Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Barometer | 16 April 2011

Prince of cars It was revealed that Audi has been enticing royal customers with 60 per cent discounts. It is not the first car company to target royalty to build its image. — In 1898 the Daimler Motor Company of Coventry offered the Prince of Wales the use of five cars on a visit to Warwick Castle. — The generosity was richly rewarded: in 1902, as King Edward VII, he ordered a 22 HP model from the company and bestowed a royal warrant. — Daimler remained the sole supplier of vehicles to the Royal Family until 1949 when, after a gearbox failure in a Daimler given to him as a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 16 April 2011

The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’. The justification for banning the burqa and the niqab in France surely has nothing to do with the French ‘separation of Church and State’. If it is justified — I would rather hesitantly argue that it is — it is solely because the veil hides identity. Common citizenship involves trust, and trust cannot exist where one cannot see people’s faces in public. Obviously there can be necessary functional reasons for concealment — surgical masks, beekeepers’ helmets, extremes of cold — but concealment in normal circumstances in

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 April 2011

Home Moussa Koussa, the Libyan foreign minister who flew to Britain on 30 March, made a televised speech in Arabic, saying that Libya could be another Somalia if it was allowed to sink into civil war. He then flew to Doha, the capital of Qatar, for an international contact group meeting on Libya’s future. Officers from the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary had an opportunity to interview him about the Lockerbie atrocity of 1988 before he left. ‘The UK has in the last week supplied additional aircraft for striking ground targets threatening the civilian population of Libya,’ William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, told a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

The Spectator

The bank job

It suits a great many people to blame the banks for the financial crisis. It gets everyone else off the hook. How, asks Gordon Brown, was a mere Prime Minister to know that banks were doing such fiendishly complicated things? How, asks George Osborne, was an opposition expected to detect what the government could not? How, asks Mervyn King, was the Bank of England governor supposed to know that these bankers had been so wicked? For all of them, the bankers have been the perfect scapegoat. In truth, all of them failed to spot the massive asset bubble that had deformed the British economy by 2007, a bubble blown by

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 16 April 2011

Q. I belong to the clerical profession, one to which, in theory, a certain dignity adheres. I particularly dislike ‘trendy’ abbreviations of my Christian name. On meeting recently a new ecumenical colleague I introduced myself as ‘David’ and he replied: ‘Oh great, I’m a Dave too!’ I was lost for words. What should I have said or done? After all, nobody called Jesus ‘Jeez’. — Father D.S., Southampton A. You should have nipped the abuse instantly in the bud by smiling pleasantly as you replied ‘Do you know… I thought everyone would call me Dave but in my neck of the woods they all seem to want to call me

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety: The great BSF scandal

Government reports don’t often make scintillating reading. But the Review of Education Capital by Sebastian James is an exception. Colloquially known as the James Review, it’s an investigation into Building Schools for the Future, a programme of capital expenditure on schools overseen by the last government. It also contains various proposals as to how education capital might be better spent in future. Sebastian James is the group operations director of Dixons Retail and, reading between the lines, it’s clear that he’s appalled by the level of inefficiency and waste he uncovered. You would expect this to lead to eye-popping rage — after all, it’s taxpayers’ money that has been going

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The threat to Christianity

Is secularism now a greater threat to Christianity than Islam? This is the title of our next Spectator debate, to be held at 29 June, and it grows more topical by the week. In tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday, we learn that a Christian electrician could be sacked after displaying a crucifix in his white van. His name is Colin Atkinson, and he works for Wakefield and District Housing Association who ordered him to remove the cross because it may offend non-Christians. They picked the wrong guy. Mr Atkinson is a former soldier and thinks this is a battle worth fighting for. He tells the newspaper, “The treatment of Christians in

David Blackburn

Soft on crime, me?

The name ‘Ken Clarke’ and the word ‘sacking’ are inseparable to the chattering classes at the moment, but so was it ever thus. There are signs though that the normally insouciant Clarke has been shaken on this occasion. He has given an interview in defence of his contentious prison reforms to the Times this morning (£). In a clear message to concerned voters, Tory backbenchers and sceptical government colleagues, he denies that he is ‘soft on crime’. For example, he will tighten community sentences: “I want them to be more punitive, effective and organised. Unpaid work should require offenders to work at a proper pace in a disciplined manner rather

Martin Bright

Do far right extremists operate as lone wolves or a pack?

Some political organisations chase the news agenda, others just plough their own furrow driven by the overriding morality of their cause. The work of Gerry Gable and his anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has never been fashionable, but his tireless monitoring and exposure of the extreme-right has acted as an important check on violent racism over four decades. His latest report, “Lone Wolves: Myth or Reality?”, was commissioned by John Denham when he was Communities Secretaries and it is an extraordinarily detailed examination of the history of right-wing extremist violence. His conclusion is that it may be convenient for the police and the media to think of right-wing terrorists as “lone wolves”,

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 16 April 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s competition In Competition No. 2692 you were invited to supply a poem suitable for inclusion in Now We Are Eighty-Six. A strong entry fell into two camps: those infused with the gung-ho spirit of Jenny Joseph’s ageing purple-clad heroine (‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/ With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me…) And those that have more in common with the drool, incontinence and baffled absence of Philip Larkin’s ‘The Old Fools’. There are no prizes for looking on the bright side, I’m afraid: it’s the gloom-mongers who dominate the winning line-up below and nab £25 apiece.

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: News of the twirled

There are few things in life more pleasing than giving one’s friends a good kicking, but I’m afraid sometimes only an ovation will do. There are few things in life more pleasing than giving one’s friends a good kicking, but I’m afraid sometimes only an ovation will do. And this is one of them. My old chum and colleague Amol Rajan has just come up with an enchanting new book about spin bowling, Twirlymen (Yellow Jersey), and an absolute snip it is too at fifteen quid. It was my dad who first introduced me to the joys of spin. He bowled good off-breaks at minor county level for 40-odd years

Douglas Murray

Diary – 16 April 2011

‘I’m told you’re the one to watch,’ Julian Assange says when I introduce myself in the Green Room. ‘Likewise,’ I reply. We’re backstage at Kensington Town Hall on a sunny Saturday afternoon to debate the ethics of whistleblowing. The seats sold out in minutes and the audience, almost all young, female or both, are clearly here for him. One of my colleagues tries conversation. Government comes up. ‘Companies are the new government,’ Assange says. He expands on his theme. The room is becoming blurry. I’m zoning out. It’s not just the sixth-form politics but the sheer anti-charisma of the man. I start to worry about the debate. What will I

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Even Conservative councils now think like the left

The right-wing historian Niall Ferguson is very handsome, isn’t he? If I were a woman, or a homosexual, I would certainly set my cap at him; I would let him order for me in restaurants and handle me brusquely in the bedroom as he revealed to me the full tumescent glory of his ‘killer app’, as he would undoubtedly put it. The right-wing historian Niall Ferguson is very handsome, isn’t he? If I were a woman, or a homosexual, I would certainly set my cap at him; I would let him order for me in restaurants and handle me brusquely in the bedroom as he revealed to me the full

Julian Evans

Fighting spirit | 16 April 2011

How does the army of a liberal, multicultural and often secular society develop in its soldiers the spiritual resilience to cope with war, to face trauma, death and bereavement, and to fight opponents who have the advantage of a strong and common religious faith? That’s the question the Pentagon has been grappling with, as it confronts the apparent epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder affecting a fifth of its troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Its response is a new psychological training programme called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which aims to strengthen the emotional, psychological and, yes, spiritual resilience of each of the 1.1 million soldiers serving in the US Army.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Nannies v. nudgers

Colonel Gaddafi and his mad bald son are not the only has-been regime desperately clinging to power. In Britain, too, a gaggle of once-powerful but now isolated authoritarians is doing everything it can to continue dominating people’s lives. These unelected know-it-alls exerted an extraordinary and baleful influence over public life during the 13 years of New Labour rule — banning things they didn’t like, scaring the public witless, demonising fat kids as the great evil of our age — but they have seen their power wane in the Liberal-Conservative era. And they aren’t happy. Yes, it’s the nanny staters, those public health officials and their journalistic cheerleaders who took killjoyism

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

A tradition of fine writing is on the way out – and that may not be a bad thing

I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. I know it’s absurd, I know it’s juvenile, I know that awards ceremonies are perfectly ludicrous occasions for everyone except the winners and their mothers, but I am what I am, competitive, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. So I will not pretend that receiving the Best Columnist award at the Society of Editors Press Awards dinner at the Savoy last week was anything less than heavenly. But there are other things

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 16 April 2011

Vickers’s half-time score: not half as badas bankers feared or bashers hoped ‘Not half as bad as it might have been,’ was the reaction of the first banker I spoke to on Monday about the interim report of Sir John Vickers’s Independent Commission on Banking. ‘And forcing Lloyds to sell off a few more branches won’t do a damned thing to promote competition.’ ‘Not half as bad’ for bankers seems to imply not half as good as it might have been for customers. The increased and ring-fenced capital requirements for retail banking mean borrowers could be charged more for loans, and are unlikely to be offered greater choice. On the

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Transatlantic Deficits

I don’t know if the Obama administration is as enthused by the idea of deficit reduction as James suggests, not least since the American left has looked at George Osborne’s approach and judged it a failure. Kevin Drum, for instance, says Osborne’s plans are “not likely to work” and Britain “is probably going to be paying the price for this folly for many years to come”. Matt Yglesias agrees, writing that “Austerity’s failure in the United Kingdom should inform the American policy debate.” This is all occasioned by a gloomy New York Times article with the headline British Deficit Defies Advocates of Austerity. But if the economy remains weak, inflation

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Balls in fiscal isolation

Ed Balls has long said that America is the right comparison for Britain when it comes to how to deal with the deficit, contrasting the Obama administration’s fiscally loose policies with Osborne’s plan for fiscal tightening. This comparison has always been flawed; the dollar is the world’s reverse currency which gives Washington far more fiscal flexibility than HMG. But, even leaving that aside, the Obama administration is now — albeit under Congressional pressure — about to start cutting.   By 2015, Obama’s plan will have reduced the US deficit by 8 percent of GDP. Osborne’s plan sees Britain reduces its deficit by 8.4 percent by 2015. Indeed, from next year

The Spectator

The week that was | 15 April 2011

Here is a selection of posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. CoffeeHousers reveal their choice for Gordon Brown’s greatest mistake. Fraser Nelson urges policy makers to blame the schools system, not Oxford. James Forsyth says that Cameron needs to tread with care, and explains why the Vickers review won’t harm London’s global competitiveness. Peter Hoskin says there is nothing new but plenty to ponder in Cameron’s immigration speech, and argues that the inflation figures are not all that they seem. David Blackburn sees that two flagship coalition reforms clashing in Brent, and examines Europe’s growing immigration problem. Rod Liddle remembers Sidney Lumet, and not unthinkingly. Alex Massie ponders