Society

Saturday

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I’ve left London. How will I ever work again

They say that moving house is the third most traumatic thing after death and divorce and they’re right about that, I reckon. For the past few weeks and months I’ve been treating our London house not like the beloved home where I’ve spent 12 happy years but more like an anonymous shell where I just happen to eat, sleep and work. I used to enjoy having new friends round and hearing them wax lyrical about the niceness of the wallpaper or the size of the bedrooms or the delightfulness of the view over the park, but not this year. I used to spend hours in the garden, but I’ve scarcely

Mark Lutyens

The new country garden

Like Nostradamus, the vision is flickering but I believe I have glimpsed the future — at least, the future look of garden and landscape design. I wonder whether, in these dark times, we are at the threshold of a new enlightened age. There were two great moments in the history of garden and landscape design: the first was the introduction of naturalistic planting pioneered by William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll towards the end of the 19th century; and second, before that, in the first half of the 18th century, the landscape movement as exemplified by William Kent and Capability Brown. Both movements — ‘game-changers’ at the time — were preceded

Mark Mason

A fan’s notes

When was the last time a piece of technology made you happy? Truly happy, so satisfied with the experience that you immediately wanted to repeat it? For me it was last weekend, in a pub toilet, using an Excel Xlerator hand dryer. This unbelievably powerful bit of equipment sorted out my mitts in less time than it takes to say ‘force 12 hurricane’. I was tempted to re-wash them, simply for the fun of using it again. And I realised this is the only sort of device that gives real pleasure these days: one that does a basic job very, very well. All the kit that’s supposed to amaze us

Andrew Watts

Edinburgh notebook

One of the rites of passage for a comedian is walking through the rain at the Edinburgh Fringe, looking down and seeing one of your own flyers being trampled underfoot. If you want a vision of the Fringe, imagine a boot stamping on a flyer of your own face — for ever. Or until the end of August, which feels much the same. •••  Conventional wisdom is that flyers are the only way of making your show stand out. You can make the world’s best one-man production of The Mousetrap, but the world won’t beat a path to your door unless they’re handed a picture of your face and selective quotations

Melissa Kite

War on games

On a visit to my old school not long ago, I found myself confronted by my former PE teacher, now the deputy head. She fixed me with an icy glare. ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I’ve forgotten my note.’ The icy glare froze completely so I explained: ‘You remember? I’m the one who came to every single PE and games lesson with a note from my parents saying I had neck ache.’ Icy glare. To her, it still wasn’t funny. More than 20 years later, and on the night I was invited back to present the prizes, my lack of enthusiasm for school sport still made her look me up and

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why do all the fattest people live on islands

Here’s a mystery which has been keeping me awake at night recently. Why do people who live on islands, and even more so very small islands, tend to be grotesquely overweight? I stumbled across this strange apparent correlation the other evening, while sporcling. This is what I do in my spare moments these days, in lieu of a life. Sporcle is a website which offers hundreds and hundreds of quizzes, and has some particularly good quizzes on geography. This is how I know which country in the world has the most renewable water resources per capita (Iceland), which country has the most camels (Somalia), who produces the most apricots (Turkey)

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Malthus’s children

Two hundred years ago, the creepy Revd Thomas Malthus would take to his pulpit to rail against the copulating lower orders. Author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Malthus was one of the first promoters of the overpopulation thesis. If people — especially poor people — didn’t stop having so many babies, ‘premature death would visit mankind’. The demand for food would outstrip mankind’s ability to produce it, giving rise to famines, to ‘epidemics, pestilence and plagues’ that would ‘sweep off tens of thousands’. His scabrous sermons provided a satisfying shudder down the backs of his pious, prole-fearing followers. Today, Malthusian sermons are not delivered in church

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Forget school sports: the Paralympic row could be far more toxic

The Paralympic flame is now burning in Trafalgar Square ahead of the Games’ opening ceremony on Wednesday. As it was lit, Boris Johnson encouraged London to ‘re-ignite the spirit of the Golden Games’ for the Paralympics, which London looks ready to do, given the record sales of 2.3 million tickets (a lesson in endurance and determination to succeed in spite of many obstacles in itself, given the quality of the Locog website that sells those tickets). As with the Olympics, even though the Paralympics are not about politics, they still offer an opportunity for some to make political points. During the first Games, the arguments focused largely on school sports

Douglas Murray

Not ‘the best results ever’: Good news for GCSEs

For the first year since GCSE’s came in we have not seen ‘the best results ever’.  Which is, of course, a great relief.  As Anthony Seldon, among others, has pointed out, these results suggest a return to credibility in our examination system. But there are already those, including some teachers and teacher unions who are now hinting darkly at ‘political interference’.  They are used to year-on-year grade inflation and expected this to continue forever. I think these people should themselves be asked to pass a simple test.  They should try to find a single university lecturer who is able to tell them (with a straight face) that each year –

Peter Robins

Does the New Statesman need more cartoons? Yes!

The current issue of the New Statesman leads off with a characteristically elegant and thorough feature by its deputy editor, Helen Lewis, on the fate of the political cartoon. In short, she fears for its future. The most poignant element, however, is a sidebar headed ‘Cartoons in the New Statesman‘. After reviewing the magazine’s magnificent record in the area – Low! Vicky! First professional publication of Matt! – it winds around to the fact that a recent redesign eliminated the regular editorial cartoon: ‘This was brought up by several of the cartoonists I interviewed.’ Lewis then asks readers whether they miss it, and would like it back. Speaking as a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lance Armstrong: It Wasn’t Just About the Bike – Spectator Blogs

In one sense, I have some sympathy for Lance Armstrong. He has been hounded by the American anti-doping agency USADA who, like other federal agencies, are remorseless foes. Once they have their hooks in you they never let go. The usefulness of their investigations is another matter. Even so, Armstrong’s declaration that enough is enough and that he will no longer bother to defend himself against doping charges will doubtless be seen as a capitulation. Most people, I suspect, will take his silence as an admission of guilt. So it really wasn’t just about the bike, was it? Apparently not. The evidence against Armstrong may still – as far as

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Harry snaps expose Leveson’s regulatory headache

Prince Harry’s naked outing on the front page of today’s Sun has already prompted  60 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about a breach of the Prince’s privacy. It also illustrates the problem facing Lord Leveson as he prepares to make his recommendations on the future of press regulation. The Sun’s editorial, which it published alongside the now infamous picture on its front page, argues that it was perfectly reasonable to defy the warnings from the Royal Family’s legal team not to print the snaps which have been circulated across the globe via the internet. The piece says: It is absurd that in the internet age newspapers like The Sun could

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How mini jobs could support people back into work

Remember when we used to laugh at Germany’s economy? Gordon Brown loved to contrast its sclerotic labour market with booming Britain. That was in the boom years. As Warren Buffet said, when the tide goes out you can see who is swimming naked – and today Britain looks as naked as a prince on a billiard table while Germany celebrates unemployment at near-record lows. We know where we went wrong, but it’s time for us to learn where Germany went right.  It’s main insight was that the problem is a supply of willing workers, not a supply of jobs. There’s no point borrowing cash to create vacancies if you can’t

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

QE — the ultimate subsidy for the rich

It’s official: Quantitative Easing has marked the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich of any government policy in recent documented history. The Bank of England released an analysis today, which was rejected as being an underestimate by the former government pensions adviser Ros Altman. But it was shocking enough, and the strongest point was made by the brilliant Ed Conway, economics editor of Sky News, who put it into a graph who would benefit from a QE-inspired boom in asset prices described by the Bank of England  today. “10th” means the richest tenth of the population, and so on. This is our new graph system: hover your mouse over each

Sebastian Payne

What influences GCSE grades?

For the first time in the history of GCSE exams, this year’s results have seen a decline in grades. Today, the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents exam boards, announced that the number of papers marked A*-C has dropped from 69.8 per cent last year to 69.4 per cent. A grades have dropped by 0.8 per cent while A* grades are down by 0.5 per cent and C grades also down 0.4 per cent. Since GCSEs were first set in 1986, rising grades each year may have been welcomed by the pupils receiving them, but have led to concerns about grade inflation. To address this, the exams regulator Ofqual has placed extra

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

You can’t judge a school by its sports fields

There’s a glass case in the hall of Number 10 at the moment which contains a large sports bag with two shiny Olympic medals poking out. This wasn’t left behind by a Team GB athlete: it’s actually an enormous, elaborate cake, complete with icing zips. Downing Street staffers are looking forward to eating this part of the Olympic legacy soon. A considerably less tasty leftover from the Games is the row over school sports provision. During the Olympics, I argued that the Prime Minister’s interventions on the matter were largely unhelpful, but as Fraser and Matthew d’Ancona have pointed out, schools selling off old tennis courts to pay for new

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 – international justice, school sports and unfair GCSE results

Is there a downside to our glowing era of ‘international justice’? In this week’s cover feature, Douglas Murray writes that our carefully designed system can trap criminals, giving them no way out and potentially leading to even more horrific acts. In our View from 22 podcast, Douglas expresses some of his issues with how signatories perceive the International Criminal Court: ‘It is a replacement for being a serious military power, it’s cheaper in the end and gives people this wonderful cloak. Any politician who wraps themselves in the ICC wraps themselves in a wonderful moral aroma that was actually fought for and earned by many hard working people. But it

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Straining every sinew a just that little bit further for growth

The Institute of Directors added a bit more moss to the rolling stone of worry about the government’s growth agenda today, releasing the results of a survey of business leaders that condemned a list of the government’s reforms as ‘ineffective’. It’s worth looking at the full list of areas where the respondents felt the government is failing to deliver, but in short simplifying the planning system was deemed the least ineffectual set of reforms, with reducing tax complexity the area where the government scored worst. Now, before Chuka Umunna gets too excited about the words ‘too far and too fast’, the IoD’s members did support the government’s deficit reduction measures.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Pay study embarrasses teaching unions

The teaching unions like to dismiss talk of introducing regional pay to the public sector as a plan that will hit deprived areas hardest. Their fierce opposition to the plans touted by Michael Gove and other ministers threatens to crystallise into strike action should the government make any serious moves towards the changes. But research from Bristol University published today changes the terms of the debate rather, as it suggests that pupils are paying the price for a national pay rate for teachers. The study, which compared pay to performance in around 3,000 schools, found that in areas where salaries in the private sector are significantly higher than in schools,

Shiraz Maher

Galloway and Murray’s smears ignore how simple the Assange case is

The remorseless smears of the alleged victims of serious sexual assault by George Galloway MP and Craig Murray, our former ambassador to Uzbekistan will have serious consequences for the victims of sexual assault on British shores. Both men are guilty of some of the most callous behaviour of modern political times in their intemperate outbursts, which are about much more than Julian Assange. The victims of these crimes in this country already suffer from a unique combination of trauma and stigma. It is no surprise that rape and associated crimes are perennially underreported. An authoritative study commissioned by the Home Office in 2007 found that ‘between 75 and 95 per