Society

Tuesday

Johnnie Kerr

The policies behind your energy bills

It may be a week old, but last Monday’s episode of Panorama really is worth putting half-an-hour aside for, if you haven’t seen it already. Its subject was energy prices, and it raised some very urgent concerns about the government’s policies in that area. You can watch it on the BBC site, but here’s a brief summary in the meantime. All in all, switching our dependence away from coal and oil is going to be enormously expensive. Some £200 billion of taxpayers’ money is to be spent on increasing renewable energy output from seven to thirty percent by 2020. And, because sources like offshore wind costs almost £100 an hour

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Harrier Flies Again!

That’s the good news. The bad news is that these admirable little planes won’t be flying for Britain. Navy Times (and others) report that the United States Marine Corps plans to purchase the whole of the United Kingdom’s Harrier force. The spare parts will apparently cost the cousins some $50m and a price for the airframes will, apparently, be agreed soon. This is good news for the Harriers and for the US Marines who, as one Harrier expert told Navy Times, “We’re taking advantage of all the money the Brits have spent on them. It’s like we’re buying a car with maybe 15,000 miles on it.” Gee, ya think? Yeah,

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

When the centre goes berserk

Over at the Leveson inquiry a smug Lord Patten – there is no other kind — said the BBC could not possibly be biased because left wingers attack it on some occasions and right wingers attack it on others. The BBC holds the ring, he implied. Uncontaminated by the ideologies of extremists, and possessing indeed no bias or ideology of its own, it speaks for moderation and reason. Although true, the argument that apparently moderate and reasonable people can be more ideological than extremists is ordinarily a hard one to make. Given the crisis in the eurozone perhaps even Patten can grasp that the centre ground offers no protection against

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Junk Tobacco Science: Tar Heel Edition

As always, I commend Chris Snowdon’s blog, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist to you as among the very best places for common sense on tobacco issues. His latest post offers a pleasing, if sadly pointless, demolition of a North Carolina study claiming that a ban on smoking in bars caused a 21% fall in the number of heart attacks in the Tar Heel state. Poppycock but the sort of tripe that’s accepted by press and politicians alike. As Chris explains: Even if we assume that secondhand smoke does cause heart attacks, smoking bans have so little effect on so few non-smokers (and have no effect at all on the smokers, unless

Peter Hoskin

Halfon seeks to cool the inflationary fires

Don’t whip out the cava just yet, CoffeeHousers. Inflation, in both its CPI and RPI incarnations, may be down on last month’s figures, but the latest numbers are hardly cause for jubilation. At 5.0 per cent in October, CPI is still over double the Bank of England’s target figure, and it’s far outpacing the average growth in people’s wages. The truth is that living costs remain constrictive, and at a time when the economy could teeter back into cataclysm at any moment.      Hence Robert Halfon’s motion on fuel prices, which will be debated in the Commons today. It’s another one of those motions triggered by an e-petition (112,189 signatures

Monday

Daniel Korski

Can Italy rebound?

I’m in Italy watching the bonfire of Silvio Berlusconi’s vanities first hand. From the ashes, most Italians hope a stronger nation will emerge. And for this reason, faith in former EU Commissioner Mario Monti, who gave his first statement to the nation last night, seems high. Italy is not a nation on its knees, and despite the travails and troubles of the last decade, there is a sense of hope here. People want Italy to succeed and seem willing, for now, to pull together. They also have a foundation upon which to build: brands, low private debt, and a solid banking system. Crucially, President Giorgo Napolitano has also indicated that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Whitehall could use some Google thinking

Today’s New York Times has a fun piece about Google X, the secret lab where Google is working on its special projects. The ideas are, suitability, far out. They are, apparently, looking at connecting household appliances to the internet and creating a robot that could go to the office so you don’t have to. It would be tempting to laugh if not for what Google has already pulled off. Indeed, the NYT reports that Google’s driverless car might soon go into production. But in political terms what struck me about the article is that this is the culture that Steve Hilton embraces. Remember that when Hilton was working from California,

Peter Hoskin

Will Project Merlin keep on keeping on?

How goes the lending part of the government’s Project Merlin accord with the banks? Judging by the figures released by the Bank of England today, neither brilliantly nor terribly. The amount loaned to small and medium enterprises fell to £18.8 billion in the third quarter of this year, from £20.5 billion in the second quarter. But, as the Tory press office has been quick to point out, it still exceeds the equivalent amount dished out last year. And, what’s more, the banks are still on course to meet the lending targets for 2011 — for both SMEs and companies in general — that were set out in the agreement itself.

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 14-20 November 2011

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which — providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency — you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’, which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write — so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game, from political stories in your local paper, to

Sunday

Ian Rankin

Up there with Thin Lizzy

‘Better than Josh Pearson!’ That was what it said on the hand-printed sticker. The sticker was attached to an odd-looking CD in the new releases section of the Edinburgh record shop, Avalanche. The shop’s proprietor, Kevin Buckle, was the man behind the claim. I asked him about the album. It was by an Aberfeldy-based group called Star Wheel Press. Their singer also ran a gallery and made his own woodcuts. He had just delivered the albums that morning. If I cared to open the cellophane wrapper, I would smell fresh ink. ‘And the music’s pretty good, too,’ Kevin added. Reader, I took the CD home with me. The cardboard sleeve

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Barroso’s warning

José Manuel Barroso’s article in The Observer today is a plea for relevance. When you cut through the usual EU jargon, what you find is the Commission President—predictably—declaring his opposition to German talk of an inter-governmental treaty among the 17 Eurozone members. He’s also warning the smaller Eurozone states that without the Commission’s protection their interests will be trampled on by the Germans and the French. This is what he means when he writes that  “all member states need to support and trust the common supranational European institutions that were created after the second world war. It is precisely these supranational institutions that are the best guarantee for the respect

Saturday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Food: The End of Cows

Wolfgang Puck, who is a globally famous chef, has opened Cut on Park Lane. Beef is Cut’s thing and who doesn’t like beef? Except I am convinced that if cows, like women, discovered their own strength, there would be a cow coup, like in Planet of the Apes. (This is a very personal fantasy.) How I can see them, stampeding down Whitehall and into the Treasury, taking George Osborne hostage. Anyway, I secure a 10.30 p.m. slot on a Monday, which is too late for hunger, but not for celebrities and lighting designed to make everyone look like the Gold Blend couple (‘How was Milan?’). You enter Cut through an

Dot Wordsworth

Spads

Of course I live in the past — where better? But I found out this week exactly how many years in the past. The answer is six, which seems to me indecently like futurism. The occasion for my discovery was hearing in a politics programme that there were a harmful number of spads in government. Ah, I thought semi-consciously, Cameron’s people aren’t seeing the danger signals. I had taken it, you see, that the commentator was using an unhackneyed metaphor taken from railways. There, as anyone knows who has seen David Hare’s play The Permanent Way, a spad is a signal passed at danger. Thus, in the Ladbroke Grove rail

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: your problems solved | 12 November 2011

Q. In the event of the expected death of a dear friend, I have been asked to organise the funeral. I have no idea which newspaper I should put the announcement in. Each death notice costs about £60, so if I were to do the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent, it would all mount up, and with no guarantee of people even noticing it and being able to attend the funeral. Any advice? —C.D., London SW9 A. A new service, still in its infancy, has been set up by three society matriarchs to solve this very dilemma. With their website www.funeralinfo.co.uk, the women concerned have provided a simple solution to

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 12 November 2011

I knew I shouldn’t have gone to the Economist’s end-of-summer party last month. Within seconds of arriving, I was buttonholed by Venetia Butterfield, publishing director of Viking. Two years ago I signed a contract with Viking to write a book about class and education, but I got sidetracked by the West London Free School. The due date came and went and I’ve been dodging Venetia ever since. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the book you owe me,’ she said, jabbing me in the chest. ‘But I’ve thought of a way you can make amends. Penguin are publishing a series of short e-books this Christmas and I wondered if you’d like

Robin Oakley

The turf: Cheltenham jinx

Here is one for the experts at pub-quiz racing nights: which well-known jumps trainer has scored twice at Royal Ascot without yet registering training a winner at the Cheltenham Festival? Answer: Paul Webber. His glorious Cropredy Lawn yard near Banbury turns out a stream of decent hurdlers and chasers most winters — think of Flying Instructor, De Soto and Imperial Cup winner Carlo Brigante — but never seems to have much luck at the Festival. Meanwhile, from his comparatively rare forays on the Flat Paul can point to Royal Ascot victories on the Flat both with Ulundi (who also won a Scottish Champion Hurdle) and Full House. In March this

Melissa Kite

Real life | 12 November 2011

What I know about mountaineering you could write on the front of a postage stamp. But I’m willing to bet Sir Edmund Hillary did not have bright pink, ergonomic insoles in his boots called ‘Superfeet’. I have. I was sold them along with vast amounts of other gear I’m fairly sure must be extraneous by the people at the intrepid outdoorsy store where I went to kit myself out for Kilimanjaro. I’m afraid of intrepid outdoorsy stores. They are full of long-haired, weather-beaten extreme para-snow boarders called Brad who look as if they would quite happily lop a finger off if it was frostbitten or just for a laugh to

Taki

High life | 12 November 2011

New York God, it’s great to be Greek right now. We’ve out-front-paged the Holocaust as well as the Israeli ‘existential threat’. (The latter has been jerked up a notch, and Big Bagel papers present the Iran problem as 1939 and the Nazis having the bomb.) When the Greek alarm first sounded in mid-2009 in a report by the IMF, what do you think the elegant Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the towering Sarkozy and the statuesque Merkel did? They did to it what I’d like to do to The Spectator’s deputy editor, squashed it and shoved it into a very dark room where no one could find it. Instead of pricking the boil

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 12 November 2011

The book launch party was terrific. To those who put it on, and to everyone who came, I am a beggar even in thanks. A salute, too, to the 200-plus of you who entered the joke competition and to the 15 winners, every one of whom was the life and soul. A special mention in dispatches as well for the lovely Katrina from Paisley, a competition winner, who selflessly assisted when the first casualty came in. This was Sharon. Later I heard reports that the editor had surprised her getting to grips with one of the competition winners on the deputy editor’s desk. I don’t believe it. She was far

The Spectator

Letters | 12 November 2011

• Democracy in Zambia Sir: There are undoubtedly dubious countries in Africa but Daniel Kalder (‘Mr Blair goes to Kazakhstan’, 5 November) is wide of the mark in including Zambia among them. It may not be perfect but its record in terms of human rights and relative freedom from corruption is one of the best on the continent. Zambian presidents since independence have respected the will of the majority when their time was up. The recent election that led to a change of government is a shining example of the country’s political maturity, one which Mr Blair might usefully point to in his conversations with his more authoritarian clients. Brian