Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The human hand grenade

You can tell a lot about a minister from their bookshelves. Some display photos of themselves with the great and the good, others favour wonky texts. As you walk into Elizabeth Truss’s seventh-floor office in the Department of Education, the first thing you see is a think-tank pamphlet: ‘The Profit Motive in Education: Continuing the Revolution’. Knowing Truss, I half expect she put it there to provoke; a symbol of her radicalism. She grew up in a left-wing household and says, ‘My first political experience was going on a CND march, which taught me a certain political style.’ I’ve heard her nickname in the department is the human hand grenade.

Neil Obrien

The great divide | 29 November 2012

My career in politics nearly ended the day it began, when I was almost run over by a gang of Nazis in a Mini-Metro. Not a very butch car to be hit by, I know, and a rather pathetic substitute for a Panzer tank. But it was the early 1990s, and supporters of fascist government in Britain had seen their resources dwindle a bit over the decades. I was 14, and attending my first political demonstration, an Anti-Nazi League protest against the BNP in Halifax. I became separated from the crowd. There were some hooligans from the other side screeching around in a car yelling abuse and doing handbrake turns

Ruth Dudley Edwards

The Turner prize is boring

Inside Tate Britain on Monday night, a fashionable London audience will applaud the award of the £25,000 Turner prize to whatever is judged the best thing a British artist under the age of 50 can come up with. Standing outside will be a group of Stuckists protesting against the overlord who for nearly a quarter of a century has ruled this process. Sir Nicholas Serota chaired the prize until 2007, yet still retains his grip. It is he who has made figures such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin so famous and rich. Yet this year, for the first time, there are finally signs that the Serotan winter is beginning

Giles Coren

Not graphic and not novel

As someone who once spent a whole summer refusing to leave the house in anything except his Superman costume (to be fair, I was only 23 at the time), I was tickled to death by the announcement last week of a Costa Book Awards shortlist that included not one but two ‘graphic novels’, and the subsequent declaration by the chairman of next year’s Man Booker judges that he would be open to the idea of such things being submitted for that as well. Oh dear Lord above, the laughable, lumbering, creaky old juggernaut that is the British literary establishment. What, now you decide to accept comics as a literary form?

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Back in the Delingpole fold

Gosh, I can’t tell you how lucky you were not to have been brought up in the Delingpole family. There were nine of us in all — not counting the cats, iguanas, fleas, lice and one-eyed pugs — and the scene every day in the rambling Old Rectory where we lived was like the second half of Lord of the Flies only without the restraint, civility and gentle charm. It was a dog-eat-dog world where no quarter was given and none expected. It was like Florence in the era of the Medici (only without the culture and art part: unless you count the huge mural of Judge Death my brother

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Can anyone defeat the town-hall zombies?

Others have already swelled a chorus of rage against Rotherham -council for removing three foster children from the couple caring for them, on the grounds that the couple were members of Ukip; and the rage is justified. But few sane people will need persuading that the -council’s judgment was wrong, and I don’t intend to bang on about it. Within that statement — ‘few sane people’, etc — lies the puzzle I want to -examine. And a puzzle it is; because those who took the decision were not insane. The fact is that the Rotherham’s Children and Young People’s Services department will be staffed by people whom we would not,

Christopher Andrew

The edge of destruction

The world came closer to thermonuclear warfare during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 than ever before or since. Most Americans now aged between their late fifties and late sixties remember ‘duck and cover’ drills during the crisis which taught them to hide under school desks and adopt the brace position in case of nuclear attack. One man who at the time was a 13-year-old schoolboy in Buffalo, New York, told me how on the day after a drill, ‘I was sitting on the big yellow school bus thinking: Will I get home today? Am I going to die? Is this it? Just looking out the window at the

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Sympathy for Roman Abramovich

There’s a rough old whiff emanating from Stamford Bridge these days, and the source of the stench is Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner. Roberto di Matteo, the manager he sacked last week, was the eighth dismissed since he bought the club in 2003. That’s quite a turn-over, even for an oligarch who likes to get his own way, but getting rid of di Matteo is significant because the Italian delivered the prize most coveted by Abramovich, the European Cup. Not even José Mourinho could get that into the Chelsea trophy cabinet. When it comes to football, the world is not enough for Roman Abramovich. In fairness to the unshaven money

Mark Mason

A lifesaver’s lament

It was about as English as you can get. I saved a man from drowning, and ended up annoyed that he didn’t say thank you. The setting was a disused railway walk near the meadows of my local market town in Suffolk. I was out with my dog, enjoying one of autumn’s last sunny days. The walk is heavily lined on both sides with trees, and shielded from view of what few houses there are nearby. From the left, where a river runs alongside the track (again, shielded by the trees) came cries of ‘Help! Help me! PLEASE help!’ At first I assumed some kids were messing about. But after

Lucy Vickery

Remaking history

In Competition No. 2774 you were invited to supply an extract from the diary of a well-known historical figure that startlingly reverses received ideas about history and the person in question.   John Samson outs Oliver Cromwell as a closet Cavalier in love with all things Irish, while Steve Baldock’s extract from the diary of Jackson Pollock reveals the origins of the great Abstract Expressionist’s drip paintings to be in a ‘drunken paint fight’. Sandra Hardingham lifts the lid on a darker side of Florence Nightingale. It was an entertaining entry: commendations all round. The winners earn £25. The bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard. The second day of September

Raymond Keene

London Classic

To celebrate the London Classic, which starts at Olympia this Saturday, I shall be paying a series of homages to illuminati of the game who have achieved great things in London. I kick off with Howard Staunton, who won the equivalent of World Championship matches against the German masters Harrwitz and Horwitz in London and who also founded the first ever international tournament in the capital in 1851. The winner of that inaugural event was another German, Adolf Anderssen, who won probably the most celebrated game of all time, for which see this week’s puzzle. For information on the London Classic see londonchessclassic.com. Staunton-Horwitz; London 1851; Dutch Defence 1 c4

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Bold Boles’ planning push is a key example of ‘spreading privilege’

Nick Boles has just put in a fierce performance on Newsnight over his controversial remarks on planning. Amusingly, the minister’s remarks aren’t a million miles away from Nick Clegg’s slightly less well-reported speech on housing last week, but Boles has a knack of going where other ministers fear to tread when he speaks about difficult issues. He was extremely impressive on why making development a priority does not mean England is going to turn into an enormous concrete jungle, saying: ‘Under 10% of Britain, currently, 10% of England, is covered by urban development in any way. A very small amount. Over 85%, 88%, would still be rural, undeveloped countryside, and

Martin Bright

How to improve the Work Programme

Everyone who has been involved in the Work Programme has been warning ministers for some time that there were serious problems with this flagship policy. As this is the opposite of a listening government nobody took any notice. Big homelessness charities have warned that the system doesn’t work for people on the streets, small work creation charities like the one I run have seen a trickle of referrals from the ‘prime providers’ who won the contracts. Large employers are mystified by the plethora of organisations knocking on their doors offering to partner up on getting people back to work. And now the first official statistics show that just three per

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

University applications fall 8%. But is that bad news?

University admissions service UCAS published figures today showing the number of students applying early for university has fallen by 8 per cent on last year, following a drop of just under 13 per cent the year before. ‘Oh dear,’ tweeted Times Higher Education’s news editor Simon Baker, adding that these figures are ‘worrying’ while NUS president Liam Burns said the data meant the government ‘should now finally admit that its higher education policies are having a significant impact on application behaviour’. Universities themselves might be worried about the effect on their business models of a decline in the number of students, particularly for undersubscribed courses. But are these figures really an

Tuesday

Shiraz Maher

Few would shed tears if Britain barred Anjem Choudary from returning

Britain’s best known Islamist, Anjem Choudary, is planning to hold a conference in Pakistan on Friday where, among other things, he will issue a fatwa on Malala Yousafzai. She is the schoolgirl from Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal areas who was shot in the head for defying the terrorist group by demanding an education. Yousafzai survived the attempted assassination and was later flow to Birmingham for specialist medical treatment (the bill is being picked up by the Pakistani government). Choudary plans to hold his conference – ‘Shariah for Pakistan’ – at the Red Mosque in Islamabad which was the scene of a notorious standoff in 2007. Radical students of the mosque had

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Work programme figures disappoint

Today’s headline figures on the Work Programme are not good news for the government: in its first 12 months, only 2.3 per cent of participants actually landed sustainable employment against the department’s target of 5.5 per cent. This sounds even worse when you contrast it with the government’s own figures suggesting that 5 per cent of people who have been unemployed for a long time can find sustainable jobs without any intervention at all, suggesting the programme is actually worse than doing nothing. At Coffee House, we are keen to see the Work Programme succeed, not just because it will vindicate the ministers co-ordinating it, but also because a successful

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The City: a beacon of diversity

Now, what would those in the Equalities industry say to an industry so diverse that it has — in proportion — seven times as many Hindus, five times as many Indians, three times as many atheists and three times as many gays or lesbians as the rest of the country? And that this was achieved not by a positive discrimination employment strategy, but by sheer hard-headed hunt for the best talent? It would likely be hailed as an exemplar of diversity, an example of how Britain is the most tolerant country in the world. But if they happen to be bankers? Well, that’s another issue altogether. The study from Astbury

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will Michael Gove respond to Ofsted’s attack on councils?

Ofsted’s annual report, due out later today, will launch a scathing attack on those responsible for underperforming schools. But rather than taking aim at the teachers or the schools, it’s the local authorities that the watchdog has got set in its sights. The report will say that there is too wide a gap in standards between different councils. Chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw told the Today programme this morning: ‘There are not only differences between local authorities, there are differences between local authorities with similar demographics, and we will be looking very carefully at what is happening in those local authorities with the same sort of population, same levels of

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s coup: Mark Carney is the new Bank of England Governor

Hiring Mark Carney may just be George Osborne’s best move since becoming Chancellor. Britain badly needed a break from the failed economic consensus which still hangs around the Bank of England like a bad smell. In August, The Spectator implored the Chancellor to mount a global search. When Carney ruled himself out, I gave up hope and resigned myself to Paul Tucker, who would be likely to keep Britain on its current Faustian monetary path paved with freshly-minted banknotes. Instead, Osborne has succeeded in hiring one of the best-qualified of all the Queen’s 137 million subjects — from a country that knows a thing or two about economic crises and how

Jonathan Jones

IFS warns Osborne: don’t cook the books, like Brown

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has today published its attempt to predict what the OBR forecasts will show when they’re released as George Osborne sits down after delivering his Autumn Statement next week. They put forward two possible scenarios: a ‘pessimistic’ one where the economy’s recent weakness is largely permanent, and an ‘optimistic’ one where it is largely temporary. In both scenarios, they show Osborne missing his ‘supplementary target’: to have the debt-to-GDP ratio falling by 2015-16. But these forecasts exclude the effect of transferring of the interest on the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing purchases to the Treasury. As I reported on Friday, that effect might be enough to