Society

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 – fixing the NHS in the wrong way, the whining intern and Ed Miliband’s summer of discontent

Are David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt going about fixing the NHS in the wrong way? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, former No.10 advisor Sean Worth and director of Reform Andrew Haldenby discuss Dr J Meirion Thomas’s Spectator cover feature on the problems with the Health Secretary’s plans to reshape the NHS. Is Dr Thomas right in saying we need more focus on training GPs, and not centralised technological solutions? Will the government’s reforms be remembered in 100 years as a landmark moment for the NHS? And do we need more focus on recruiting British doctors, to improve the quality of care? Freddy Gray and the Economist’s Daniel Knowles

J. Meirion

The wrong way to fix the NHS

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is a decent and well-meaning man. He’s genuinely excited about the new, radical reforms planned for the NHS which he announced last weekend. I have been told that Hunt and his old friend David Cameron see this restructuring of the NHS as the next great step, as significant and successful as Gove’s education reform; something the Prime Minister will be remembered for gratefully in 100 years’ time. I’m afraid they’re wrong. If implemented as announced, these plans will be both expensive and ineffective. The main trouble is that Hunt’s NHS revamp will rely on a vast, integrated and enormously complicated IT system. The idea is

Bruce Anderson

Enjoying South Africa’s secret French connection

One aspect of the old South Africa’s racial policies cannot be faulted. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenot refugees arrived at the Cape. Within a few decades, they had been culturally cleansed, abandoning the French language and becoming decent Afrikaners. If only we had possessed the foresight to do something similar in Quebec. But the immigrants were allowed to retain a legacy of their grenouille past: wine-making skills. They planted vineyards around Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, creating a great oeno-phile tradition which still flourishes. The terroirs are in achingly beautiful terrain. Early on my first visit to South Africa, in 1984, I met a chap who had been

Alistair Elliot

Love-making in Water

Seals — well, they rhyme with steel — can stand the cold. And they can even dive and mate at once. They hold their breath; and one knows how to fold his vulnerable parts into the other’s. Even virgin seals don’t need experience to do this properly so no one smothers. We need warm waters — and we might be coy, but sirens can undo our modesty striding across the liquid corduroy. The upright aleph, the round omega line up discreetly in the shining sea. The Indian Ocean lifts him into her. All this might look suspicious from the shore: is it the rollers bobbing up and down? The sex-police

Lucy Vickery

Light touch

In Competition 2810 you were invited to write a light-hearted poem about a serious subject. I suggested you take a look at J.B.S. Haldane’s comic poem ‘Cancer is a funny thing’ to get an idea of what I was after. Another source of inspiration might have been my predecessor Jaspistos, the poet James Michie, who treated the big subjects — life, illness, death — with an exquisitely deft, witty touch. Here is ‘Cancer, or the Biter Bit’,  written shortly before he died: ‘I used to fancy crabmeat as a treat:/ Now Crab’s the epicure, and I’m the meat.’ It was a large entry but the standard was on the patchy

Connie Bensley

Decorous Confessions

Unexpectedly, he made a sober success with his self-published book of decorous confessions. It eschewed turmoil in the bedchamber and coarse descriptions of disarranged clothing, but confided reminiscences — a bird which he’d stolen from a gold cage; a love message intercepted; a trespassing glance glanced, and the dénouement: the day when he took her hand and, with slow avidity, stripped her white kid glove from her warm, willing fingers.

Wednesday

John O'Neill

Unemployment figures: All good news?

Unemployment is down, there are fewer people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, and more people are in work than ever before. So, the top line on today’s employment figures: They’re good news. The real picture is more nuanced. Unemployment is down by 4,000 on the previous quarter, a figure that is dwarfed by the margin of error. We might reasonably expect the real number of unemployed to be anywhere within 85,000 above or below the 2.51 million quoted. There have been nine straight months with fewer people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, but the unemployment rate is still 7.8% – just where it was in August 2012, and a meagre 0.1 percentage points lower than

The Spectator

Interns, stop whingeing!

In this week’s Spectator, Brendan O’Neill turns on unpaid interns who complain about their lot, arguing that they should instead be paying their employers for the opportunity. He attacks the argument that unpaid internships hit working class young people the hardest, when these placements will encourage self-drive, rather than self pity. O’Neill writes: It speaks volumes about the parlous state of modern history teaching that these interns so liberally refer to themselves as ‘slaves’. Anyone who had been taught properly about the Roman era, or about black slavery in early America, or about the Holocaust, would know that there’s rather more to being a slave than being asked by a

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Institute of Directors trial the end of the suit

Is this the end of business attire? The slow degradation of the standard issue suit has reached the Institute of Directors — the Pall Mall-based bastion of all things business. Its website says that members should ‘make the decision on what they would normally wear to do business, as long as it is not deemed indecent.’ So, what does that mean? ‘Members will be permitted to wear jeans, T-shirts, shorts and all variants of footwear. There is a very mixed view about the dress code and this will be for a trial period of 3 months.’ The trial is advanced: my mole says that there have been at least seven

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The creepy cult of Mark Carney

Of all the qualities one hopes for in a Bank of England Governor – a brilliant mind, the courage to tell politicians they are wrong, supernatural foresight – coolness is not among them. I don’t mean coolness under pressure; clearly that helps. I mean the ability to project a hip image. The new Bank of England Governor may well be a terrific economist. More than that, however, he is a first-rate media brand. He’s more Blair than Blair. Hell, he’s more Blair than Cameron. Last weekend, he went to the Wilderness Festival, aka ‘poshstock’, and the press seems to have taken that as proof that things are going to get

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Australia are just New Zealand in disguise (plus Michael Clarke and Ryan Harris)

Thumping Australia is grand; thumping Australia without playing well almost feels like cheating. But in a good way. This is where England find themselves today. The Ashes are safe for another few months and England have not had to be very good to keep them. Which is just as well, frankly, since even though they are unbeaten in 12 tests England are not quite as good a side as they like to think they are. They are good enough to defeat these hapless Australians, however. The Australians are basically New Zealand in disguise. Like New Zealand they are a side good enough to get themselves into good positions but not

Monday

Ed West Ed West

The name game

The ONS have published its list of popular names, and so it’s time for that annual ritual of debating whether Mohammed, if you include all eight spellings, is really the most popular name in Britain. It depends; if you include spelling variations in a name, do you also include diminutives, in which case Oliver and Ollie, and Henry and Harry, outnumber all Mo’s. But then diminutives are sort of separate names where variations are not, Isabella, Lisa and Jack all having started as diminutives, now surely names in their own right. Why on earth does this pedantry pop up? Whether you think Mohammed tops the list says a lot about

Henry Smith

Argentina’s G-20 membership should be revoked

When Argentina appears in British public discourse, it is normally in relation to one of the two ‘f’s – football or the Falklands. The behaviour of President Cristina Kirchner’s regime towards the islanders is nothing short of disgraceful, and it is very encouraging to see the British government supporting the islanders in the strongest terms. The Falklands, for obvious reasons, are top of our agenda when it comes to discussion of Argentina, but this issue should not blind us from other major problems affecting this country as a result of Cristina Kirchner’s belligerence. Kirchner makes no secret of her refusal to play by the same rules as everyone else. Argentina

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Lord Adonis the right man to lead Labour’s Growth Review?

One of the things we know about Labour’s policies is that the Adonis Growth Review is meant to produce a fair few of them. Launched by Ed Miliband last month, the former head of Tony Blair’s Policy Unit’s review is meant to publicly report in spring 2014. When Miliband announced this review, he praised Adonis’s work in reforming public services in the last government. But this positive view of Adonis’ work does not seem to be shared by all the shadow cabinet. In his Guardian interview on Saturday, Andy Burnham said ‘I wasn’t cheerleading for academies.’ Academies were, of course, an Adonis initiative. One other consequence of Adonis heading this

Steerpike Steerpike

Katie Hopkins gets her comeuppance

Former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins, who has become a ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’-style rent-a-quote in middle age, was never going to applaud the appearance of names like Riley, Isla and Mia in the top ten popular baby names of last year. In high dudgeon, she interrupted elevenses to hit the airwaves: ‘These are the sort of names you can hear parents screaming across the playground, screaming because they have not done their home learning, they are the sort of people that choose names like this.’ Hopkins, a professional snob, reiterated that she uses names as ‘a shortcut, a very efficient shortcut to deciding who my children play with.’ Apparently she

Ruth Porter

Social housing needs to be more social

With the recent anniversary of the Beveridge report, TV channels have been packed with an array of documentaries on our welfare system. Most of these have been fairly hopeless, trying to make their points with extreme cases. Channel 4’s ‘How to get a council house’ was a notable exception. With devastating clarity it showed how our social housing system is nothing of the kind. My grandfather, an electrician, spent most of the Second World War on Malta with the RAF. His house in East London was destroyed by bombing during the war. With no home of his own he stayed with relatives when on leave and happily fell in love with my

Sunday

David Blackburn

Jeremy Hunt’s tough talk on the NHS doesn’t address the toughest question of all: what is the purpose of modern medicine?

Jeremy Hunt’s quiet demeanour is deceptive. The Health Secretary has a bit of what my late grandfather called ‘iron in the soul’ – a measure of self-confidence, calculation and the determination not to let the bastards get you down. ‘Iron in the soul’ came in handy during the Burma campaign in the Second World War. And I imagine that it’s vital if one is to prosper as Secretary of State for Health. Hunt was sent to the Department of Health last year in order to clean up the political mess left by Andrew Lansley. Hunt’s tenure has been beset by scandals beyond his or his predecessor’s control – from Mid

Lucy Vickery

Spectator literary competition No. 2812: Bookish

The CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos has said ‘the physical book and bookstores are dead’. This week competitors are invited to celebrate this endangered species and submit a poem (of up to 16 lines) in praise of bookshops. Please email entries  to lucy @ spectator.co.uk by midday on 21 August and mark them Competition 2812. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were asked to submit a letter liberally sprinkled with evidence of an imperfect grasp of foreign languages. There has been already a welcome influx of newcomers, which is great to see. Keep ’em coming.

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Stone the soothsayer

When the history books tell the story of peace in the Middle East, the name of Lord Stone of Blackheath, managing director of Marks & Spencer and a Labour peer, will be up there in lights. For he is a soothsayer with unique insights on the region. At least, that is the impression given by his ‘out of office’ email message: ‘I am in Israel for August back Sept 3rd. I said there’d be talks by then! Peace in 9 months!’ You read it here first.

The Spectator

Being uncharitable

William Shawcross’s comments earlier in the week, following the disclosure that the number of staff at foreign aid charities earning salaries greater than £100,000 a year has grown from 19 to 30 since 2010, caused consternation. The leading article in this week’s Spectator makes two points on the subject. 1). The expansion of the DfID budget has coincided with the growth of executive pay at charities, just as the expansion of the health budget under Blair and Brown coincided with the growth of staff pay in the NHS. Criticism of salaries should never be motivated by envy, but neither the charitable sector nor the NHS has provided adequate results to justify such salaries. HIV and malaria are yet