Society

Thursday

10 Jan 2013

Diary – 10 January 2013

There is a lesson to be learned from the Francis Report into the NHS in Mid-Staffordshire, and from the police force’s current travails. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS had virtually become a state religion, and until recently, most of us held the British police in complacent esteem. This is dangerous. Left unchallenged, highly admired by the public, it is easy for any bureaucracy to drift into bad habits (cf. the Irish Catholic church), especially if it is immune to competition and market forces. But waste, inefficiency and corruption are no less acceptable when they are perpetrated by institutions with noble goals. Once their standards slide, these bodies can end

The Spectator

Barometer | 10 January 2013

Welfare state The government was attacked for wanting to increase benefits by less than inflation. How have benefits changed in real terms since they were introduced? — Unemployment benefit began with the National Insurance Act 1911, when unemployed workers became eligible for payments of seven shillings a week for up to 15 weeks in the year. In 2013 prices seven shillings equates to £33, compared with £71 for Jobseeker’s Allowance. — The state pension began in 1909 when people over 70 with an income of less than £21 a year became eligible for five shillings a week. In 2013 prices this equates to £24, compared with the basic state pension

Peter Jones

Fatbusters

The government is having its annual fit about the fat. In the ancient world, most of the population worked the land, while aristocrats kept trim in the gymnasia. Only the militarily obsessed Spartans made it government business, inspecting their warriors naked every ten days for signs of excessive thinness or corpulence. But ancient doctors were aware of the problems. While no one mentions anorexia or slimming for aesthetic reasons, the famous 5th C. bc Greek doctor Hippocrates commented that ‘dieting which causes excessive loss of weight, as well as the feeding-up of the emaciated, is beset with difficulties’. He was also aware that sudden death was more common in the

Mr Magoo

Christmas crossword winners

The first prize of £100, three prizes of £25 and six further prizes of the Chambers Crossword Dictionary are awarded to the following. The first four prizewinners will, in addition, each receive a bottle of champagne. First prize Seamus McNeill, Belfast Runners-up Ms H. Piper, Chessington, Surrey; Sue Topham, Elston, Newark; Rhidian Llewellyn, Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire Additional runners-up Brian Dice, Beaconsfield, Bucks; T.M. Crowther, Winchester; Brian Midgley, Ettington, Warwickshire; A.C.R. Bull, Canterbury; Michael Grosvenor Myer, Haddenham, Cambridge; Roger Baresel, London SW7

Mr Magoo

2095: Getting around

The unclued lights (one of three words, one of two words and three doubly hyphened) might be named in a given order. Across 11 A large one, with fruit syrup in place of fruit (9) 12 What might go with rugby league? (5) 14 Respect the creeps (4) 15 ‘Slipper’, and what it ’asn’t got? (3) 18 Plug covers lying in protective gear (7) 19 Check on heartbeat (7) 22 Don’t go upsetting me in the shower (6) 23 Phone company ultimately quibbled about fare to Japan (6) 24 Daily temperature diagram (5) 27 Australian puts on pleasant accent (5) 29 Pedestrian admitting animal transporter is stationary (6) 31

Michael Heath

Dave – 10 January 2013

The Spectator

Christmas

DING DONG MERRILY ON HIGH (2A), SEE AMID THE WINTER’S SNOW (118), ONCE IN ROYAL DAVID’S CITY (1) and WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED (19) are the opening words of Christmas carols, as are ‘I saw three ships come sailing in’. SIGHT (53) and ROUND WINDOW (8/92) each define ‘eye’, which sounds like ‘I’; GANG (39), PIT (72) and SEE (110) may each precede ‘saw’; KINGS (75), WISE MONKEYS (95/54D) and GRACES (97) are associated with ‘three’; CRARE (37), GALLEASS (52A), GRAB (4), DROMON (43), SAIC (47D), PRAM (68), BRIGANTINE (74) and TERN (107) are ‘ships’; ‘come’ is part of LOCOMEN (57), UNCOMELY (77) and COMEDIC (99); ‘sailing’ is an anagram of

Isabel Hardman

MPs: We’re underpaid and worried about Christmas

Are MPs paid too little? Quite a few of them seem to think so. Parliamentary expenses watchdog IPSA released the results of a survey today which found 69 per cent of MPs think they are underpaid. If that wasn’t quite enough to light the touchpaper, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen very bravely appeared on PM this evening to make the following rather provocative comments: ‘We work in the constituencies and we work in Westminster. In the city of Westminster average salaries are well over £100,000. We work in both those spheres. Now I know MPs who will say in private that every year they are getting poorer. Most of my colleagues

Alex Massie

Housing: the south’s difficulty is the north’s opportunity – Spectator Blogs

Three cheers for Isabel’s post on the difficulties Nick Boles faces in pushing through his plans to make is slightly easier to build houses in Britain. I would add only this: people who already own their houses have more power and much greater access to important media outlets than people who do not own their own homes. Today’s wrangling about planning reminds me I meant to write something about Neil O’Brien’s excellent recent Spectator article on the north-south divide. To put the matter in the broadest terms, the south’s difficulty is the north’s opportunity. As O’Brien wrote: The North can gain advantage where it offers something the South doesn’t. Take

Isabel Hardman

Nick Boles is ballsy, but his planning push faces some big blockages

Nick Boles is to be applauded and rewarded for being so ballsy on housing need. It is heartening to read the minister describing current housing shortage as ‘immoral’ and a ‘threat to social justice’. I could write a long post about why Boles’ latest push for more homes (which involves a ‘Boles Bung’ of money that communities can use for their own benefit in exchange for new local housing developments) is wonderful, and how he should win all sorts of political prizes and promotions if he succeeds, but I’ve already done that. Instead, it’s worth examining the tricky problems which will mean the Planning Minister needs to keep wearing his

Mary Wakefield

Can you help Andrew Mitchell?

Andrew Mitchell, formerly of DFID, urgently needs Coffee Housers’ help. It seems he won’t believe DFID wastes money, unless he sees actual, concrete examples. Last week, in the magazine, we ran a foreign aid special in which Jonathan Foreman and Justin Shaw showed us how and why we waste so much on ineffectual aid. In principle of course aid is a wonderful idea, but it can also be a blight: propping up dictators and entrenching corruption in the countries that are struggling most. We identified two major concerns: A lack of DFID due diligence The daft ring-fence around aid 0.7% of GDP which means the DFID has its

Rod Liddle

Luton is changing. But it’s still a dump

Does it matter that white Britons are now a minority in three towns or cities in this country? The latest census figures suggest that whitey is outnumbered in Leicester, Luton and Slough. I assume the reason for this is that lots of Asians have colonised these places and as a consequence many of the whites have got the hell out. They have always been fairly awful places, mind, in any case – Luton in particular. Those who welcome more and more immigration usually wave their hands and say listen, change happens, and we should welcome it – for the white people in those towns it is a chance to meet

Jonathan Jones

The coalition’s half-time score

Yesterday, the coalition released its mid-term self-assessment, comparing the commitments made in its Programme for Government back in May 2010 to the policies it has actually implemented to date. Sadly, it does not allow for a simple tick/cross exercise as to whether each commitment has been kept, as there is a lot of grey area. Some of the promises were too vague, some may be being stuck to but haven’t been delivered yet, and on others it depends how charitable you’re willing to be to the government. I’ve therefore given each commitment a tick (delivered), a cross (not delivered at all) or a question mark (those you might give a

Steerpike

The rumble of the Thunderer

Steerpike is back in this week’s Spectator, and here’s a little taster from Wapping: James Harding, the ousted Times editor, left with a £1.3 million payoff in his pocket and the praise of Fleet Street ringing in his ears. But why did he go? A chap who polishes the executives’ shoes at News International tells me that just before the hacking scandal blew up, Rupert Murdoch was planning major changes at the Times. He’d decided to pull the newspaper out of the Press Complaints Commission, just as Richard Desmond had done with the Express. Then he’d pull it out of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which he felt didn’t reflect

James Forsyth

The accidental exit

If Britain leaves the European Union, historians will say that 30 June 2012 was when the great exit began. That day, David Cameron was due to write an article for the Sunday Telegraph and his advisers were frantic. It was a last-minute idea, to balance out some loose talk from the Prime Minister at a Brussels press conference. The piece was being drafted by committee and on the hoof. Aides stood at railway stations and in airport lounges emailing a line here and a tweak there. The result was Cameron’s gnomic pledge that ‘for me the two words “Europe” and “referendum” can go together’. What did it mean? Those who

Roger Alton

Just not cricket

Sad times for The Times, and for the game of cricket, with the passing within days of each other of William Rees-Mogg and Christopher Martin-Jenkins. Both men represented, besides the potency of the double-barrelled surname, a specific and wholly admirable strand of Englishness. They had unfailing good manners, and though very posh were never snobbish. They would talk to anyone and enjoy it (most of the time anyway). They never looked as if they were trying too hard, though of course both did work very hard throughout their lives. And by golly they knew their stuff — whether it was Rees-Mogg and his antiquarian books (and Somerset cricket, of course)

Daniel Kalder

A hit man at 13

After a long wait in the visiting room of the maximum security wing of the ‘Gib Lewis Unit’, Rosalio Reta finally arrived for our interview. He was only five feet tall, but even so projected an air of menace. The demonic face tattoos helped. That face was the last thing many people saw before they died, I thought. When he started talking, his voice was soft and mellifluous. Until his arrest in 2006 Reta was a sicario, a hit man responsible for at least 30 murders in the USA and Mexico. He started at the age of 13, when he executed a man as an audition to join the Zetas.

Martin Vander Weyer

Gnomes of Zurich will fall like skittles before US investigators finish with them

So farewell, Wegelin & Co, the oldest bank in Switzerland and the one with the simplest strategy for growth — which was to offer secret accounts to American tax-evaders who could no longer obtain that valuable service from bigger Swiss banks such as UBS. Founded by a linen merchant in 1741, which makes it half a century younger than Coutts and Barclays, Wegelin last week pleaded guilty to helping US citizens evade tax on $1.2 billion, agreed to pay $58 million in fines and restitution, and announced that it is closing down. The explosive growth of Wegelin’s funds under management during the last decade — despite being headquartered in a

Michael Tanner

Trojan triumph

Opera has naturally made no start at all in 2013 in the UK, the month surrounding Christmas being a culture-free zone. By contrast the New York Met has entered the new year with a thrilling production, revived from 2003, of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, a resounding success in all major respects except one. Lovers of this great masterpiece usually have a chance to see it about once a decade, but only a few months ago it was staged by the Royal Opera in a production that had a muted response. Les Troyens is one of those works which either shakes you to the core or leaves you mildly, or even very

Rod Liddle

How did Mary Seacole come to be revered as a black icon?

Isn’t it time, just out of perversity, that we all signed the petition on the Operation Black Vote website to restore the part-time nurse Mary Seacole to the national curriculum? I am beginning to think that our children should learn all about this entertaining woman; she’s given me a good laugh for the last dozen or so years, ever since she was dredged up as an icon by the deluded and hysterical liberal-left. After all, if Mary is not restored to the curriculum, kids will be pestering us to know why so many buildings in this country are named after her. The University of Salford, the University of Birmingham and