Society

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Three Cheers for the House of Lords | 12 October 2011

As a general rule complaints that the opposition are too beastly for words should not be taken too seriously. They reflect a sense of entitlement on the part of the governing party that, whenever it may be modestly frustrated, quickly becomes peevish, sour and silly. If this is true of parliamentarians it is even truer when considering the bleatings of partisan pundits cheering on Team Red or Team Blue. Again, if you judge these squabbling teams by different criteria then you forfeit some right to be taken seriously. So it’s depressing to see a commentator as urbane and generally sensible as Benedict Brogan make such an ass of himself in

Tuesday

Julia Unwin

Right to reply: The truth behind the poverty figures

This morning, Fraser published a piece criticising the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ definition of poverty. Here is a counterpunch from Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is the organisation that funds the IFS. This article is the latest post in our Right to Reply series.  Do we really need another debate about the usefulness of a poverty measure? Of course, no definition is perfect. One of the hardy perennials of the poverty debate is the question of measurement. I wonder what it says about us as a country: why do we spend so much effort thinking about definitions of poverty, and so little responding to the

David Blackburn

Which amendments to the NHS bill would the government accept?

The Lords has been debating the Owen/Hennessy amendment to the NHS bill, which threatens to upset the coalition. Owen and Hennessy have called for the bill to be referred to an extraordinary committee, which would report by 19 December, and they insist that the secretary of state must remain ultimately responsible for services.  Lord Howe opened for the government and spoke of the need to delegate power away from the secretary of state. The he added: ‘We are unequivocally clear that the Bill safeguards the Secretary of State’s accountability. However we are willing to listen to and consider the concerns that have been raised and make any necessary amendment to put

James Forsyth James Forsyth

BREAKING: Jeremy Heywood to be new Cabinet Secretary

Gus O’Donnell has just emailed colleagues to say that he is announcing his retirement today. He will be leaving the civil service at the end of this year. His successor as Cabinet Secretary will be Jeremy Heywood, the current permanent secretary at Number 10 who has managed to make himself indispensable to David Cameron. But Heywood, who is not overly popular with the departmental permanent secretaries, will not become head of the home civil service. That job will instead go to one of the other permanent secretaries who will take this on in addition to their current role. Ian Watmore, of Football Association fame, will become the permanent secretary at

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The poverty of the poverty measure

‘400,000 children will fall into relative poverty by 2015, says IFS’ we read on The Guardian’s front page today — yes, one of the most pernicious ideas of recent years is back. It’s the definition of ‘poverty’ as being figures on a spreadsheet, households deemed to fall beneath an arbitrary threshold. It’s almost entirely meaningless, and diverts energy and resources away from a real fight against poverty. I really do believe that, as ideas go, this one has damaged Britain more than almost any other over the last two decades — and it’s high time it was confronted.   The ‘poverty’ that the Institute of Fiscal Studies is talking about

Monday

Daniel Korski

Sarko’s dour challenger

One of France’s dullest politicians is now odds-on to take up residence in the Élysée Palace next year. François Hollande, the former leader of the French Socialists, has emerged on top in a competition to take on Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidency. Six contestants vied for the Socialist nomination, including Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s former partner who lost to Sarkozy in 2007. In the first round of the primaries yesterday, Hollande finished first ahead of current Socialist leader Martine Aubry. Here are the results based on 82 per cent of the votes cast:  The two will now face each other in a second round on Sunday, with Hollande the clear favourite.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The New Statesman: The Toadies’ Gazette

Here we go again. According to the surprisingly reliable Gudio Fawkes, the New Statesman has forced Dan Hodges, a lively young writer, whom you actually want to read, to resign for being a lively young writer, you actually want to read. Specifically, he had done what free journalists in a free society are meant to do and criticised a leading politician – Ed Miliband in Hodges’ cases. As a parting snub, the Statesman failed to publish Hodges’ piece from the Labour party conference (but thanks to Iain Dale you can read it here). I was forced out of the New Statesman for departing from left orthodoxy, Martin Bright was forced

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Ad We’ve Been Waiting For

As far as I can tell Mitt Romney has been hoping that everyone will be fed up with health care reform by the time the primary season rolls around. That way perhaps people will forget that his Massachusetts bill – once much-praised by the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives – is not wholly dissimilar to the bill President Obama signed for the rest of the United States. Rick Perry ain’t about to let Romney forget this: First thing to be said about this: it’s way cool. Second, let’s have ads like this in the UK too. Thirdly: Romney’s case is about pragmatism not principle. In a way, then, this ad

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 10 October – 16 October 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

Jonathan Jones

Crunch time for Fox

“I don’t believe that wrongdoing did occur”, said Liam Fox in his apology yesterday. With today’s front pages dripping with accusations, Fox has some work to do to substatiate that claim. The Guardian reveals that “Political lobbyists were paid thousands of pounds to help a Dubai-based businessman arrange a secretive meeting with Liam Fox”: “an invoice, seen by the Guardian, shows that Boulter enlisted the services of a lobbying firm to help him skip layers of bureaucracy and meet Fox for an urgent meeting on the 41st floor of the hotel. The invoice shows Boulter paid Tetra Strategy £10,000 for “project fees”. It is understood that the fees covered fixing

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Here’s to Des

A slightly belated happy birthday to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was 80 years old on Friday. I can’t think of many prominent figures from Africa to whom one would gladly wish a long and peaceful life, but Tutu is surely one. It is a moot point as to whether he is more of an irritant to the ruling ANC party in South Africa than he was to the apartheid regime. His latest howl of anguish came when the corrupt and morally bankrupt ANC connived with the Chinese to stop the Dalai Lama coming to Des’s 80th bash. But he has been slinging arrows in their direction for most of the

Daniel Korski

Fox would lead anti-coalition Tories

So far, the Prime Minister seems to be playing down any potential fallout from the crisis dogging Liam Fox. No 10 seems to be saying “if the Defence Secretary goes, it won’t be such a big issue”. Much remains to be seen about the Defence Secretary’s career – and he may survive the crisis that is currently engulfing him. But it looks increasingly hard for him. Evidence is emerging daily that Adam Werritty was somehow a member of the Defence Secretary’s team, closer to Fox even than junior ministers. And there may be more trips to be uncovered and more meetings that he joined. He was, for example, spotted at

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 8 October 2011

Q. I have been building a small business, so far single-handedly, with a tiny bit of input from my parents. We live in a tight-knit rural community and a couple of unemployed graduate friends, still living at home like me, on hearing that I may be expanding soon, have asked me to employ them. They are far too intelligent to do the only sort of work I would need them for — packing up parcels part-time — but they have suggested they do it anyway and I give them equity in my company as a compensation for paying the minimum wage. I don’t want to do this, and my parents,

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety: Nothing to write about

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference in Manchester and I must say it’s nice to be among friends. I mean the drunken hacks at the bar, obviously. This is a conference where we can drink with impunity because, let’s face it, there isn’t much for us to write about. The big story at all the party conferences is ‘splits’ and the reason both this conference and the Lib Dem conference have been so dull is because the split is between the two parties, not within them. This is one of the ancillary benefits of the coalition: the poles around which the government’s internal politics revolve are located in

Dot Wordsworth

Predatory

Most people think polar bears attractive animals, at least when not sharing space with one. Yet, ‘polar bears are, unquestionably, the world’s largest land predator,’ a popular magazine remarks. It’s the way some animals are. Beasts of prey are called predators by extension. The Latin praedator was a ‘plunderer, pillager, robber’. But words don’t mean what their etymological forebears meant. In the reign of Elizabeth I, someone made a punning reference to Caesar as a tyrant, ‘no pretor but predator’. It was not until 1908 that natural historians began to speak of carnivores as predators. So Ed Miliband’s categorisation of businessmen like Sir Fred Godwin as predatory might seem to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 October 2011

Manchester ‘Beer-battered sustainable fish’, said the menu in the Palace Hotel: this great city tries to combine its incontestable northernness with its growing, but still insecure modernity. Everything has to be ‘sustainable’ now of course, which will prove difficult if the present European banking system cannot be sustained. The government’s new ideas about planning are based on ‘sustainable development’. Even though I find the phrase irritating and almost otiose (it is like saying one is in favour of ‘edible food’), I speak at the Daily Telegraph fringe meeting in favour of the new policy. Only in Britain — only, actually, in England — do people believe they are doing country

Clarissa Tan

Diary – 8 October 2011

This is not the best time to move from East to West. The thought occurs to me as I sit in a British bank, at its Westminster branch no less, waiting to open my first UK account. The procedure takes two hours, stretched across two appointments over two days. In the same period of time, a bank in Singapore — my home for the past 20 years — would not only have set up an account, but offered the customer five credit cards and a housing loan. When international investors like Jim Rogers say Asia is the future because things just move faster there, there’s some truth in it. •••

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 8 October 2011

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that the Treasury would spend billions buying bonds from small and medium-sized businesses in an exercise called ‘credit easing’. He announced a freeze on council tax for a second year, saving householders an average of £72. He also remarked: ‘We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told the nation to pay off its credit card bills. He also said: ‘As eurozone countries move to co-ordinate more, as I believe they should, those outside the eurozone will need certain safeguards’; Treasury officials were studying

The Spectator

Letters | 8 October 2011

Boris and the Johnsons Sir: Toby Young speaks of ‘the (Johnson) family’s roots as Turkish immigrants’ (‘Plan B’, 1 October). Though I’m always amused by what Toby writes, I have to point out that he is not always accurate. These are the facts. My paternal grandfather, Ali Kemal, was married to my grandmother, Winifred Blum. Winifred’s mother Margaret was English (née Johnson), while her father was Swiss. While Ali Kemal’s political and other commitments required him to remain behind in Constantinople, Winifred — already several months pregnant — came to England to visit her mother, and to have the baby in more tranquil surroundings. My father was born in Bournemouth on