Society

Friday

David Blackburn

A black anniversary

Even after 10 years, Afghanistan still has the capacity to shock. Details of the attack on Kabul are vague, but it seems that a posse of Taliban fighters dressed in “military garb” walked into the offices of the British Council and the United Nations; three people were killed in the ensuing explosions and fire-fights between security forces and insurgents. As I write, reports suggest that one Islamist is still alive and shooting in the British Council, while other explosions have been heard across the capital this morning. Taliban spokesmen have confirmed that they had carried out the attack to mark the 92nd anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from Britain. But they

Thursday

Martin Bright

Why IDS must get it right on youth unemployment

Iain Duncan Smith has given a detailed interview with the Spectator and the full-length version is online. Right now, beyond David Cameron and George Osborne, he has the most important job in government. There is some really interesting and innovative stuff here despite the unnecessary British jobs for British workers dog-whistle politics. IDS is right to talk about the riots being a pivotal moment for our society and “social bonds” are certainly something we should look at very closely. But he also needs to take another hard look at his Work Programme, which is being touted as the cure-all for Britain’s ills by government ministers. This is a reform that

David Blackburn

The markets rout

The recent rally on the markets is now the most distant memory. Stocks continued to fall today amid concerns about the European sovereign debt crisis, negligible growth figures in the developed world and cooling Asian economies. Robert Peston has an excellent account of the causes and effects of the latest rout. Banking stocks were brutalised, with Barclays and RBS both shedding more than 10 per cent of their value, with Lloyds and HSBC not far behind. Continental banking stocks were similarly mauled, with Soc Gen losing 12.34 per cent and Commerzbank being shorn of 10.42 per cent of its value. But the unease spread across exchanges as investors put their

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Dangerous Summer

This England cricket team is rather like the great German football sides of the past: a collective rather greater than the sum of its parts. Hard, determined, efficient, ruthless, organised and together. There’s quality too, for sure, but that’s not what stands-out. They thoroughly deserve their success. Nevertheless, their success comes at a price. Or, rather, much as one relishes the novel notion that England might be the best side in the world at present, there is a gloomier picture to be considered too. India’s feebleness in this series, combined with the nature and preferences of their governing board, is bad news for the future of Test match cricket. It’s

David Blackburn

Lambs to the slaughter

Who are the forgotten victims of the economic malaise that has beset the West? Martin Vander Weyer’s business column in a recent issue of the Spectator is a lament for the middle classes. The modest fruits of their honest labour are being quietly obliterated by forces they cannot hope to resist. The piece is infused both with empathy and no small measure of anger at those responsible. Here is an extract: ‘What horrors. As I write, the FTSE 100 index has dived below 5,000 for the first time since last July, the mood of the London investment community darkened by the sense that civilisation is breaking down. There’s no glimmer of goodness or

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Creating British Jobs for Non-British Workers?

Will Straw takes issues with Fraser’s post on the matter of just how many “new” jobs have been filled by foreign-born workers. As Straw says, foreign-born is one metric, British-national another. If you measure these things by the latter yardstick then, apparently, 69% of new jobs in the last year have been filled by non-UK nationals. This is interesting and that is, evidently, a hefty percentage. (It would be interesting to see a regional breakdown of these figures too.) The better and more important question is why businesses appear to favour employing foreigners. Because this is the better, more important question it’s the one that’s best left unasked. I don’t

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator, redux

There’s a lot of bad news around, but some things are going right in Britain. Sales of The Spectator are on the rise again, for the first time in four years. Pretty soon, if the trend (and our luck) holds, more people will be buying the magazine than at any point in our 183-year history. I thought CoffeeHousers might like to know a bit more about the forces behind this, and what we at The Spectator are up too. The market for print is murderous right now. We’re mid-way through what is, for the media, an industrial revolution. A massive migration is underway, from print to online. Like many organisations, we cut

Sally Thompson

Tobin’s folly

The Eurozone Tobin tax announced on Tuesday by Merkel and Sarkozy is intended to reduce market volatility. It could have the opposite effect, and, if introduced in Britain, could cripple Britain’s financial sector, a new report by the Adam Smith Institute says. Based on the example of the “pure” Tobin tax that was implemented in Sweden in the 1980s and a large number of studies looking at equity and foreign exchange markets, a clear relationship was revealed between increasing transaction costs and higher levels of volatility. Transaction volumes also decrease as business is driven to lower tax regimes. When Sweden introduced a levy of 0.5 per cent, 60 per cent

David Blackburn

The annual A-levels helter-skelter

The Gap Year has been declared dead. It’s A-levels day today, and the annual scramble for university places has been intensified ahead of next year’s tuition fees rise. According to this morning’s Times (£), the last count had 669,956 pupils sprinting after 470,000 vacancies. An estimated 50,000 students with adequate grades will not enter higher education this year as many universities have raised entry requirements to manage increased demand. This means that competition during clearance will be even more stiff than usual, particularly as universities will offer many fewer clearing places according to various surveys. Needless to say, UCAS’ website appears to have collapsed under the weight of this unparalleled

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Sentencing: Riots Division

I dare say some of the sentences handed down in the aftermath of the riots are on the stiff side of things. Some people are likely to be harshly punished for moments of stupidity as they were carried away by the thrill of running with the mob. But, though readers know I tend to take a pretty liberal line on criminal justice matters, I also think that this is one of those occasions when a measure of exemplary sentencing may often be appropriate. Whether this is the case or not, it’s useful to read what those passing judgement are actually arguing. This being so, here’s the full judgement of four

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Perry Derangement Absurdity

Earlier this month Joe Biden was in “trouble” for referring to the Tea Party as “terrorists”, now Rick Perry’s getting it in the neck for suggesting loose monetary policy “between now and the election” is “treasonous” and that if Ben Bernanke turned-up in Texas he’s be treated “pretty ugly”. This might have been phrased better and on the merits of the policy question Perry’s more likely to be mistaken than not but, please, let’s not pretend this is, um, a hanging offence. Right Andrew? I mean, sorry, but this is silly: Here’s the actual quote: If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Recalcitrant police forces

Applications to be the next commissioner of the Metropolitan Police closed at noon today. But thanks to the Home Office and the police, the best candidate for the job — Bill Bratton — hasn’t been allowed to even apply. The energy which was put into barring him shows just how determined the police and the Home Office are to prevent any outside talent from being brought into the police. Number 10, though, maintains that it still wants to appoint outsiders to positions of authority in the police, even though it is now trying to claim that the commissioner of the Met was the wrong place to start this process. It

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Our Revolting Youth (Have Always Been With Us)

The problem with the Prime Minister’s “Broken Society” meme is that it’s not obvious society is more broken now than it always has been. Sure, there are serious problems and some of them are deep-rooted and, perhaps, the overall level of hopeless venality is higher than once it was but, tempting though it is to conclude this might be likely, the fact remains we are much more likely to be aware of contemporary problems and equally likely to gloss over the problems of past ages. This is especially obviously the case if we pause to consider aspects of modern Britain that, once unthinkable, have become so commonplace we sometimes forget

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

16.8.77

My mother doesn’t read blogs but if she did this is the kind of thing she’d like to see:   Appropriate, not just for the anniversary today, but for Riot Week too.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Rick Perry’s Federalism: Another Lost Cause

Dan Drezner tweeted this afternoon that Barack Obama vs Rick Perry would be the starkest choice between rival philosophies and policies since Johnson-Goldwater in 1964. That might well be true, particulalry if you limit the question to domestic policy. Perry is barely out of the traps, of course, and already people are rushing to argue he’s a dangerous lunatic. Matt Yglesias, for instance, reads Perry’s book Fed Up and picks out ten of its “weirdest ideas”. Among them, apparently: 5. Almost Everything Is Unconstitutional: Regrets the existence of jurisprudence construing the Commerce Clause to permit “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and

Jonathan Jones

A bleak outlook | 16 August 2011

As Fraser has already observed, annual CPI inflation rose to 4.4 per cent in July, from 4.2 per cent in June. This means that it has been 4 per cent or more throughout 2011 and expectations are for it to reach 5 per cent before the year is out. Even stripping out tax increases (such as the VAT rise in January), prices have risen by 2.8 per cent in the past year. But looking at the more detailed figures reveals even more dramatic price rises. The biggest driver of inflation is rising transport costs, which account for 1.25 of that 4.4 per cent figure. “Fuels and lubricants” are 15.1 per

David Blackburn

The phone hacking saga bursts back to life

The phone hacking saga has burst back to life this afternoon, with the publication of a letter by Clive Goodman that contradicts much of the evidence given by News International Executives to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Goodman’s letter (which you can read here) , apparently written on 2 March 2007, states that phone hacking was widely discussed in editorial meetings at the News of the World and that senior executives were informed of the practice, contrary to their protestations that Goodman was a lone rogue reporter. Goodman alleges that Andy Coulson banned references to phone hacking in meetings and then offered to save Goodman’s job if the disgraced reporter did not

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Inflation rises yet again

“Inflation destroys nations and societies as surely as invading nations do. Inflation is the parent of unemployment. It is the unseen robber of those who have saved. No policy which puts at risk the defeat of inflation – however great the short-term attraction – can be justified”. That was Margaret Thatcher, speaking in 1980 when inflation was much higher but British politicians actually cared about it. You won’t even hear the Governor of the Bank of England denounce today’s figures: CPI at 4.4 per cent and the traditional measure of inflation, RPI, at 5.0 per cent. It is seen as just another statistic. The government has also chosen to announce

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The failure of ideology

When I was ten years old my junior school decamped from its old site and moved to a brand new building which, surprisingly for us, had no classrooms. I remember a bunch of us talking to the headmaster about it. “Where do we have lessons?” “Ah, you won’t be having ‘lessons’, as such.” “What!” “No, it’s all open-plan, there will be no more lessons. If you want to learn some maths, you’ll wander over to the maths area. If you want to learn English, exactly the same.” We thought about this for a second or two. “What if we never want to do any maths or English? What if we

Monday

David Blackburn

IDS and the renewal of society

Iain Duncan Smith has made two notable media appearances today and his comments will reveal how the government’s plan to fight gangs and lawlessness will unfold. He has just told Sky News that cuts to local youth programmes should be revisited. If the government reverses some of these decisions, it might satisfy the need for a positive policy angle, as described by James earlier. On the other hand, some Tories voice private concerns about reversing spending decisions, fearing that it would play into the Harmanite school of thought that cuts are to blame in part. Youth schemes and work are IDS’ inclusive carrot, but he also wields a coercive stick. He has