Society

Saturday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Don’t ban Frosties: teach children the life skills they need to make choices

What a very sensible idea from a group of more than 200 MPs in today’s FT: teach children about personal finance. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People wants financial education to become a compulsory part of the curriculum, with banks visiting classrooms. The idea that Natwest and Barclays could send their representatives into classrooms is obviously not enormously palatable to everyone, with critics arguing that this is just another route for big business to indoctrinate innocent minds. But consider this: research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found a lack of financial education costs the taxpayer £3.4 billion a year in debt, mis-sold financial

Simon Hoggart

January Wine Club | 5 January 2013

I’ve always been baffled by the French attitude to wine. Either they drink too much or too little. When I was a student, a long time ago, I spent some months travelling around the country, including a few weeks at the house of a friend of a friend of my father. Every day my host drank an entire litre bottle of red — probably Algerian — with his lunch and another litre bottle with dinner. I would have been insensible, round the clock. But if you were in a restaurant, people would assume that a single bottle was ample for three or four diners, possibly preceded by a small scotch.

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Parts of the Left are beginning to realise that they got the family wrong

One of the more interesting trends in British politics in the last few years has been sections of the left realising that the cultural changes of the 1960s and 70s too often chucked the baby out with the bathwater. Today, Diane Abbott has given an interview to Patrick Wintour in which she calls for more support for the family; arguing that stable families are the best way of preventing social breakdown. She also concedes that feminists were too ‘ambivalent’ about the family. Interestingly, Abbott also comes out in favour of school uniforms. She points out that they are a check against materialism and the designer label arms race. Now, I

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: Means-testing Child Benefit

George Osborne’s removal of child benefit from high-earners kicks in on Monday, but what exactly does it entail? Who loses what? Initially, Osborne’s plan was ‘to remove child benefit from families with a higher rate taxpayer’, as he announced in the Spending Review of October 2010. (This year, that’d be anyone earning over £42,475.) But after criticism that this would hit too many people, and that it would create a ‘cliff-edge effect’ (whereby someone earning £42,475 would keep all their Child Benefit but someone earning £42,476 would lose it all, so the lower-earner would end up better-off), Osborne changed his mind. In his Budget of March 2012, the Chancellor announced

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Andrew Sullivan’s Declaration of Independence – Spectator Blogs

The big news of the new year – for those of us in the online world anyway – is that Andrew Sullivan is leaving Tina Brown’s Daily Beast and taking his blog independent again. I’m not sure anyone should be surprised by this. Although Sullivan’s site has been hosted by a succession of media “brands” his own “brand” has become steadily stronger than those of his hosts. You weren’t reading Time or the Atlantic or the Daily Beast you were reading Andrew Sullivan and it just happened that these other organisations were kind enough to host Sullivan and his team. They may have helped Andrew’s audience increase but it was increasing anyway.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Happy New Year | 4 January 2013

I hope you all had a splendid Christmas and New Year. Mine was, if you care about these things, more eventful and hectic than I’d planned or otherwise anticipated. Each January I tend to have a Wodehouse Week, returning to the great man for cheery sustenance in the bleak midwinter.  It will be a rum thing, reading Wodehouse while engaged to be married. Anyway, back on the grid now and the great thing about writing and blogging is that it’s a commendable distraction from wedding planning. The grindstone never seemed so appealing. Time too, I suppose, to post the answers to my Christmas Quiz. So here they are. Hope you

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour revisits old welfare ghosts with its jobs guarantee

Dig out the bunting, fly the red flags in celebration, for finally we have a policy from the Labour party. Ed Miliband promised that 2013 would be the year he’d set out some ‘concrete steps‘ on key policy areas, and to that end he’s announced a jobs guarantee for the long-term unemployed. Coffee House readers will already be familiar with this scheme, as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne discussed it in his interview on this site in December. But Miliband and Ed Balls have given the details today, with Balls writing an op-ed for PoliticsHome that says: A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Special Ks

London has seen three World Championship matches in the post-war period, Kasparov-Karpov 1986, Kasparov-Short 1993 and Kasparov-Kramnik 2000. The game I have chosen to start the new year is Kasparov’s most convincing win from his 1986 title defence at the Park Lane Hotel, a match opened by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and closed by her predecessor, former Prime Minister James Callaghan. The position is taken from the historic encounter 14 years later, when Kasparov lost his title to the up-and-coming Vladimir Kramnik. Next week I shall focus on games, results and critical positions from the 4th London Classic, which concluded last month. Kasparov-Karpov; World Championship London (Game 4)

Taki

High life | 3 January 2013

Lanza is a noble Sicilian name which I believe appears in Il Gattopardo, Lampedusa’s immortal tale of changing times in Sicily during the 1850s. Prince Raimondo Lanza was one of Gianni Agnelli’s best friends, until he threw himself off a Roman balcony while suffering a cocaine overdose. I knew him slightly. His brother Galvano, whom I knew better, lived a long life, some might say a quite useless one, remaining in his family’s ancient and run-down Sicilian property reading books on Napoleon non-stop. One might say it was a life straight out of Bertolucci’s brilliant film 1900. I liked the Lanza brothers because I had never before met such cynical

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 3 January 2013

I’ve been away for three months but now I’m back in my gym shoes, gym glasses and faithful old gym pants with the colour washed out of them and I’m presenting my membership card to the bloke behind the desk. It’s the same old unfit unfriendly fat bloke. He probably hasn’t broken into a run for 20 years, but because he works on the membership desk of a gym he dresses like an Olympic athlete. Think Gordon Brown in a shell suit. ‘Gym and swim,’ I tell him. ‘Long time, no see,’ he says, not particularly glad to see me. ‘I’ll put the cardiac unit on speed dial,’ he adds,

Melissa Kite

Real life | 3 January 2013

‘They all have very distinct personalities,’ said my friend Hannah, as she invited me to come to her house and pick a bunny. In truth, I hadn’t given much thought to the preferred personality of my forthcoming rabbit. I confess I wanted a quick fix of a bunny, a companion for Tinkerbell Butch Cassidy, so called because she started life as a girl and then morphed into a boy when, upon closer inspection, I panicked and declared the vet’s earlier pronouncement misguided. Tinky had been bought as a companion for TT, the two-tone bunny I found in a box by the side of the road. They had been happy when

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 3 January 2013

We have now entered the New Year in which we know that everybody, with the exception of those who have not yet been born (like our future king or queen), will be one year older by the end of it. I have already passed that milestone this week, which means that I will be 73 for the rest of the year and will only achieve 74 in the fateful year of Scotland’s vote on independence. Still, 73 is quite old enough. It is an age at which it has become difficult to look far into the future with great confidence and one begins to narrow one’s horizons a little. There

Robin Oakley

Breaking news

It is all about how you impart bad tidings, I suppose, like the wife who told her husband one night, after the first drink: ‘The good news, darling, is that the airbag definitely works.’ Mrs Oakley and I have not only a grandson and five grand-daughters but also a grand-dog, Myla, who comes to stay when south London pressures build and our daughter reckons it time for the four-legged member of her troupe to take to the country. ‘You never really liked that Turkish carpet, did you?’ said Mrs O. one evening recently. It turned out that Myla, lying comfortably in front of the fire, had decided that our prized

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 3 January 2013

It’s hard to explain to non-bridge players how much the game means to some of us. It’s not just a pastime; it’s a grand passion. Janet de Botton summed it up well when someone asked her if she really loved the game. ‘I don’t love it,’ she replied, ‘I’m in love with it.’ Ask any bridge fanatic: it seduces us, it consumes us, it makes our pulses quicken. In fact, it’s better than romantic love because the excitement never wanes. As another friend put it: ‘I’ve often thought about bridge during sex, but I’ve never thought about sex during bridge.’ You’d think that after many decades of playing, world-class players

Raymond Keene

No. 247 | 3 January 2013

White to play. This position is from Kramnik-Kasparov, World Championship, London (Game 2) 2000. Kasparov has been struggling to hold a difficult endgame, a pawn down and has now just blundered. How did Kramnik finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 8 January or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I shall be offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Rxg7 (1… Rxf6 2 Ke5!)

The Spectator

Barometer | 3 January 2013

The Seacole empire Education Secretary Michael Gove says he wants to rewrite the national curriculum in history to concentrate on figures such as Cromwell and Churchill instead of Mary Seacole. Some institutions which have been named after Seacole in recent years: — Mary Seacole House, ‘mental health drop-in centre primarily for black and ethnic communities in Liverpool 8’ — Mary Seacole Research Centre ‘provides a base for diversity orientated research’ at De Montfort University, Leicester — Mary Seacole Housing Association, provides ‘supported housing for young single people in Luton’. — Mary Seacole Awards: bursaries of £12,500 awarded by the Department of Heath for nurses, midwives and health visitors in England

The Spectator

Letters | 3 January 2013

Caught in the ratchet Sir: Melissa Kite (‘Hunting for Dave’, 29 December) wonders why the Prime Minister won’t reopen the question of hunting. Is it not just possible that the reason given is the real reason — he knows he could not win a vote on it? There is no point in leading the troops into a time-wasting and embarrassing defeat. I suspect that the hunting ban is an example of ‘ratchet politics’ — once one side has done something, the other side finds it impossible to undo it. (The opposite is ‘ping-pong politics’, where the parties take it in turns to undo the other side’s changes.) The interesting thing

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 3 January 2013

Q. I have had the misfortune to have broken my foot and was packed off by my GP to a clinic in Vincent Square for an X-ray. The male receptionist kindly arranged a taxi and gave me £2 when I told him I might be just short of the fare. I assured him that I would pop in to reimburse him as soon as I was able but he insisted that it was his pleasure and proceeded to make me a very nice cup of tea. This very good man would obviously be offended if I tried to pay him back the £2 as he refused to countenance my offer

Joanna Kavenna

Diary – 3 January 2013

I am re-reading D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. The opening line runs: ‘Comes over one an absolute necessity to move…’ He expands on the dilemma (I paraphrase): you are afflicted by wanderlust, you want to move, you don’t have any money, you’ve only recently moved but for some reason you want to move again. It is, for example, England in deep midwinter and it has been raining solidly for six weeks. Deracination is an occupational advantage of being a writer, which is otherwise a pretty absurd profession. Writers can live anywhere, or everywhere, or, at times, nowhere… For a while I lived in an airless flat in Alphabet City, New

Dot Wordsworth

Elven

Like many, I have just read The Hobbit again, which I hadn’t done since reading it to Veronica as a girl. Even when solemn, Tolkien knows what he is doing with language. It was at his most relaxed that he could be careless, as in the early pages where he too often repeats dreadful (in its modern sense). But he does not employ the ‘Wardour Street’ fake antique that Fowler complained of in others: words like anent, trow, ween, whilom or wot. As a professional philologist he knew the history of every word he used. Some of the words that give a feeling of antiquity to The Hobbit end with