Society

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

Peter John

Why a Labour council is selling expensive housing stock

The Policy Exchange report Ending Expensive Social Tenancies has predictably provoked a renewed debate about council housing and the value of genuinely mixed communities. It was welcomed by the right as providing a potential narrative for ending the automatic claim of the working and non-working poor to live in more salubrious neighbourhoods, whilst some on the left have attacked it as a fundamental attack on the very notion of council housing. On the basis of my experience as leader of Southwark Council – the largest social landlord in London – I believe the report actually presents us with an opportunity to start talking about what we want our social housing

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Rape as most people understand it’

George Galloway got a spade out today and made a statement in which he attempted to clarify his comments about the allegations against Julian Assange. He dug himself a little deeper, saying that ‘what occurred is not rape as most people understand it’. Assange is wanted in Sweden – but not yet charged – on allegations of rape, unlawful coercion and sexual molestation. Rod Liddle blogs that he thinks Galloway has a point. The law says he does not. There is a lesson to be learned from Galloway’s comments, though, which is that rape is not well understood at all. When he says something is ‘not rape as most people

Steerpike Steerpike

A messy end to a Royal era

Who said posh youths don’t riot? Head down to South Kensington tonight for some Bullingdon-style antics: the nightclub Boujis is inviting loyal regulars to smash the place up before closing time. Guests are invited to leave their mark by scribbling over the walls before literally pulling down the decor – all aided by ‘construction girls’. But panic not, Prince Harry! Doors open again at the end of September. All will be fully redecorated and minus the graffiti. In fact Mr Steerpike might have to pop by tonight to see the destruction of the dance floor on which William famously wooed Kate…but strictly in an observational role, of course.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sorry, Rachel, but more debt is not the answer to the debt crisis

Has anyone seen George Osborne’s £3 billion? The Chancellor seems to have lost it. His government had expected to net £2.5 billion more than it spent last month, as July is normally a good month for tax receipts. Instead the figure has come in at a £600 million deficit. This is a major shock to the City, and analysts are spending today reworking their forecasts. Sure, we know the economy has flatlined. But we didn’t know that the impact on the tax haul would be so bad. As you’d expect, Labour has gone on the attack. But the Ed Balls line (being voiced by Rachel Reeves today) sounds less convincing

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sir John Cowperthwaite and the wisdom of positive non-intervention – Spectator Blogs

In a recent piece Stephanie Flanders, the BBC’s economics editor, pondered how the UK economy could be adding jobs while, according to the figures, shrinking by 0.7% during the second quarter of this year. As she put it, this is a conundrum that “Britain’s finest economic brains simply cannot explain”. Well, I can’t explain it either. But, perhaps because I’m not any kind of economic brain, I wonder if all this measuring and collecting of information now does as much harm as good. In one sense, of course, it seems obviously good that government collect data so it knows what’s going on. But that comes at a price: it encourages

Matthew Sinclair

Promoting tax transparency at the petrol pumps

Too many taxes are buried in prices. From Value Added Tax to the cost of extravagant subsidies for renewable energy, all people see is the shop charging them a higher price. That is convenient for politicians trying to hike our taxes, but it distorts democratic decisions over the level of taxes and spending, and which taxes to increase and decrease. That is why we have seen steady increases in Employers’ National Insurance. It is why climate regulations are structured so a huge part of the cost is buried in the electricity market. And it is telling that the taxes people resent most are the lump sums they have to write

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers take brand NHS to the world

Danny Boyle had us all fooled. There we were, thinking the dancing nurses and luminous NHS logo in his opening ceremony for the Olympic Games were part of a piece of ‘Marxist propaganda’, when actually he was sneakily paving the way for what Labour this morning derided as the ‘rampant commercialisation’ of the health service. Yes: it turns out that the Olympic opening ceremony was just one big fat right wing advertising ploy to entice the world to buy into Brand NHS. Whoops. The government is opening an agency called Healthcare UK, which is designed to set up contacts between world-respected NHS operations and private clients overseas. The Health department

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Proalition risks becoming a noalition

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are preparing for their last-ditch attempt to kiss and make up before having to accept their union is over. The coalition partners are heading into the conference season with a positive attitude they hope will carry them through 2015 (and potentially beyond). A new word to describe the second coalition love-in has entered the Westminster lexicon this week — ‘proalition’. Both sides are desperate for proalition to work. Not out of a desire to work together, but out of sheer necessity. If the coalition falls apart in the near future, both parties would face annihilation at the polls. Neither side has managed to distinguish itself

Rupert Myers

There’s no right to live in Chelsea

Your local council owns prime real estate and could sell it to build new social houses. Housing Minister Grant Shapps says the appeal of this idea promoted by Policy Exchange is ‘obvious’. With a potential pot of £5.5bn to build up to 170,000 affordable homes, what’s not to like? Plenty, apparently: Labour MP Karen Buck warned of a risk to communities, and the importance of mixing groups within our population. Lord Prescott called the idea ‘gerrymandering’. The empty slogans come from both sides. When someone says ‘nobody has a right to live in’ Chelsea they ought to remember that some people do have a right to live there, and that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Food prices, and predicting riots

The cover story of last week’s Spectator was about the political impact of rising crop prices: John R. Bradley, who alone predicted the Egyptian revolution, explained how the same phenomenon is happening again. His piece speaks best for itself but today HSBC has released some research making the same point. I thought Coffee Housers may be interested. The picture above shows how much of the US is hit by drought now, and given that it’s the number one exporter this has hit world prices. The price of wheat, corn and soyabean has rocketed by 30 per cent, 25 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively since the start of the

Madsen Pirie

Voters say goodbye to nanny

Has nanny finally blown it?  That was what we sought to find out.  After having the state tell us what to eat and drink, how to exercise, and even how to cook turkey, anecdotal evidence suggests people are growing tired of it all and would like nanny to stop being so bossy.  A small group of self-styled ‘experts’ who think they know better than we do how to live our lives seems to have persuaded government to bully us into compliance. In 1998 the Adam Smith Institute surveyed, with a polling organisation, the attitudes of the younger generation.  We found then that they didn’t expect government to gain them a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Very, Very Special: An Appreciation of VVS Laxman – Spectator Blogs

And then there was one.  Of the four princes who made India the world’s best side to watch in the first decade of the 21st century, only Sachin Tendulkar – the first and greatest of them – remains. Saurav Ganguly, the tiger of Bengal, was first to leave the arena. Rahul Dravid, the classicist, departed last year. Now Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman, the most artistic member of India’s most formidable quartet, has announced his retirement from international cricket. As Cardus (who else?) wrote of Ranji, Laxman distributed his runs as largesse delivered in silk purses. If he could not claim Ranji’s aristocratic lineage, he was still, even in his own

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is selling off expensive council homes such a bright idea?

Here’s a policy that looks like it could be a vote winner while helping to solve Britain’s housing crisis: selling off expensive council homes. Think tank Policy Exchange has published a paper this morning proposing that local authorities be allowed to sell luxurious properties in their boroughs as they become vacant in order to raise money for new, cheaper social properties. The report’s author, Alex Morton, believes this could lead to 28,500 expensive properties being sold off each year, raising £5.5 billion for new housing construction. The idea is also, unsurprisingly, quite a popular one with voters. The report points to 73 per cent of voters agreeing that people should