Society

Tuesday

Keith Osborne

Making sense of the housing white paper

Young people, their faces pressed against an estate agent’s window, gaze at all the lovely homes they’ll never, ever be able to buy. That’s the image the communities minister Sajid Javid conjured up while unveiling the government’s long-awaited housing white paper week. This snapshot of young housebuyers’ despair was meant to symbolise a broken housing market where, on average, house prices are nearly eight times average salaries. ‘If we don’t act now,’ the communities minister said, ‘a whole generation could be left behind’. So what did the government propose in its white paper for England, initially intended for publication late last year and then in January 2017? More importantly, will this housing finance reform

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Camp vicars and smug gossips: is this really the Church of England’s best look?

I have mixed feelings about ‘the Reverend Richard Coles’, whose new
memoir I have just read. It’s great that a vicar has such high
 visibility – and why shouldn’t there be one or two luvvie-priests, who
 mix smoothly with celebs? And I have no doubt that he combines this
 with being an excellent parish priest, preaching great sermons,
 patiently attending to the needy (in a way that the rest of us don’t). And yet…how shall I put this? It’s not totally ideal that the most
 famous vicar of our day represents the camp-smug-gossipy wing of the church. His love of vestments and incense and saucy humour is in a 
long and

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Censorious universities are a bigger problem than Stepford students

Have you heard the one about the students who said clapping could cause anxiety? Or the students who banned sombreros? Of course you have. You can’t move these days for tales of Britain’s blue-haired belligerents and their campus war on free speech, ‘fascist’ tabloids and fancy dress. Student leaders have become a national embarrassment – and with good reason. They’ve turned everything that was good about being a student – broadening your mind, having fun, being free – upside down. But it’s become a little too easy to bash students, to pretend that a new generation of so-called ‘snowflakes’ are single-handedly destroying Enlightenment values. Student union politicos are, after all, entirely unrepresentative.

Helen Nugent

Inflation, housing, savers and Rolls-Royce

All eyes are on the latest inflation data, released this morning. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), inflation has reached its highest rate for two-and-a-half years. As measured by the Consumer Prices Index, annual inflation hit 1.8 per cent last month, up from 1.6 per cent in December. This is largely due to the rising cost of fuel, and is the fourth consecutive month that the rate has risen. Statistics from the RAC show that fuel prices peaked at a two-year high in early February. Dominic Baliszewski, director of consumer strategy for Momentum UK, said: ‘A lot of people will be feeling the pinch, with disposable income taking a big hit. This fall in spending

Monday

Helen Monks Takhar

Sign in haste, repent at leisure: Sky Talk hikes prices

You know the feeling. Your head is turned by a good-looking broadband and phone deal but, after a while, things change. You belatedly discover the superficially attractive package included some unappealing habits, like the tendency to ‘review pricing from time to time’. And so the honeymoon would seem to be over for Sky Talk customers lured to switch from other providers by once keener call rates. Some existing Sky Talk customers – Sky won’t say how many – have been told their bills are going up by inflation-busting proportions from April. Line rental and calls to UK landlines are both rising by around 9 per cent from £17.40 to £18.99

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

James Kirkup and Stephen Daisley join Coffee House, as The Spectator’s growth continues

When James Forsyth set up Coffee House ten years ago, we imagined there being a big difference between blogs and magazine articles. We soon worked out that readers didn’t really distinguish. They read a great article on The Spectator website, and that was that. They’d share, and subscribe to read more. Over the years Coffee House has developed into a live comment section boasting up some of the best names in British journalism: Nick Cohen, Douglas Murray, Isabel Hardman, Brendan O’Neill, Alex Massie, Rod Liddle and more. And, soon, two more. I’m delighted to announce that James Kirkup, of the Daily Telegraph, will be joining Coffee House as a regular

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Paul Nuttall tries to manage expectations in Stoke

Ukip are in the midst of an expectation management exercise in Stoke-on-Trent Central. As Paul Nuttall battles to take Tristram Hunt’s old seat from Labour in this month’s by-election, the Ukip leader has said a loss wouldn’t be ‘terminal’ as the constituency is not even in the party’s top 50 target seats. There’s reason for Ukip to get their excuses in early. Despite facing a lacklustre Labour candidate in arch-remainer Gareth Snell (not helped by an over-active Twitter account), Nuttall has hardly been welcomed to the area. The party had hoped for a Brexit boost in the Leave constituency, but the Ukip leader’s decision to list an address he had never been to as ‘home’ on his

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sajid Javid on the green belt, Brexit and his ‘homeless’ childhood

Just before Christmas, Sajid Javid performed a ritual he has observed twice a year throughout his adult life: he read the courtroom scene in The Fountainhead. To Ayn Rand fans, it’s famous: the hero declares his principles and his willingness to be imprisoned for them if need be. As a student, Javid read the passage to his now-wife, but only once — she told him she’d have nothing more to do with him if he tried it again. ‘It’s about the power of the individual,’ he says. ‘About sticking up for your beliefs, against popular opinion. Being that individual that really believes in something and goes for it.’ As Communities

Charles Moore Charles Moore

It’s no surprise that many Brexiteers are feeling anxious

Although I started it, I apologise for prolonging an intercolumnar argument. Matthew Parris (4 February) is surely right that many Brexiteers in past months have been showing signs of anxiety. He attributes this to being ‘secretly, usually unconsciously, terrified that they’ve done the wrong thing’. This may be part of it — it would be a strange person, after making such a momentous decision, who felt no qualms — but I don’t think it is the chief explanation. Our real fear is that, having come so far, we might be cheated of what we thought we had achieved. After the vote on 23 June, many powerful Remain supporters questioned the

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: protest songs for the Donald’s detractors

You were invited to follow in the footsteps of Green Day and Moby and provide Donald Trump’s detractors with a protest song. Where’s Woody Guthrie when you need him, you might ask. Well, as it turns out, the Dust Bowl Troubadour was well acquainted with the Trump family. In the early Fifties Guthrie was a tenant of the Donald’s father, Fred Trump, and the literary scholar Will Kaufman has discovered lyrics he wrote at that time excoriating ‘Old Man Trump’’s racist bigotry. Billy Bragg has set the bar pretty high with his excellent reworking of that other folk icon Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ (‘The Times They Are

Saturday

Douglas Murray

The David Beckham email leak should trouble us all

What would you do if naked pictures emerged of a celebrity you liked? Or one you didn’t? What about a slew of emails that were meant to be private that were hacked and then leaked into the public domain? Would you turn away from them, tutting. Or might you be tempted to read them? Would your inclination to read them increase if you liked the person, or if you really disliked them? We seem confused about all of this at the moment. The leak of David Beckham’s emails has condensed the confusion. Most of us believe that private communications should be private. Most of us believe that people’s private communications

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Does Donald Trump read?

When President Obama left office, he confided that he had got through the eight years of stress by reading. He named some titles. I was surprised he chose V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival over his masterpiece, A House for Mr Biswas, which I count as the best novel written in the 20th century, if such competitive judgments can mean anything. But I so hope he will read it now he has time, because I know he will love and cherish it and reread it 20 times over the coming years. But Barack Obama does not need me to recommend books to him. President Trump does. Has he ever read

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why wouldn’t our NHS saints help a dying man? | 11 February 2017

We all think pretty highly of ourselves these days, free from old-fashioned ideas about sin. We’re good people. And yet… I read in a letter in a local newspaper recently a description of an event in the writer’s own home which shows that we might also be becoming monsters. The letter-writer, Jane, was a lady in her late fifties who cared at home for a husband, Fred, with terminal brain cancer. As Jane’s letter explained, Fred had fallen recently on to the bathroom floor, and as she was unable to lift him, she telephoned for help. Seven medics arrived and rushed to the scene. All seven then stalled. Though Fred

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Britain’s manufacturing boom is now underway

Another week, and more good economic news which has not been awarded the attention it deserves. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released economic growth figures for December, which show a much stronger-than-expected economy. Construction output in December was up 1.8 per cent on November, and 0.6 per cent up on December 2015. Manufacturing output in December was up 2.1 per cent on November and 4.0 per cent up on December 2015. There is encouragement in the export figures, too – which show just how strong a shot in the arm has been provided by the lower pound. In December British firms exported £31.4 billion worth of goods and

Helen Nugent

High street sales, council tax, first-time buyers and spending

Some gloomy data for retailers this morning following the news that the high street has recorded its worst January sales since 2013. According to BDO, like-for-like sales fell by 0.1 per cent. This is the first negative growth in the new year discounting period in four years. The accountancy group added that rising prices and political uncertainty had affected consumer confidence and spending in the busiest two months of the shopping calendar (this includes December). The hardest hit were fashion sales. Council tax Households already feeling the pinch are now facing an increase in council tax. The Daily Mail reports that almost all of England’s town halls have pledged to implement

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Tradewise | 9 February 2017

The Tradewise tournament at Gibraltar has gained a colossal reputation and is even challenging the traditional tournament at Wijk aan Zee (see last week’s column) in terms of playing strength. This year the tournament was graced by our very own Michael Adams and Nigel Short, as well as such illustrious denizens of the international arena as Vassily Ivanchuk, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. Astonishingly, Nakamura succeeded in winning the event for the third year running, having triumphed in a play-off after an initial triple-tie for first place. His first-prize reward was a handsome £23,000. Notes to Nakamura’s last-round victory are based on the excellent comments by former British Chess magazine

Raymond Keene

no. 443

Black to play. This position is from Gledura-Topalov, Gibraltar 2017. Bulgarian grandmaster Veselin Topalov is not the force he used to be, but he played a fine attacking game in Gibraltar, of which this was the conclusion. How did he finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14 February or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Rc1 Last week’s winner Richard Green, Crickhowell, Powys

Peter Jones

Socrates on expertise

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, raises his growth forecasts and suddenly everyone believes the ‘expert’. So is it wrong to say that people ‘have had enough of experts’? Yes, totally wrong. Expertise exists: the question is, with what scope? Socrates dissected the problem. In debates in Athens’ democratic Assembly, he pointed out, topics such as building or ship construction were taken to be the business of builders and shipwrights, and anyone who, though no expert, attempted to give advice in those areas was jeered off the platform. But when the debate moved on to deliberation about a course of action, then ‘any builder, smith, cobbler, merchant or

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Diary – 9 February 2017

February Fill-Dyke. But north Norfolk is dry, at least in terms of rain. Instead we have coastal flooding. Three years ago, a tidal surge caused major damage and destruction to sea defences, wildlife habitats, paths and buildings. Another surge last month was less dramatic but still reached the gate of a friend’s house, set well back, behind marshes and road. It is terrifying to experience this unstoppable force and hear its mighty roar. Whole shingle banks were flicked aside. As a small child, I stood on the cliff top above raging seas in Scarborough, and the storm seemed biblical. You never underestimate the force of nature, and possibly the wrath