Society

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Artists vs Artisans

Watching Roger Federer destory Rafael Nadal the other day and knowing how many people can recognise their brilliance while always holding a vehement, even visceral, preference for one of these superb athletes I wondered if there was a correlation with another bitterly divisive sporting divide. I mean, of course, David Gower vs Graham Gooch. That is, how many people love Nadal and Gower and how many Gooch and Federer? Precious few I suspect. How could you? Even allowing for different sports and their different demands these things have an aesthetic quality. Gooch, English cricket’s greatest monster these last 25 years, is obviously allied with Nadal; Gower with Federer. Perhaps I

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Breaking down those record immigration figures

New immigration stats out today show that 2010 set a new record for net migration into the UK. The figure hit 252,000 – a 27 per cent increase on 2009 and 7,000 higher than the previous record in 2004:   As this graph shows, the number of immigrants moving to the UK has actually been fairly constant – at around 580,000 – since 2004 (when the ‘accession eight’ countries in eastern Europe joined the EU). But the number of people leaving the country has dropped off significantly in the past couple of years – from 427,000 in 2008 to 339,000 last year, hence the increase in net migration. So, as

Daniel Korski

What kind of Europe?

A couple of weeks ago I tried to lay out what the future of Europe could look like, given that some member states want to create an ever-closer Union while others prefer to remain in a looser kind of club. I wrote that the EU might end up evolving into a much more asymmetric arrangement, with a small group of European states integrating in some areas, while other states remain outside. Later I called this new arrangement the trade the ‘EF’, the European Framework, as opposed to the more integrative EU of today.   Now others have begun offering their ideas. Michael van Hulten, a former Dutch MEP, has gone

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Guardian’s standards continue to amaze

The Guardian has retracted one of the allegations it made about me in its strangely humour-free Pass Notes section on Monday. They said that I had described a footballer as a ‘spearchucking African’, whereas I was quoting what had allegedly been said about the footballer by somebody else and using that quote to justify the black footballer’s consequent aggressive reaction. So, they put in a retraction today, although devoid of an apology. I might work through the rest of the Pass Notes and get them to retract most of the rest. What they should really do is reprint their headline from earlier in the week on every page, every day,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The 40p Tax Rate is Much More Important than the 50p Rate

Clarissa Tan made a number of fine points about the utility of the 50p rate of income tax yesterday. Tim Montgomerie makes some more at ConservativeHome today under the headline “Osborne is warned that Britain will lose its high earners if he doesn’t abolish 50p tax band.” Maybe, but he might lose the next election if he does. This is not the 1980s. It was possible then to persuade middle-income voters that tax rates north of 80% were foolish, punitive and counter-productive. Making a comparable case for abolishing the 50p rate is a much more difficult prospect. If these were happy times matters might be different but they are not

Jonathan Jones

Cameron: ‘We have to end the sicknote culture’

The Prime Minister has backed the proposal for a new independent service to sign workers’ long-term sicknotes, instead of GPs. The plan, which Pete wrote about at the weekend, is aimed at ensuring that people on sick pay or sickness-related benefits really are too ill to work. Cameron describes how it would work in today’s Mail: ‘The independent service would be free to all employers from four weeks of sickness absence, with the option for employers to pay for it earlier. It would provide an in-depth assessment of an individual’s physical and mental function. So if they’re unable to work, they’ll be helped – but if they are fit, they’ll

Wednesday

Clarissa Tan

Should the top-rate tax be less than 40 per cent?

Britain will soon be a leaking ship – it’ll lose £1 billion per year by 2015, if George Osborne stubbornly sticks to the 50 per cent top tax rate. As other countries have moved to attract the wealthy, the UK has actually taken a step backwards, according to a new report. And there are losses that are harder to quantify – dampers on productivity and entrepreneurship, and deterrents to high earners from coming here. So what’s the optimum tax rate? Less than 40 per cent, says the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The 50 per cent rate for people earning over £150,000, introduced by Alistair Darling, was meant to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Up with the IRA and Down with the Pope of Rome

Joan McAlpine’s column in the Scotsman this week is uncharacteristically unpersuasive. Since she decided to defend the SNP’s plans for so-called anti-sectarian legislation she was backing a losing horse from the start. Still, it speaks well of her loyalty. Nevertheless, her piece is useful since, in large part, it outlines a kind of consensus that is deemed to exist and from which it is unwise to deviate. Certainly it is hard to think of many opposition politicians who have distinguished themselves in this affair. Even those who question the SNP’s plans do so on grounds of efficiency, not ethics or principle. If the government’s plans are woeful; the opposition remains

Jonathan Jones

Murdoch resigns from newspaper boards

The Evening Standard has the scoop: ‘Companies House filings show James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of both News Group Newspapers Limited, publisher of The Sun, and Times Newspapers Limited, which operates The Times and Sunday Times.’ Of course, James Murdoch remains executive chairman of News International, of which both those companies are subsidiaries. His next test will come on Tuesday, when shareholders will decide whether he remains non-executive chairman of BSkyB. Murdoch looks likely to survive the vote, not least because BSkyB’s directors have backed him in a letter to the shareholders.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I was wrong on riot sentencing

People sometimes ask me, about the stuff I write: ‘Do you ever think that you get it wrong?’ The answer of course is a fervent ‘Yes!’ And even when I don’t actually KNOW that I’ve got something wrong, I’m always plagued with doubt about it. One thing I got wrong recently was the riots. Or more properly, my take on what happened to the people prosecuted for their parts in the riots. I think I remember being gung-ho for long sentences, sentences out of all proportion to the crimes actually committed, bang ’em up, ne’er do well trash. I suppose, like a lot of people, I was swallowed by a

Daniel Korski

Opening Europe

It is an article of British faith that further liberalisation of Europe’s market is a worthwhile goal. But few people realise the boost the UK economy would actually get from the finalisation of the EU’s internal market – especially implementation of the Services Directive, creating an integrated market for energy, modernising public procurement rules and liberalising the digital market. Implementation of the Services Directive alone would add 1.5 per cent of GDP to the EU as a whole in the next nine years, according to European Commission calculations. As the UK has one of the strongest services sectors, this will have direct benefits here. Taken together, progress in all these

Tuesday

Campbell Robb

The government’s housing policies don’t match its strong rhetoric

Yesterday’s housing strategy offered a mortgage guarantee for first-time buyers of new properties, one of the few new announcements in a document largely consisting of re-hashed policy. At best, the mortgage guarantee helps to provide a boost to house builders and welcome relief for some credit-worthy borrowers who simply can’t build up a sufficient deposit. At worst, it encourages risky lending, subsidises high house prices and raises unrealistic expectations for young families. Unaffordable, reckless lending (at least, up until the credit crunch and collapse of the sub-prime market) threatened the stability of the financial sector and caused misery to thousands of homeowners who later found themselves falling behind on payments

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne chooses more debt over more cuts

Reading today’s newspapers, it seems that the biggest decision of Osborne’s mini-Budget has already been made. Evaporating growth means lower tax revenues, so the choice is between protecting his deficit reduction plan or keeping total spending cuts at less than 1 per cent a year. Increasing savings to, say, 1.3 per cent a year would mean he could easily meet his deficit targets. But it seems the decision has been taken to borrow even more. In his March budget, Osborne laid out plans to increase government debt by 51 per cent over the course of a parliament – lower than the 60 per cent that Labour had planned. It now

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There’s merit in the Coalition’s housing proposals

The government’s announcement on housing today is an attempt to square the circle. On the one hand, a return to excessive lending and sub-prime mortgages is clearly not a good thing. Critics say, with justification, look where government backed mortgages got America. But on the other, there are clearly problems when people who aren’t fortunate enough to have parental help aren’t getting on the housing ladder until well into their thirties. Conservatives who understand the importance of a property-owning democracy should be concerned about this. The Coalition’s solution — and this is the most genuinely coalition piece of policy we’ve seen in months — is partial government indemnities for people

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 21-27 November 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

James Plunkett

Are we facing an American nightmare?

With the Chancellor’s autumn statement due next Tuesday, we’re all talking about growth. The ECB and Bank of England now say the UK economy is set to grow at less than half the rate the OBR forecast back in March. That makes it all but certain that George Osborne will announce dramatic downward revisions to UK forecasts when he stands up in parliament next week. But before all the fighting about Plan As and Bs reaches fever pitch, it’s worth asking what the next decade looked like under the previous, more optimistic growth projections. The answer isn’t pretty and it helps highlight one major question that’s rarely asked in our

Sunday

Johnnie Kerr

Heath on Heath

‘I don’t know why I became a cartoonist,’ says Michael Heath. ‘I had no education during the war, so when I was twelve and war ended, I couldn’t read or write like children now. I suppose I sort of expressed myself by drawing.’ He is sitting in the conference room at The Spectator, surrounded by shelves of leather bound back volumes, almost sixty years worth of which are filled with his drawings. I’m shocked to learn he was born in 1935 — he doesn’t look anywhere near a man in his seventies. He still treks miles to work every day on foot.  Cartoons today, he tells me, aren’t at all

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

English English

Some man in the Daily Telegraph was going on about English not being only for the English. Dr Mario Saraceni, the man in question, an academic at the University of Portsmouth, goes further. He says: ‘It’s important the psychological umbilical cord linking English to its arbitrary centre in England is cut.’ But why should it be? The next thing he says sounds truly deranged: ‘The origins of English are not to be found in the idea of it spreading from the centre to the periphery, but in multiple, simultaneous origins.’ Does he believe that in the fifth century some Jutes set sail from Schleswig-Holstein in clinker-built boats for Malaysia and

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: your problems solved | 19 November 2011

Q. I believe there is a recent trend among very well-brought-up people to attempt to alleviate the impression of elitism that their impeccable manners may provoke by putting their feet in places where they should not be. When I was in London just before the election, I noticed a picture of Mr Cameron sitting in a window, with one Nike-clad foot pulled up next to him on the windowsill. I believe this was deliberate, in order to reassure prospective voters that he was not a stuffy old fogey, but hip and with-it. Now, at my mud hotel in Mali, I have told the staff that feet are not allowed on

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 19 November 2011

The fact that the request came in late on a Thursday afternoon should have aroused my suspicions. ‘Are you available?’ she asked. This was a BBC producer asking me if I was free to appear on Any Questions the following day. I quickly ran through my commitments: pick up Caroline’s dry-cleaning, fix the lavatory seat in the upstairs loo, take Ludo to the doctor. ‘Of course I’m available,’ I said. It wasn’t until I was introduced by Jonathan Dimbleby that I realised why they’d called me so late. ‘Toby Young has heroically stepped into the breach after Kelvin Mackenzie dropped out,’ he said. It didn’t take long to realise why