Society

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

Christmas is all about enjoying the look on the face of a loved one as he or she opens something which you know will fill them with great emotion. And so Christmas day came a couple of days early for me as I watched my wife open the Oftsed report on our daughter’s school and shriek with fury to see that it had been downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘satisfactory’ (or, as the word is better understood, ‘utter sh*t’). The accompanying letter from the headmistress was one of the most disingenuous and dishonest pieces of literature I have ever read. The rest of the day was spent watching the missus text

A brief post to let CoffeeHousers know that the blog will be going a bit quieter over the next few days. We hope you have a very happy and peaceful Christmas. Coffee House won’t fall completely silent, though. Tune in over the weekend for the occasional post and selections from The Spectator archives. And there’s our ongoing Christmas competition here. We’ll be back, proper, early next week.

While we’re talking Christmas, how about this release from the Office for National Statistics today? It reveals how the cost of certain ‘Christmas shopping basket’ items has risen over the past year. We’ve put them into a table below — but let’s just say, you might want to start stocking up on carrots.

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