My blog's new home

This is my last blog-post for the Spectator. I have decided to expand and develop my own website over the coming months, and so if you would like to continue to read my blog you can find it at melaniephillips.com.

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Public regulation and private squalor

Amidst widespread horror at the revelations by BBC TV Panorama of shocking systematic abuse at residential home for people with learning disabilities, the Prime Minister’s office has asked for an account of what various official agencies knew about the place. Squarely in the frame is the care homes regulator the Care Quality Commission, which clearly has many questions to answer. The Guardian reports:

The CQC, which failed to follow up tip-offs from a whistleblower who then contacted Panorama, has admitted its mistakes were ‘unforgivable’.

Putting aside the permanent moral stain on British society caused by its neglect and worse of elderly or handicapped people (far more effort is put into Bowdlerising the language than caring for those considered to be not fully functioning members of the human race), the question is whether regulators in general do what...

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The floating theatre of the jihad (part two)

Two things are due to happen in Gaza in June.

The first is that a second shopping mall is due to open. According to Khaled abu Toameh, this will house a huge supermarket, clothes and gift shops, a large restaurant, a modern coffee shop, a cinema and entertainment sites for children. This complements the first mall that opened last year, as well as the gourmet restaurants that are already turning Gaza into a magnet for the discerning Arab foodie.

The second thing that is planned to happen is the arrival of another huge flotilla carrying ‘humanitarian supplies’ to relieve the, er, starvation and destitution in Gaza. Last time, the ‘humanitarian’ medical supplies on board the flotilla were revealed to be well past their use-by date. This time round, maybe the organisers want instead...

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Cameron drinks the Kool-Aid

The Times (£) says that David Cameron’s decision to step down from being a patron of the Jewish National Fund shows the British government is becoming cool on Israel.

You don’t say. Any cooler and it would be frostbite territory.

Precisely why Britain’s Conservative-led government has drunk so deeply of the anti-Israel Kool-Aid isn’t clear. Sucking up to Obama? Muslim demographics in the UK?  Part of Cameron’s hopey-changey-lefty-loopy repositioning of the Tory Party? Yet another bone tossed to the blood-libelling knitted organic vegan victimologists, aka his LibDem coalition partners?

Whatever. Who cares. The unpalatable fact is that Britain has now reverted well and truly to type in professing with hand on heart an unbreakable bond of brotherhood with Israel while cutting it off at the knees, sliding a stiletto between its shoulder blades and bashing its head in.

The...

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Even Obama's ineptitude cannot mask his profound hostility

In a particularly authoritative analysis, Charles Krauthammer identifies the extent of the threat posed by Obama to Israel’s interests  in his ‘1967 lines’ speech and subsequent remarks:

Note how Obama has undermined Israel’s negotiating position. He is demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited its claim to the territory won in the ’67 war — its only bargaining chip. Remember: That ’67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter are Palestinian — alien territory for which Israel must now bargain.

The very idea that Judaism’s holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically or demographically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of

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A joyous production

On Tuesday evening, I went to the first night of Richard Bean’s new play at London’s National Theatre, One Man, Two Guvnors. It fully deserves the rave reviews it has received (see here,  here and here): it is pure joy. Based on Carlo Goldoni’s Commedia dell'Arte farce The Servant of Two Masters, it is a glorious fusion of physical slapstick, verbal wit and magnificent performances -- and brilliant direction by Nicholas Hytner.

I have written about Richard Bean before. He is that rarest of rare creatures, a fully paid-up member of the artistic world who (maybe because of his previous life as an occupational psychologist) is a courageous independent thinker. It was he who, having been attacked by the usual lobotomised pc crowd over his multicultural play England People Very Nice, then chose to take on the...

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