Like hope, but different

7:33pm

I'm a McCain man. But this take on the Obama 'Yes We Can' video is very funny:

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Where Bush really was a disaster

7:19pm

There's a truly fascinating commentary at Bloomberg, which Andrew Sullivan points to:

With a recession looming, the policy implications of the spending explosion are serious. If a deep recession occurs, we will have less wiggle room. 

To see how different the world could have been, I gathered data from a number of sources and ran an alternative history. In that wishful place, government spending was set equal to the spending envisioned by the Congressional Budget Office in the January 2001 long-run forecast, plus the spending for the war in Iraq and to fight terrorism. This simulation assumes that the war would have happened in spite of Bush's spending promise, and wouldn't have induced him to seek cuts elsewhere.

The difference between that spending path and the one we are on is huge. Today, we expect federal spending in 2008 will be $2.9 trillion. According to the alternative history, spending would be $2.5 trillion.

With spending at the lower level, we would have a surplus of $152 billion if revenue were equal to what it is currently projected to be.

Running the simulation forward, the gap between revenue gets wider and wider. By 2017, we are scheduled to spend almost $1 trillion more than we would have if we had stuck to the Clinton baseline. With the low spending baseline we would have a surplus in 2017 of $1.1 trillion, instead of the $151 billion surplus that's currently forecast.

Think of it this way. If we now had the lower spending levels that Bush inherited, we could extend his tax cuts, repeal the alternative minimum tax, enact the current stimulus package, and still have a 10-year budget surplus of $1.9 trillion. And, remember, that allows spending to be adjusted up for the Iraq war and the war against terrorists. ...Let's see what happens when we allow mandatory spending to go up as it did. This lets Bush have his prescription-drug benefit, which is now part of mandatory spending.

If we had held the line on everything else that is discretionary, we could have had the prescription-drug plan, the Iraq war and the war against terrorists. We could have kept all the Bush tax cuts, made them permanent, repealed the AMT and added the stimulus package and still ended up with a balanced budget from 2008 to 2017.  

It's ironic that so many people accuse Bush of being a disastrous President whose legacy the world will have to live with. Because they are right but also wrong. 

They're wrong because they usually refer to his foreign policy. when in truth he has been right about the biggest issue of all - defending the West from Islamism. 

But they're right, for the wrong reason: he has indeed left an awful legacy to the world - he has been a fiscal disaster.

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I never have, and I never will

6:41pm

That would be me.

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Who cares about facts or research?

10:28am

So, whose opinion would you rather trusts on matters scientific? Scientists whose work is peer reviewed and based on objective evidence? Or a newspaper columnist who has written a diet book? 

According to new research carried out at University College London by the Health Behaviour Research Centre of the charity, Cancer Research UK, and published last week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, there really is such a thing as a fat gene. Researchers who studied 5,000 sets of twins found that genetics has more of an influence on weight than upbringing, exercise and diet. 

...I hate to blithely dismiss a whole swathe of scientific findings but I don’t believe a word of this. Fat gene, my foot. 

I've long wondered what purpose India Knight served. Now it's clear: she offers her readers an entire alternative universe. One based, that is, on utter nonsense. 

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What's the joke?

4:24pm

Clearly, there is a part of me which is not fully British. 

This picture of the gobby Labour MP, Stephen Pound, was taken at last night's Macmillan Cancer Support cabaret.

What is it with the British and drag acts? I just don't get it. Why is it funny to see a man dress up as a woman?

Don't get me wrong - I'm not upset, or angry, or bothered by it. I just don't understand why so many of us find it funny. Danny La Rue, Lily Savage, the lot of them. Why? I mean, why is it funny? What am I missing?

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This is Sharia in Britain, without the courts

4:03pm

Ruth Gledhill has an unmissable post on Rowan Williams. Do read it all. But this leapt out at me: 

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a 'no-go area' for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: 'The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn't want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don't you people write about this?'

My interlocuter went very red and almost started to cry. Instead, she began shouting at me. I was a member of the press. 'You must write about this,' she begged.

'I can't,' I said. 'Not unless you become a whistle-blower. Or give me some evidence. Or something.'

She shook her head. 'I can't be identified,' she said. 'I would be killed. And so would the women.'

So there you have it. After weeks of wondering what to do, inspired by the Archbishop, I've taken her word that she is telling the truth, respected her anonymity, and written it anyway.

And this, I imagine, is what the Archbishop wants for the whole of England. As they used to say in my father's country parish: 'Heaven preserve us!' I wonder what they're saying there today. Expressions somewhat shorter and sweeter, I fear.

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The greatest mistake

3:27pm

Comment Central has a fun competition to determine the greatest mistake in British history. I hate to be dull, but if one is judging post war mistakes, I think Graham Stewart nails it with the very first contribution:

Circular 10/65: When Tony Crosland, Secretary of State for education in 1965, requested local authorities to scrap grammar schools and institute one-size-fits-all comprehensives across the country. This meant having to pay for selective education.

I'm not supposed to be giving any details away, but I have a chapter of my fothcoming book on the infamous Circular 10/65. (It's forthcoming in two senses: that it'll be out this autumn; and that it has still to be completed!)

Mind you, there are some terrific other entries from Times writers. It's difficult to disagree with Matthew Parris (not something I often write!):

1) The First World War
2) The Boer War 
3) The failure of the Irish Home Rule Bill

And Nigel Hawkes is spot on:

And the 1948 centralised structure of the NHS (the high watermark of Stalinist planning) has damaged health care delivery for 60 years. Astonishingly, many people still think this was a good idea. 

But I have to echo Daniel Finkelstein's ultimate choice:

Appeasing Hitler in his early years and allowing him to believe that he could get away with expanding his power.

My undergraduate thesis was on British policy towards Eastern Europe in the 1930s, and I studied it as my special subject for my degree. I found that the more I read and discovered, and the more official documents I saw - Cabinet minutes, FO memos and such like - the more wilfully blind to reality Chamberlain and his followers seemed to be. Somewhat weirdly, if I was asked to name my political villain I would name the son of my political hero - namely Neville Chamberlain, son of Joe Chamberlain, not merely the greatest Prime Minister we never had but one of the greatest political figures of all time. And all the more complex for being very right for most of his career and very wrong for the rest of it.

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The Beth Din and Jewish courts do not make the Archbishop's case

10:45am

Do read Melanie Phillips's commentary on Rowan Williams; it is masterful. 

She also explains why it's quite wrong - as seems now to be happening - to equate the way the Beth Din is treated with the Archbishop's proposals re Sharia law:  

Yes, Jewish religious courts, like sharia courts, deal with such issues as dispute arbitration, family issues, marriage and divorce. But the Jewish courts have never sought official recognition of their rulings, and they are not recognised under English law. Their dispute resolution is informal and voluntary. Their religious marriage and divorce rituals have no status in English law; for the state to recognise their marriages or divorces, Jews have to marry or be divorced according to English law just like everyone else. If sharia courts were to operate in this way, there would be no problem. Why should anyone care, after all, what minorities are doing in the private sphere as long as it doesn’t break the law? But the crucial difference is that such Muslims want their rulings to be accepted by the state as having the same legal authority as English law — and Dr Williams is endorsing this. But it breaks the fundamental precept that Jews have always acknowledged — that as a minority they live under the law of the land and do not seek to change it to accommodate them.  

UPDATE: I am rightly taken to task for confusing masterly and masterful in the above remarks. Mea culpa.

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McCain - a class act

10:24am

John McCain's speech to CPAC yesterday was a masterclass in how to win over a hostile audience. McCain was hardly the first choice of many US conservatives, and there's been a lot of talk about many voting Democrat rather than for a RINO (Republican In Name Only).

So he had one task yesterday - and it was a delicate one. He had to reassure those sceptical conservatives that he was a true conservative, whilst not frightening off the very centre voters that he can attract - his USP.

If you want to watch a class act, have a look at this (and then the second and third extracts). Trust me, it's worth it, whatever your views. As one of the Fox News analysts put it afterwards - he hit it out of the park. 

Part 2 is here and Part 3 here.

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Not if you believe in the Ascension

10:02am

The best comment I've heard on the Rowan Williams affair is from a chap who just called in to Radio Five. 

After saying he was a proper Christian, unlike Rowan Williams, he said:

Jesus Christ will be turning in his grave.

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