Society

There’s some rare good news for the government in today’s public finance statistics. Public sector net borrowing in November is estimated at £18.1 billion, down from £20.4 billion last year. This means that total borrowing for the first eight months of this financial year is £88.3 billion, down 11 per cent on last year. That’s lower than expected, and puts us on target to undershoot the OBR’s forecast of £127 billion in 2011-12. That’d be a relief for the coalition, after Labour hit them hard when the OBR upped their borrowing forecasts last month. But this deficit reduction cannot be put down to spending restraint in Whitehall. In fact, central

I think this is my favourite seasonal story so far, aside from that Korean bloke popping his clogs. Toddlers at a playgroup in York have been banned from doing the hand motions to a nursery rhyme in case it inadvertently offends any deaf people who might, or might not, be watching. The rhyme in question is “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and the problem has arisen because the gesture the kiddies use for “twinkling star” is very similar to the Makaton sign for a very rude word indeed, referring to a lady’s furry cup of sin. The sort of word one doesn’t expect young children to bandy about. A playgroup spokeswoman

‘The most far-reaching reforms of British banking in modern history.’ That’s how George Osborne called it in Parliament this afternoon, in a statement that contained few surprises. What the government’s doing, in large part, is to follow exactly the recommendations contained in September’s Vickers Report. But is that really as far-reaching, or as radical, as the Chancellor would have us believe?   Certainly, many of these reforms are encouraging: measures such as ‘bail-ins’ and ‘living wills’ should facilitate the orderly winding-up of insolvent institutions, and reduce the necessity for taxpayer bailouts. But other parts of the government’s reform package are less convincing. For instance, additional capital buffers and reductions in

One afternoon a couple of years ago Christopher Hitchens, Michael Totten and I had gone for a walk along Hamra street in West Beirut when Hitch spotted a signpost put up by a local fascist group called the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The SSNP is a Hezbollah ally that does a lot of the Assad regime’s dirty work in Lebanon. Totten was in the middle of telling us about the SSNP’s reputation for for brutality and its skill at making bombs when Hitch took out his pen and started to deface the sign. It was an action that typified Hitch’s commitment to his political convictions — the same dauntless commitment