Society

Although it is nearly 20 years ago, I can still recall being lobbied by the representatives of a private consortium who had nascent plans to redevelop a hospital in south London using the then fabulous new idea we called the private finance initiative.  Before you jump to too many delirious conclusions, the meeting took place in my office, not in an expensive restaurant, and it was the only one I ever had with the group. I may have splashed out on a plate of civil service issue custard creams. At the time I was the special adviser to the then Secretary of State for Health, Virginia Bottomley, and the main

Has the world become one huge ball of anger? As a follow-up to his book A Bee in the Mouth, Pete Wood examines how ostentatious rage — once the preserve of Americans — is now spreading to Europe and taking over the world in this week’s cover feature. In our latest View from 22 podcast, Freddy Gray and Fraser Nelson discuss this growing anger, much of it resonating from technology: ‘If you look at internet commenters or trolls, you can see the natural human default position when in front of technology is to be as angry as possible. But only if you are anonymous, the internet has given the cloak

A speech earlier this week by unmasked-spy Jonathan Evans has put the threat of cybercrime back into the national consciousness. The MI5 director general spoke at Mansion House earlier in the week to warn of ‘real damage’ caused online — highlighting one London business which suffered a £800 million loss following an attack. He stressed the need to introduce snooping powers: ‘It would be extraordinary and self-defeating if terrorists and criminals were able to adopt new technologies in order to facilitate their activities while the law enforcement and security agencies were not permitted to keep pace with those same technological changes,’ he said. In tomorrow’s magazine, we have a special

As Isabel reported earlier, today’s public finance statistics contained a double dose of bad news for George Osborne. Not only did borrowing in May come in higher than expected at £17.9 billion — £2.7 billion higher than May last year — but the borrowing figures for the last two years were revised up as well. Before today, we thought the government had borrowed £136.8 billion in 2010/11 and £124.4 billion in 2011/12. Today, we learn it was in fact £140.6 billion and £127.6 billion respectively. That means we borrowed £3.2 billion more than we thought last year, and £11.6 billion more than the £116 billion Osborne told us we would

The Greek coalition was already a pretty shaky affair but the resignation of the finance minister before he’s even taken office weakens it even further. Vassilis Rapanos, who was the Chairman of the National Bank of Greece, has been in hospital and his resignation does appear to be health related. But given that the two left-wing junior coalition partners are refusing to allow their MPs to join the new Cabinet, his inability to take up his post is a severe blow to the government. Another threat to the government’s survival is that the Germans, whose public and private positions have been surprisingly aligned throughout this crisis, are making clear that

David Cameron’s 10 Downing Street has an unusual setup — it has a pollster, Andrew Cooper, as its chief strategist. This helps explain why the government is (to put it politely) more able than its predecessors to modify its policy positions to align with the nation’s priorities. Cooper’s polls are showing that pretty much the most popular thing this government has done so far is impose a £26,000 cap on benefits. Indeed, if there were more welfare cuts, his polls show, they would also be popular. So the government can save money and win votes! Quite some trick.  Today the PM is proposing to cut housing benefit from the under-25s,