Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 November 2011

•Home The crisis in the eurozone was ‘an opportunity to begin to refashion the EU so it better serves this nation’s interests’, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said in his Mansion House speech. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a television interview: ‘There’s got to be more integration — the kind of thing actually that Britain would not tolerate and is one of the reasons we didn’t go in the euro.’ Unemployment among those aged 16-24 rose above a million. Inflation fell by 0.2 percentage points, to 5 per cent (measured by the CPI) and 5.4 (by the RPI). Mr Cameron threw a fork at a mouse

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Riots and responsibilities

The riots are fast in danger of becoming the forgotten issue in our politics. The social and cultural problems that they laid bare have been knocked out of the news by the continuing financial and political drama in the Eurozone But if we, as a society, don’t work out how to address these problems then they will simply get worse. The essay by David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, on what happened this summer in The Guardian magazine today is thought-provoking even if I don’t agree with all of its conclusions. . Interestingly for a man of the left, Lammy accepts the points that the riots were about culture as much as

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What is it with the critics and Ricky Gervais?

I’ve had a sense of humour failure, in that I find something funny which nobody else does, apparently. I’ve been watching Ricky Gervais’s new comedy, Life’s Too Short, and thought the first episode, in particular, was hilarious. But people really hate Gervais, don’t they? I haven’t yet read a decent review of the programme and yet it’s probably funnier than anything else on our screens that’s new. This seems to get missed. My Sunday Times colleague, AA Gill, kicked the living hell out of the programme last week in typically elegant and cutting fashion, for example. And many of his observations (£) were right: it’s a comedy with a dwarf

Peter Hoskin

Assessing the sick

Should GPs determine whether people on long-term sick leave are too ill to work? Perhaps not, according to the draft copy of a government-commissioned review into sickness absence. It proposes setting up a new, separate and independent body to assess those on long-term sick leave, on the grounds that doctors have no incentive — nor, perhaps, the specific knowledge — to prod and coax them back towards employment. The new service, it is said, would advise sick leavers, and their employers, about just what they can and can’t manage. If the government does introduce this, it will be another sign of their intent to untangle the problems with sickness benefits.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Politics: Recovery begins at home

There’s a pattern emerging to George Osborne’s autumn. He gives a big domestic set piece speech on growth and then immediately leaves the country for a meeting of European finance ministers. It is what he did straight after his conference speech last month and what he will do after the growth review on 29 November. It is a reminder that the fate of the British economy is uncomfortably linked to the fortunes of the floundering eurozone. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have never been more worried about the economic outlook than they are now. One Downing Street aide remarks: ‘it is not quite sleepless nights territory. But it is

The Spectator

Get it right, George!

Arthur Laffer Chairman, Laffer Associates Cut the 50p tax Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through tax cuts, is the surest way to promote growth. I have never heard of a country that taxed itself into prosperity. Yet Britain last year raised the top rate of income tax from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. For more economic growth, and more tax revenue, this rate should be lowered immediately. This paradox — lower rates, but higher yield — has been demonstrated time and time again, the world over. Between 1980 and 2007, the US cut tax rates on every form of income, the highest, the lowest and all

Nigel Lawson

Surviving the euro

We need an orderly end to the EU’s disastrous economic experiment The eurozone crisis threatens the world’s economic stability, but not for the reasons people think. The crisis was predictable and predicted, but schadenfreude is neither appropriate nor affordable. The task now is to extricate ourselves from this mess, and to learn its lessons. This means identifying the factors behind the debt crisis, and deciding how best to bring the calamitous eurozone experiment to an end. The economic threat comes from a further weakening of an already enfeebled western banking system, as a result of unwise lending and borrowing on a massive scale. Why did the West borrow so much?

Michael Henderson

Deadly game

When, two decades ago, the cricket historian David Frith published his study of cricketing suicides, By His Own Hand, the book carried a foreword by Peter Roebuck. As an opening batsman, Roebuck had represented Millfield School, Cambridge University and Somerset, where he was the club captain. In his second life he proved to be a quirky, provocative journalist, initially for the Sunday Times and eventually for several newspapers in Australia, where he lived by choice. Now he too is dead, at 55, by his own hand. What is it about cricket and suicide? In his research Frith found more than 80 cricketers who snuffed out their life-light, including some of

Leah McLaren

Resetting the clock?

A Canadian doctor may have found a natural way to extend women’s fertility Dr Robert Casper, gynaecologist, reproductive endocrinologist and Toronto-based fertility guru, is telling me a bunch of stuff I really don’t want to hear. ‘The ageing female reproductive system is like a forgotten flashlight on the top shelf of a closet,’ he says in his flat, matter-of-fact Canadian bedside voice; a voice, incidentally, that reminds me of my father’s. ‘When you stumble across it a few years later and try to switch it on, it won’t work, not because there’s anything wrong with the flashlight but because the batteries inside it have died.’ The ‘batteries’ he’s referring to

Dylan Jones

New York Notebook | 19 November 2011

When Keith Richards stepped up onto the stage at the Norman Mailer Gala at the Mandarin Oriental in New York last Tuesday, to collect the Autobiography Award from a bumptious Bill Clinton, he appeared to be almost speechless. Words eventually came, though, if a little tentatively: ‘I’m not usually fazed by stuff,’ said Keith, almost humbly, glancing at the ex-president, ‘but I’m fazed by this.’ It was difficult to tell who had the most star-power; the great and the good took out their mobiles to take snaps of Clinton, while Keef charmed everyone with his unintentional impression of Bill Deedes. Two months ago, when we honoured Keith at the GQ

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

The media is out of control. But we can still worry about the behaviour of tabloids

For months now, the whole idea of the Leveson inquiry into press standards has been dimly reminding me of something. Only recently did I figure out what it was. You know when anthropologists descend upon some almost-doomed Patagonian tribe, desperate to document their language, costumes and strategies for spear-throwing, nose-boning and rat spit-roasting before the last one succumbs to alcoholism and keels over and dies? It’s a bit like that. It’s the Domesday Book for the British press. This isn’t to say that there won’t be a British press 30 years from now. There had better be, or else some of us are going to be in trouble. But surely,

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: Across the Slough of Despond to the Edge of Darkness – with bright spots in between

The Bank of England was expected this week to slash its growth forecast for the current year and next to around 1 per cent, down from previous forecasts of 1.5 and 2.1 per cent — but that’s still optimistic according to a European Commission report which projects no better than 0.7. Official ­figures were also expected to show the number of unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds passing a million for the first time. In the eurozone, where Marios are suddenly in the ascendant, the new ECB president Mario Draghi admitted that ‘mild recession’ is in prospect while pundits gave Italy’s new prime minister Mario Monti a month at most before his

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Occasional verse

In Competition No. 2722 you were invited to supply an all-purpose poem for state occasions. ‘What a strange competition,’ writes Elizabeth Llewellyn-Smith, ‘when the prize must inevitably go to Wendy Cope for her existing poem under the same title! Who is going to beat that one?’ Good point, Miss Llewellyn-Smith; Wendy Cope’s wry and witty poem does indeed set the bar high. In the event, most of you chose to play it straight, though there were a few notable exceptions. The winners earn £25 each. The bonus fiver is Brian Murdoch’s. Lo!/Hail!/Arise!/Rejoice!/Kneel!/ Wonder!/Weep! Let loyal crowds their loyal vigil keep Along the route to our nation’s great shrine, And let

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: The rigged roulette wheel

I came face to face with the real banking problem a month ago when speaking in Oxford to an audience of undergraduates. ‘Well, I suppose one good thing about the last three years is that you won’t now all be applying to work in banks,’ I joked. It seems I was wrong. At these words, about half the people in the audience stared sheepishly into their laps. I can’t say I blame them. Of my own college contemporaries, leaving aside one or two barristers and a brilliant technology entrepreneur, I think it would be accurate to say that every single person who went to work in banking wound up earning

Bruce Anderson

Drink: The long-life cocktail

Although the sample may seem unscientific, I have established a link between dry martinis and longevity. There was a wonderful old fellow called Roland Shaw, who lived to be nearer 90 than 80, and lived is the word. Even given the age of the vehicle, the mileage was prodigious. More than six-and-a-half feet tall, like a piece of Stonehenge with legs, Roland had lapidary features and a basso profundo voice. He would have made an excellent Commendatore, except that he would have won the sword fight. Roland was not only an oil man; he was the Nestor of the oil business, there when the first donkey nodded. He had a

Charlotte Metcalf

Kerala in Luxury 

I flew into Cochin one December morning, glad of the humidity, like a welcoming hot flannel after Britain’s bitter cold. I was staying a short walk from the shore in the heart of the old fort at Malabar House, one of a group of boutique hotels set up by Joerg Drechsel and his Catalan partner, Txuku. ‘We were told we were doomed to fail,’ says Joerg, a determined-looking German in his early sixties. ‘When we first opened Malabar Escapes in 1997, people were still travelling round India in groups of 20 or more, but it’s not about mass tourism or backpackers any more.’ In 2008, the four hotels that make

William Dalrymple

Goa’s two cultures

The best view of the Goan coast can be seen from the topmost turret of the ruined Portuguese fort above Chapora. From the dark upper slopes of the Pernem hills down to the level ground of the coastline stretches mile upon mile of banana and coconut groves, the deep green of the palms offset by the white sand of the shore and the foam of the breaking rollers. In the palm groves you can just see the toddy tappers throwing ripe king coconuts down from the treetops. Further up the beach, lean fishermen are beaching their catamaran-canoes on the sandbanks. From these dugouts,a crocodile of women carry panniers of freshly

Giannandrea Poesio

Original sin

Nothing beats the buzz that precedes the debut of a rising star in a big, known role. Double it and you’ll get an idea of what last Tuesday felt like, as not one but two Royal Ballet principals, Lauren Cuthbertson and Sergei Polunin, took the main roles in Kenneth MacMillan’s 1974 Manon for the first time. As an artist, Cuthberston frequently makes bold choices when approaching big parts. Her Manon is no exception, as there is no trace of corrupted innocence at the beginning of her disastrously rapid and morally debatable ascent through Parisian society. The much romanticised image of the hapless lamb is thus replaced with that of a

Friday

Jonathan Jones

200,000 extra working pensioners

Despite – or perhaps because of – the recession, pensioner employment has increased dramtically over the past few years. In his Telegraph column today, Fraser remarks on this important but largely ignored trend in Britain’s workforce. ‘A million jobs have been lost since the Great Recession began’, he says, ‘but the number of pension-aged people in work has increased by 200,000.’ Here’s that phenomenom in graph form: Why has this happened? Fraser puts his finger on one important factor: ‘Crucially, they pay less tax. A pensioner manning the tills in Tesco will take home 12 per cent more than a working-age colleague on the same salary.’ You see, employees over 65 don’t

Martin Bright

Wise up Mr Grayling: youth unemployment is no mere distraction

Could it be that Matthew Taylor, the RSA’s chief executive, is even more influential in Downing Street today than he was when he was head of policy under Tony Blair? His latest blog post is certainly causing a huge stir. David Aaronovitch picked it up in yesterday’s Times and put a rocket under it. Matthew suggests a ‘bond for hope’ to fund a programme to tackle youth unemployment and I hear this has already caused a massive flurry of excitement inside Number 10. Here is the bones of the suggestion in his own words: ‘The Government should create a “bond for hope”. This would be a five year bond earning