Society

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond, Supply-Sider?

Today’s Chat With Dave is all very well and good but Alex Salmond’s speech to the LSE last night was just as significant. Much of the wrangling about Scottish independence has, for respectable reasons, concentrated on matters of process leaving the substance of what an independent Scotland might actually be like for another day. This too is reasonable since so much is speculative at this stage and, in any case, one should not necessarily presume that the SNP would dominate post-independence politics. Nevertheless, it is useful to have an idea of what Alex Salmond considers important. What he emphasises now is the best available guide to what might be emphasised

Bailout country | 16 February 2012

With the political wrangling over another Greek bailout continuing today, we thought CoffeeHousers might care to read (or re-read) Faisal Islam’s cover piece for The Spectator from four months ago: In a theatre in central Athens, over a thousand tax inspectors have gathered to shout crossly about the latest cuts to their pay and pensions. Eventually the argument, between the government-affiliated union leader and his members, spills out on to the street. The rank-and-file feel betrayed: they were persuaded to accept the first wave of pay cuts earlier this year, and now they are being asked to take even more. This does not feel to them as if they’re being

Rod Liddle

British jobs for foreign workers

The free movement of labour and capital — don’t you just love it? Our unemployment rate is now 8.4 per cent, the worst in sixteen years. But, paradoxically, there isn’t an enormous problem with unemployment — or at least there shouldn’t be. Take the following two figures and you’ll see why: Last year’s total of British born workers in paid employment: down by 208,000. Last year’s total of foreign born workers in paid employment: up by 212,000. That’s fairly straightforward, isn’t it? Ok, it may not be quite as straightforward as it looks. But there is a certain agreeable symmetry to those figures, no? The Conservatives like foreign labour because

How to implement a minimum price for alcohol

Pete posted earlier on the Prime Minister’s latest intervention on the issue of problem drinking. The new proposals — like a greater police presence in A&Es, and ‘drunk tanks’, special units where drunks are taken to sober up — are sensible enough, but seem small relative to the scale of the supposed problem, and focus on peripheral (though important) side-effects, rather than the core of the issue. The ‘big idea’ seems to be missing, even though the Conservatives have been flirting with it for some years, is a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol: far more controversial, but potentially far more effective. The last Labour government, in which I was an adviser, looked at this

How can employment and unemployment go up at the same time?

The employment level has risen since the election, according to today’s figures — albeit only slightly, from 29.0m to 29.1m. But unemployment’s up too: from 2.46m to 2.67m. So how come we’ve seen both more jobs and lengthening dole queues? Well, that’s because the ‘economically active’ population (people who are in work or ‘have been actively seeking work and are available to start work if a job is offered’) has grown faster than employment has. There are now 31.8m people in the UK who fit that description, an increase of 320,000 since the coalition came to power. But with only a 110,000 rise in employment, that means the number of

Minimum pricing, maximum controversy

Just because there’s no PMQs today, it doesn’t mean you won’t hear from David Cameron. The Prime Minister is readying his anti-booze cruise once again, and taking it on tour to a hospital in the North East. Once there, he will rail against ‘alcohol abuse’ and its consequences, which include, he will say, a £2.7 billion a year bill for the NHS. And he will preview some of the solutions that may make it into the government’s ‘alcohol strategy’ next month: ‘drunk tank’ cells where binge drinkers can be dumped overnight; ‘booze buses’ to deliver people to these cells; police heavies in A&E wards; and, possibly, minimum pricing for alcohol.

Rod Liddle

The unedifying plight of Hamza Kashgari

For the magazine this week I’ve written about the plight of the young Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari, who faces a possible death penalty for having ‘tweeted’ something about that bloke Muhammad. His comments were wholly anodyne, but now a sort of maniacal combination of fundamentalist Islam and Twitter has done for him — and he will soon be charged with both blasphemy and apostasy, for which the penalty is death. When the furore kicked off he fled to Malaysia where the authorities put him on a plane back to Riyadh, out of cowardice and cravenness towards their Saudi investors. There’s a Facebook campaign called Free Hamza Kashgari, which I don’t

Melanie McDonagh

Why Prof Dawkins has it wrong

No sooner does Baroness Warsi denounce militant secularists who try to marginalise Christianity than, bang on cue, up surfaces Richard Dawkins with a survey commissioned by his Foundation for Reason and Science intended to demonstrate that Christianity is a minority pursuit. His Ipsos MORI poll, published today, is intended to unpick that bit of the 2001 census which found that more than 70 per cent of respondents identify themselves as Christian. So — selecting from 2,107 respondents questioned the 1,136 who either said they were Christian in the census or would have done so — his poll finds that 72 per cent of them did so because they were baptised

How Obama’s new budget fits into the UK debate

Yesterday, Barack Obama set out his budget for ‘Fiscal Year 2013’ – that is, for the year beginning October 2012 (in the US, the fiscal year runs from October to September, rather than April to March as it does here). Of course, the federal budget has to be passed by both houses of Congress before being signed off by the President, so the final version will look very different to this one. It is better thought of as a statement of Obama’s intent, and his starting point for the negotiations between Congress and the White House. Nevertheless, it throws up a few interesting points, not least in how it relates to our own

How to kick-start the economy

This morning’s news is a stark reminder of the desperate need to get the UK’s economy growing faster than the 0.9 per cent it managed in 2011. So far, George Osborne’s seemed short of ideas in this area, so, back in November, we asked a select group of economists and politicians to suggest some for him: Cut the 50p tax Arthur Laffer, Chairman, Laffer Associates Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through tax cuts, is the surest way to promote growth. I have never heard of a country that taxed itself into prosperity. Yet Britain last year raised the top rate of income tax from 40 per

James Forsyth

Inflation falls as the VAT rise drops out

Late last year, the Tory party’s brains trust found that the inflation numbers corresponded directly to whether or not people thought that the economy was on the right track. When inflation was going up double-quick, the ‘wrong track’ numbers went up. But when the pace of inflation slowed, the ‘right track’ numbers increased. It is for this reason that the Tories are quietly confident that this year will see an uptick in economic confidence. They expect the inflation rate to fall steadily throughout the year as the VAT rise drops its way out of the calculation and the effects of the oil shock recede. Obviously, though, today’s inflation numbers will

Labour’s plan would have cost us our AAA rating

For Ed Balls this morning, there is only one conclusion to be drawn from the news about our credit rating: ‘A change of course is needed.’ But to what? Balls no doubt means a shallower course of deficit reduction — less far, less fast. But Moody’s are clear that we have been placed on a negative outlook because of doubts that our fiscal consolidation will continue strongly enough. Specifically, they say that, ‘Any further abrupt economic or fiscal deterioration would put into question the government’s ability to place the debt burden on a downward trajectory by fiscal year 2015-16.’ So how would Labour have fared? We already know that they

Nick Cohen

We are all journalists now

As the cops round up journalists, Trevor Kavanagh’s protest in the Sun has aroused amazement and some scorn. ‘Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom’ — ran the headline, and the gist of the complaint among my friends was that it was a self-pitying and self-aggrandising piece of work. Whatever you think of the Sun or Kavanagh, however, it is worth hearing him out for three reasons.   1. Kavanagh is being brave. We ought to applaud Hugh Grant for standing up to the tabloids even though he knows they will give him a bad press for the rest of his career. (You will have noticed that

Rod Liddle

Authoritarianism in action?

The filth confiscated hundreds of cut-out-n-keep mock Ku Klux Klan masks which supporters of Manchester United had intended to wear to herald the visit of Liverpool. The implication behind the stunt being that Liverpool is a racist club, as evidenced by its support for the ‘orrible little scrote Luis Suarez. So, now it is not only a criminal offence to say something which someone somewhere might deem as racist, it is also a criminal offence to lampoon someone who might support someone else who might have said something racist. I suppose the police will insist that this was preventive measure designed to minimise the risk of trouble. Even so, it

Nick Clegg’s NHS squeeze

Andrew Lansley’s career prospects were boosted yesterday — when Simon Hughes said that he should ‘move on’ after the NHS reforms have been implemented. Since then, Downing Street has redoubled its defence of the Health Secretary; with a spokesman explaining tersely this morning that, ‘Simon Hughes speaks for himself ’. And Nick Clegg himself has added that, ‘Andrew Lansley is the architect of the NHS bill. He cares passionately about the NHS. He’s the right man for the job and he must see it through.’ Clegg’s general support for the Bill — and Danny Alexander’s — is worth noting because it’s one of the factors helping David Cameron hang on

James Forsyth

Will Germany let Greece stay in the euro?

The German government is split on the biggest policy question of the day, according to the FT’s German edition. As Open Europe points out, the paper has a senior member of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag saying that finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble ‘supports the bankruptcy of Greece, Merkel wants to strictly avoid it… It goes back and forth, which is not very helpful.’ If true, this is a remarkable story. The British Foreign Office has been convinced since the beginning of the year that the Germans are keen to kick the Greeks out of the euro. Their conversations with the Germans have convinced them that Berlin believes that the

Fraser Nelson

Gotcha! | 13 February 2012

The Spectator‘s cover, a few weeks ago, borrowed one of The Sun‘s most famous headlines: ‘Gotcha’ — but, this time, with tabloid journalists caught in the trap. It was supposed to be a parody. But, this weekend, the Metropolitan Police arrested a further five journalists from The Sun using methods normally meted out to drug dealers: pulling them out of their beds, searching their houses for concealed evidence. No one has been charged, but all five are suspected of paying sources for information: i.e. ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office … and conspiracy in relation to both these offences.’ If the definition of bribery extends to buying sources outrageously-priced

Rod Liddle

RIP Ray Honeyford

So RIP Ray Honeyford, the former headmaster of the Drummond Middle School in Bradford. He died on February 5; he had not worked in teaching since the anti-racccccccccisst left forced him out of his job in the middle of the 1980s. His crime was to have insisted that the Asian kids in the school receive exactly the same teaching as the white kids. That meant such controversial stuff as swimming lessons for the Muslim girls. He wrote a couple of articles expressing this point of view and was sacked by an alliance of the Tory government and the local Labour council. He was not, of course, remotely a racist. And