Society

Friday

Peter Robins

Local interest | 21 October 2011

A pregnant 24-year-old from Carmarthen, north Wales, has pleaded guilty to attacking a parked police car with a rolling pin. She was reported to have explained her action as follows: “It was something I needed to do and I did it.” (South Wales Evening Post) About fifty mourners, including one who flew in from Portugal, attended a New Orleans-style funeral for a stray cat in Walthamstow, north-east London. (Walthamstow Guardian, with thanks to Mark Wallace) Cat bones believed to be a 300-year-old charm to ward off witches have been found in the ceiling of a room at the Duke’s Head Hotel, King’s Lynn. (Eastern Daily Press) Burglars who broke into

The Spectator

The week that was | 21 October 2011

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Daniel Finkelstein is left slightly underwhelmed by Martin Scorsese’s biopic of George Harrison. Fraser Nelson laments the poverty of Britain’s energy debate, and offers a bottle of champagne to anyone who can help to explain George Osborne’s growth plan. James Forsyth charts government’s never ending Europe problem, and watches Europe dominate PMQs. Peter Hoskin reacts to GOD’s report into the Fox affair, and wonders if IDS’ reforms will be mired in Whitehall’s digital swamp. Lloyd Evans thinks that Cameron was outfoxed at PMQs. Jonathan Jones watches Romney and Perry’s ding-dong in Vegas. Daniel Korski has a to-do

Matthew Sinclair

How to untie the tax knot

Yet another HMRC scandal this week, as a new HMRC computer discovered millions who have paid too much or too little in tax. A letter from the tax man will land on their doorstep in the next few months. Some will enjoy the dubious pleasure of getting money back that should never have been taken in the first place. Others face the painful task of finding the money to catch-up on tax they didn’t pay before.   As Pete said in his post on Wednesday, this isn’t the first time. When the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee looked at similar problems last year, they said that the Department had

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The austerity myth

CoffeeHousers may remember an odd New York Times editorial recently where they tried to blame the evaporation of British economic growth on austerity. Perhaps the newspapers’s famed fact-checkers had taken the day off, because the slightest piece of research would have exposed the premises of the piece as bunkum. This morning, the ONS has produced monthly public finance figures, showing current spending is still rising in Britain. But first, let’s get to the New York Times editorial: “Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself… Austerity was a deliberate ideological choice by Prime Minister David Cameron’s

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Gaddafi Memorial Quiz

In order to commemorate the death of Colonel Gaddafi properly, here’s a quiz about various deceased (with one exception) murderous megalomaniacs. No googling, or I’ll boil you in a vat for supper. Answers later today. 1. Which Muslim headcases wrote the following novels: a) Escape To Hellb) Begone Demons! 2. According to a popular conspiracy theory, from whose frozen semen was German Chancellor Angela Merkel created? 3. Who ordered The Night of the Murdered Poets? 4. Which friend of ol’Muammar may well have served up his other friend, Giscard D’Estaing, with poached loin of human being at a presidential dinner? 5. Which murderous black nationalist nutjob reportedly modelled himself on Baron Samedi? 6. Who wrote to the Queen

Thursday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Helping out the Editor

Fraser asked how Britain can compete in the new world of global television. Here are two answers: 1) Don’t give up on the BBC. To use the language of marketing that has been polluting English for a generation, the BBC is a “global brand”. Fraser’s idea that Sky could ever win the same levels of trust is optimistic in the extreme. It would take decades for Sky to build a comparable reputation; longer if the board and shareholders allow the disgraced Murdoch family to cling onto power. BBC bias is a snide and cowardly phenomenon. But let us be realistic. When people talk about BBC bias they usually mean Radio

Jonathan Jones

The Spending Review, one year on

It’s been a year since the Coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review, but the public is in no mood to celebrate its anniversary. As the economy has failed to recover – GDP was no higher in June this year than at the time of the Review – sentiment has turned against the government. The latest YouGov polling shows that just one-in-three think the government is handling the economy well, against 58 per cent who say “badly”. At the time of the Spending Review, the public was split evenly on this question. Similarly, just 33 per cent think the government’s spending cuts are good for the economy, while half say they’re bad. But

Daniel Korski

The Colonel’s end

After more than 40 years of murderous rule and months fighting his own people, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has finally been caught, and killed, in his hometown of Sirte. This marks the end of the formal struggle against the Colonel’s regime, and, as such, is a great event for all Libyans. But Col Gaddafi’s death does create some complications for the new Libyan authorities. They have avoided a drawn-out judicial drama — like Slobodan Milosevic’s — which could have rallied people in the ex-dictator’s support. But his death also robs the new Libyan government of an opportunity to show that they are better than he was, by allowing a process of

Justin Marozzi

The post-Gaddafi future | 20 October 2011

We tweeted a link to this earlier, but thought CoffeeHousers would appreciate this Spectator article from August on the future of Libya. The question for Libyans, as they take their first momentous steps into the post-Gaddafi era, is whether they can now build a government and country worthy of their heroic struggle against one of the world’s worst tyrants. For decades, conventional thinking about Arab nations, especially among the experts, argued that they were best ruled by ‘strongmen’, a western euphemism for pro-western dictators such as the deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his former counterpart in Tunisia Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. According to this line of thought, Arabs

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Europe bubbles to the surface in PMQs

A particularly fractious PMQs today. Ed Miliband started by asking questions about Liam Fox which, frankly, seemed rather out of date given that Fox has already resigned. Cameron swatted them away fairly easy, mocking Miliband with the line “if you’re going to jump on a bandwagon make sure it is still moving”. But when Miliband came back on the economy, Cameron was far less sure footed. The Labour leader had one of those great PMQs facts: despite the government having issued 22 press releases about the regional growth fund in the last 16 months only two firms have received any money for it. A visibly irritated Cameron then said that

Peter Hoskin

Will IDS’s reforms get stuck in Whitehall’s digital mire?

“7m caught in tax blunder,” trumpets the cover of this morning’s Daily Mail. “After a series of errors, six million will get an average £400 rebate, while a million face demand to pay £600.” It’s a good story — but it’s also sadly, wearily familiar. Rewind the tape to last November, and the Telegraph was running with the headline, “New HMRC tax blunder means thousands face demands to repay”. Last September, the Guardian had an article about the 10 million people who might be owed rebates. Last August … oh, you get the point. Nary a month has passed without some tale of how HMRC has screwed up once again.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A town like Orania

Here’s a conversation I had with an elderly Afrikaaner lady (EAL) in the main street of the whites-only town, Orania, in South Africa. Me: Hello, do you live here? EAL: No, but I am thinking of moving here. Me: Why would you want to do that? EAL: There is no crime here, it is secure. The people are friendly and welcoming, and the shops are good. Me: There’s also a complete and utter absence of black people. EAL (jabbing her finger into my chest): Yis! And lit me tell you. That is the best thing of all! That is the best thing in the world! More snapshots from this neck

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Competition: Help Osborne to explain his growth strategy

Yesterday, Lord Wolfson — the new Tory peer and CEO of Next — made an extraordinary offer: £250,000 of his own money to whoever comes up with the best plan to break up the Euro. It’s the second biggest prize in economics, after the Nobel, and a great and patriotic idea from Wolfson, an original and forceful thinker with plenty real world experience from whom I hope we’ll hear more. Inspired by this, we at Coffee House would like to make our own offer: a bottle of Pol Roger, our house champagne, to whoever can explain George Osborne’s growth strategy. The chancellor needs some help on this front, with some unkind

Tuesday

Daniel Finkelstein

When Marty met George

Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, hasn’t been going long when its subject says something that made me laugh out loud, and at the same time explained all that followed. Speaking of his first attempt at writing music — a song called ‘Don’t Bother Me’ — he said he thought he’d have a go, because he figured that if John and Paul could write songs, how hard could it be? It’s always been the mathematics of The Beatles that has puzzled me, the sheer improbability that someone as brilliant as Paul McCartney should have teamed up with someone as good as John Lennon and

Peter Hoskin

Inflation soars

CPI inflation at 5.2 per cent in September, a three-year high. RPI inflation 5.6 per cent, the highest for twenty years. UPDATE: More from me here.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Stephen Birrell’s Conviction Shames Scotland

Sectarianism, we are often told, is “Scotland’s Shame” though there’s also ample evidence it’s actually “Scotland’s Pleasure”. For some at least. The prosecution and conviction of Stephen Birrell for comments he posted on a Facebook page entitled “Neil Lennon should be Banned” marks a new low. Not because of anything Mr Birrell wrote – his fevered outpourings being merely the ravings of a disturbed mind – but because Scotland now imprisons people for the crime of disliking other people and making that dislike apparent in any kind of public forum. This is a shameful moment that demeans the country far more plainly than anything said, sung or written at or

Monday

Bounderby

Why is the recovery so slow?

As someone who works in the City, even I sometimes think the Occupy Wall St brigade have a point. When you consider Barclays’ behaviour today, it’s a surprise that the protests didn’t come earlier. The bank has announced an $11.5 billion loan to junk-rated Kinder Morgan Inc to fund an oil pipeline transaction. The banks have money to lend; they just choose to gamble it. The reason? Simple. Risky loans and takeover deals can earn enormous fees for investment banking arms. Those fees are paid in advance and bonuses for senior management are drawn from those sums. The loans may also get placed on the commercial bank book — and

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dept of It’s Always the Jews: FIFA Edition

Yikes: Former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has blamed Zionism for the circumstances that led to him and former Asian Football Confederation chief Mohammed Bin Hammam being forced out of world football. Warner, 68, resigned from FIFA after ethics investigations were begun into a meeting he held with Bin Hammam where FIFA say payments were made to Caribbean football officials ahead of the election for FIFA president in June. Qatari Bin Hammam was handed a lifetime ban by FIFA for his role in the affair while a number of Caribbean officials were given suspensions last week. Bin Hammam was not immediately available for comment. Trinadadian Warner says in a letter to

John Kampfner

A crucial week for the cause of free expression

For those who care about free expression in the UK, and particularly the reform of our invidious libel laws, this is a crucial week. Today and tomorrow, the UK Supreme Court hears the Times’s attempt to overturn an appeal court ruling in a libel case brought against it by Metropolitan Police officer Gary Flood.   On Wednesday the Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill produce its first report. There are grounds for hope that it will suggest strengthening some key areas, paving the way for full legislation early in 2012 — if the government can be persuaded to find parliamentary time. They should, as this will be a win-win

Alex Massie Alex Massie

How important is the Ministry of Defence?

How important is the Ministry of Defence? Not, according to Fraser, important enough to this government to appoint a Secretary of State who has any great interest in Defence issues. This is fairly remarkable. You might have thought – and the MoD’s particular problems might have persuaded you – that defence would be an issue demanding a specialist but that reckons without the managerial habits of modern politics. This is not a criticism of Philip Hammond. He will doubtless be, as they say, a “safe pair of hands” at the MoD. Nevertheless, while procurement issues and budget-management are a large part of the MoD’s future they are not the only