Spectator - The Magazine

Balls on everything

, 12 May 2008 19:14:27 GMT

Good old Ed Balls. He has just given a lobby briefing attacking Tory education plans - at least that was his plan. But he ended up speaking about everything under the sun - Cherie's pregnancy, the wickedness of Frank Field, the hopelessness of Crewe, the errors of the 10p Budget, why Labour is "behind the curve" on family finances. He walked into bear trap after bear trap. The lobby loved it, unable to believe their luck. All of this eclipsed his orginal attack message.

As CoffeeHousers know, I'm keen on education]]>

The writing's on the wall

, 11 May 2008 11:13:35 GMT

There is a housing development in Brockley, south east London, with an extraordinary piece of graffiti. “Thanks to Gordon Brown, I will never buy a house,” it says, and in super-large lettering no less. It is not without economic rationale. Brown’s easy-money policy at the Treasury led the Bank of England to chase a dodgy inflation measure - therefore, making credit too cheap, and, therefore, inflating an asset bubble. Also Brown’s failure to reform planning laws put an artificial restriction on supply of UK housing in the face of ever-rising demand. But is]]>

Obama wins big in North Carolina while Clinton edges home in Indiana

, 07 May 2008 08:27:40 GMT

It might have been a split decision but with Obama winning North Carolina by 14 points and coming within twenty-odd thousand votes of Clinton in Indiana it was an emphatic points victory for Obama that puts him on the brink of winning the nomination. Hillary Clinton’s downbeat appearance tonight suggested that she knows the game is almost up.

On Tuesday morning, the rough metric everyone was using was would Clinton win Indiana by more than Obama won North Carolina. In the end, there was no contest: North Carolina was called]]>

Pete suggests

, 07 May 2008 02:29:31 GMT

BOOKS

If you're looking to keep up-to-speed with all things Web 2.0, then you could do worse than read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody. Like, say, Wikinomics, it's replete with information about the power of the internet and mass-collaboration. However, it also pays attention to the problems of the new, social dynamics. Perhaps the key text on all of this.

MUSIC

It's been out for a month-or-so now, but Muse's live album Haarp is still a frequent port-of-call on my iPod. Like marmite, the Devonshire three-piece are a love-hate thing –]]>

Not the marrying type

, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Those days are gone in which romantic novels had heroines called Muriel. Even on first publication 84 years ago, The Crowded Street was not a conventional romantic novel nor Muriel Hammond a conventional heroine — but the former embraces elements of romance, the latter aspects of heroism. The subversion of our expectations of heroism and romance provides the dynamic of Winifred Holtby’s second novel, originally published in 1924.

The Crowded Street is a family saga, comedy of manners and roman à clef. It tells the story of Muriel Hammond, from schoolgirl to maturity. The Hammonds inhabit the determinedly genteel Yorkshire]]>

Emperor Soros’s new clothes

, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If nothing else, three decades as one of the world’s most successful speculators has taught George Soros how to pitch a book. While the main title of his latest work, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, might not be the kind of thing to get Waterstone’s managers clearing their shelves, its subtitle — The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means — makes it bang up to date. Even better, Soros rushed it out as a digital download within days of the final words being penned. The implication was that the world couldn’t possibly wait until 19 May —]]>

Another Voice

, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

‘You have reminded me, Mr Speaker, that for a minister resigning, permission to make a Personal Statement to the House is granted entirely at your discretion and should be of an explanatory nature. With the speech of the Noble Lord, Lord Howe, in mind, I too will keep mine short: to a thousand words. Members opposite will forgive me if the burden of what I have to say is addressed to my own party even if the implications are perhaps of interest to a wider audience.

‘I can no longer serve as a minister in this Cabinet. I have come]]>

An unassuming genius

, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The great director and critic François Truffaut once labelled James Stewart as one of those rare actors who could be ‘moving and amusing within the same scene’. Quite so. On the one hand, Stewart — angular, lanky, and awkward in action and speech — was made for comedy. That meandering drawl alone is enough to get punters giggling in their seats, ‘W...w...w...well, golly.’ But on the other, he was capable of such sincerity of expression that none of his physical quirks matters. Make no mistake, he’s a truly great actor. And perhaps the only one who could make us believe]]>

Train strain

, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Bank holiday Saturday afternoon and I’m standing in a jam-packed railway carriage bound for Cardiff in Wales. If I lift my head, my face is in my nearest neighbour’s face, so I’m contemplating my feet. A Welsh woman somewhere is holding a long and intimate telephone conversation in a voice loud enough for all in the carriage to follow it. ‘My little one-stop shop? Is that what he called me? I’ll kill him. If I’m his little one-stop shop, then he’s Kwik Fit — and you can tell him I said that.’

I’m going to Cardiff to look at]]>