who is Richard Goldstone to judge.
Charles Moore reflects on his relationship with Nothing British.
Peter Jones believes that parliament is self-serving.
Olivia Cole celebrates extremes.
And Philip Hensher reviews David Kynaston’s Voices of Change.
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Frank P
October 29th, 2009 12:03pm Report this commentWhy the commercial - figures going south?
Tiberius
October 29th, 2009 1:52pm Report this commentActivity on the blog is low this morning. Are posters waiting for Neathergate 4.0?
Peter From Maidstone
October 29th, 2009 3:34pm Report this commentWell I sort of was. We had been promised something. I don't really care about the expenses scandal. It seems the least of our problems. It seems to me to be down to the economy, immigration and Afghanistan. Does anything else matter if those aren't fixed?
logdon
October 30th, 2009 6:49pm Report this commentHere's an item from Glen Beck at Fox.
Should cheer us all up hot on the heels of Neather.
Funny isn't it? They'll perpetrate this appalling breach of privacy on innocent middle class whites yet the Alahu Akhbar brigade seem to walk scot free.
Hmmm.... I wonder why?
GLENN: You know, I've been talking to you and now we have the proof that it's why the phone doesn't ring on the set of the TV show. The I've been telling you that we are headed for a, worse than a nanny state. We are headed for some gigantic government and a global government that is just frightening. And people say, oh, Glenn Beck, he's a conspiracy theorist. No, no, let me not talk to you about the things that could happen. Let me show you the things that are happening in the U.K..
After Jenny Paton, a 40 year old mother of three in Poole, England, tried to enroll her daughter in the neighborhood school, the local education department began, the local education department, began spying on her to prove that she had applied under a false address. She hadn't. The investigation included an examination of Poole's telephone records and three weeks of secretly following and photographing her and her children—all without court approval. It is now perfectly legal under the regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which gives 474 local governments and 318 agencies in the U.K. the unilateral authority to conduct covert surveillance of anyone they choose. According to the country's chief surveillance commissioner the country's chief surveillance commissioner they do so about 10,000 times a year often for trivial offenses like failing to recycle. Usually the targets are unaware of snooping. Paton found it out only after officials showed her a report. By her account they said my privacy wasn't intruded because the surveillance was covert. Now, this is from Reason magazine and I you know, we all thought here, okay, it's Reason magazine, that's a libertarian, that's got, okay, all right, well, they are just no. This article was based on this article in the New York Times. Britain's wary of surveillance in minor cases. It talks about how they obtained her billing records and for more than three weeks in 2008 an officer from the pool education department followed her, her children, taking pictures of her children and, quote, the target vehicle. Local governments quoting the New York Times regularly use these surveillance powers which they self self authorize without oversight from judges or law enforcement officers to investigate malfeasance like illegally dumping industrial waste, loan sharking and falsely claiming welfare benefits. But they also use them to investigate noise pollution, people who don't clean up their dog's waste, local governments use them to catch people who are failing to recycle. People who put their trash out too early, people who sell fireworks without a license, people whose dogs bark too loudly or illegally operate taxicabs. America, this is the Fabian Society plan of the early 20th century happening in England. It is the Wilson plan that is happening now in America. The Fabian Society and the socialists and the communists have been ahead of us in England, but we are rapidly closing the gap. When you have Michael Bloomberg saying that he's putting camera and surveillance all over New York, a Republican saying he's going to put these surveillance cameras all over New York just like they have lo and behold in England, and he follows it with a statement, "We just can't have people believing that they can just go anywhere they want."
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