Society

How much of a role should the government have in building homes? The vogue these days is for talking about localist solutions and helping the private sector to grow, but today Danny Alexander signalled a significant shift in the other direction. As he launched the 2014 National Infrastructure Plan, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said he was examining how the state could commission and pay for new developments itself. The government is already building 10,000 homes at former RAF base Northstowe in Cambridgeshire, which is the first instance of the government working as a developer. Alexander said: ‘An idea I’ve been promoting is direct government commissioning of housing. The

From NEWS OF THE WEEK, The Spectator, 5 December 1914: THE King has been at the front during the past week, and as we write is still there. Indeed, it was stated in Friday’s newspapers that the visit, which has proved eminently satisfactory from every point of view, is likely to be further prolonged. We sincerely hope that this may be found possible. That the King is exceedingly glad to be at the front no one will of course doubt for a moment. It is equally certain that it is a great pleasure and source of satisfaction to the Generals, officers, and rank-and-file of the Army to see His Majesty

After the Bristol Heart Scandal in the 1990’s, the speciality of cardiac surgery rose to the occasion, leading the way in publishing individual surgeon’s mortality figures and self-audit, which made it perhaps the most transparent speciality in the UK, and thus consolidating its long-held position as a world leader in the training of surgeons and patient safety. Professor Bruce Keogh, head of NHS England, recently announced that NHS surgeons will now be asked to submit their mortality data online to public scrutiny, and failure to do so will result in medical purgatory. The cardiac surgery experience suggests that ‘league tables’ will improve outcomes; I disagree. The public deserves competence from

The Shadow Education Secretary is suggesting that private schools provide qualified teachers to help deliver specialist subject knowledge to state schools. It’s depressing that they don’t all already have in-house specialists. Not surprising though, according to Terence Kealey, who argued in 1991 that the state should never have got involved in education in the first place: Ever since St Augustine had founded King’s School, Canterbury in AD 597, charitable church schools had flourished. They were rarely short of sponsors. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for example, was raising no less than £10,000 p.a in London alone in 1719. New societies continued to be formed… But the Commons did not

I’m not sure why everyone is so enraged by the pictures of fighting, shouting and arrests from Black Friday. British people have been exhibiting this sort of behaviour for years, whether it be at the open doors of a shop holding a sale or even trying to get into a Tube carriage (I was elbowed in the stomach on Monday morning by someone who clearly had a very important meeting to get to). When Primark opened its Oxford Street store in 2007, there was the most absurd stampede of thousands of screaming shoppers into the building, as though they were being chased in by some enormous monster. Instead, it turned

Say this about about Black Friday — the celebration of cheap shopping that we mark today — it isn’t a fraud. It’s not a consumer festival dressed as religious festival, as Christmas is for most of us. It’s a consumer fest dressed as a consumer fest. But it’s still disgusting, an American import we can certainly do without. It brings out the worst in us. Already this morning, fights have broken out between mad British bargain hunters. A few years ago, a shopping mall security guard in America was trampled to death by hordes of desperate consumers. Cyber Monday, in three days time, when we all buy stuff online, may be