Society

Saturday

Christopher Ward

My grandfather, the Titanic’s violinist

When he died, the White Star Line sent a bill for his uniform There can be few better places to consider the irony of the phrase ‘the good old days’ than Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I went last week to visit the grave of my grandfather, a 21-year-old violinist in the band of the White Star liner Titanic. More than 120 passengers and crew are buried here, 40 of them still unidentified as we approach the centenary of Titanic’s sinking. The body of Jock Hume, my grandfather, was one of 190 recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett and brought back to Halifax (more than a thousand

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 6 August 2011

So how was it for you, The Most Extraordinary Test Match Ever? Keen readers may have noticed this column two weeks ago was in raptures over the extraordinary batting, keeping and leadership skills of the Indian captain, M.S. Dhoni. Well that went very well, didn’t it? Bad luck if you were left holding the fort in the August exodus, catching glimpses of scores on mobile phones and TV screens and asking yourself what on earth was Bell doing back at the crease? And does that really say England are on 500 for seven? And who’s that on 90 — Tim Bresnan?? Hard to do anything but stop and gawp. My

James Delingpole James Delingpole

We’re destroying our countryside – and for what?

By the time you read this I’ll be in the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world: a section of the Wye valley in beautiful mid-Wales, where I’ll spend every day paddling in streams and plunging in mill ponds and playing cockie-ollie in the bracken and wandering across the sunlit uplands, drinking in perhaps the finest view God ever created — the one across the Golden Valley towards the Black Mountains, and beyond that to the Brecon Beacons. By the time you read this I’ll be in the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world: a section of the Wye valley in

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 6 August 2011

The greatest nation? This debt fiasco makes Washington look like a parish council I love America, and if you look at my Wikipedia entry — which I have neither the vanity nor the knowhow to bother to edit — you might suspect that I’ve been brainwashed to say so, because I am ‘a leading figure within the British-American Project’. I am indeed active in that excellent networking organisation, which has never been anything like the sinister Reaganite propaganda vehicle that Pilgerists and Guardianistas imagine it to be. And it has given me valuable insights into the national characters of movers and shakers from both sides of the pond who form

Friday

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: “Capital punishment is absolutely indefensible”

Thanks to Guido and his co-conspirators, capital punishment is back on the political agenda. Here’s what The Spectator, under the editorship of Ian Gilmour, wrote about the hanging of Ruth Ellis — the last woman to be hanged in the UK — some 14 years before the abolition of the death penalty in Britain: The execution of Ruth Ellis, The Spectator, 15 July 1955 It is no longer a matter for surprise that Englishmen deplore bull-fighting but delight in hanging. Hanging has become the national sport. While a juicy murder trial is on, or in the period before a murderer is executed, provided that he or she has caught the

The Spectator

The week that was | 5 August 2011

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk during the past week: The Spectator publishes its summer reading list, featuring the revelation that David Cameron reads books backwards. Fraser Nelson says that the ghost of Gordon Brown still hovers over the 50p tax debate. Peter Hoskin reveals which government department could be replaced with a mathematical equation, and sifts through a bet-hedging report from the IMF. Peter Hoskin and Jonathan Jones write an open letter to Will Straw about deficit reduction. David Blackburn wonders whether capital punishment is to be debated in Parliament, and says that the government is split over policing the Internet. Daniel Korski says that the

Martin Bright

Norway: The Amy Winehouse Connection

One of the most irritating aspects of modern journalism is the tendency to make spurious connections between unconnected phenomena. The non-existent links between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaeda is the most obvious and pernicious of these. Many conspiracy theories originate from making connections where none exist. So when I tell you I am about to connect the death of Amy Winehouse to the massacres carried out by a right-wing anti-Muslim extremist in Norway, I would forgive you for being sceptical. Both stories were running around my head while I was on holiday last week and I can’t stop thinking about them. I run the risk of sounding a combination of pretentious

Peter Hoskin

The markets wax and wane

CoffeeHouser ‘Ben G’ had it right in his comment underneath my earlier post: 24 hour news really does struggle in the face of economic crisis. This morning, all the talk was of a debt-induced apocalypse. Earlier this afternoon, the headlines were about the markets “rallying” after better-than-expected data on the US labour market. And now the BBC website’s main headline is that “turmoil in the stock market persists,” despite those very same labour market figures. Oh yes, it’s difficult to present a consistent front as the money merchants sway and buckle in the breeze. That said, the economic fundamentals remain discouraging. It shouldn’t be forgotten that yesterday’s losses were extraordinary;

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Gloomy Decade?

Tim Montgomerie is in full-on never waste a crisis mode today. Given the doom plastered across all the front pages (The Sun excepted) this is a good time for wheeling out old favourites: With the world economy facing such a bleak decade this is no time for half measures. We need to be cutting taxes on business and funding them with deeper cuts in the over-sized state. We should be suspending environmental measures that are imposing heavy and futile costs on our manufacturing industry. We shouldn’t be loading new regulations on our banks until the economy is strong again. We need them to be lending. We need reform of competition

Thursday

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

In this week’s Spectator | 4 August 2011

The Spectator this week contains a brilliant piece on the crisis in Somalia by our Kenyan columnist Aidan Hartley. The Daily Telegraph today reports that voters are extremely sceptical about Cameron’s aid policy, wary of shovelling cash overseas when we’re hard-up at home. Aidan’s piece proves the voters absolutely right (no surprise). Not only would the cash be better spent in Britain, but according to Aidan, aid money in Somalia actually makes the situation there much, much worse. He says:  ‘I am haunted by the people I have seen die in Somalia, and by news pictures of the latest famine, but aid agencies are presenting this crisis misleadingly — as

David Blackburn

Barroso behind the times

There were rumours flying around Whitehall this morning that the EU leadership was feeling the strain from yesterday’s rise in Spanish and Italian borrowing costs. Both stand rather too close to 7 per cent for comfort, and the price of insuring against sovereign default in the two countries also soared to its highest level in two weeks. The limited progress made after the Greek deal of 21 July seems to have been undone. In fact, the problems stem from the piecemeal deal to allow Greece to selectively default. As I wrote at the time: ‘The European Central Bank has declared that it is happy to allow this and will continue

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s summer reading list

As the headline suggests, what follows is a list of summer reading recommendations from Spectator staff members and writers — with more to come shortly. Although, it must be said, there is one contributor who doesn’t really count as a Spectator staff member or writer… David Cameron: I’ve been reading a book called Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, an Irish writer. I read it when I was in Ibiza and I haven’t managed to finish it, so I’ve picked it up again. What else have I got? I tend to have a pile of books that I dip into. For instance, I’ve got Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem. I’ve been reading

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Last of Mr Norris

Mary Robinson was (and is!) a woman and, just as importantly, the first President of the Republic of Ireland whose candidacy was not backed by Fianna Fail. Her successor, Mary McAleese is originally from Northern Ireland and thus, like Robinson, some kind of outsider. Both women expanded the idea of the Irish presidency and, in some small measure, helped refine the notion of what it means to be Irish in a modern european context. So you can see why some felt that David Norris, the independent Senator representing Dublin University in the upper house, would make an excellent candidate to succeed Mrs McAleese. These may be grim economic times but

David Blackburn

Moving slowly towards the future

Yesterday’s leak of Vince Cable’s response to the Hargreaves report into the Digital Economy Act (DEA) set tongues wagging. The headline was as expected: ‘web-blocking’, the practice whereby copyright infringers are barred from internet access, will be dropped because it is unworkable. In line with Hargreaves’ recommendations, Cable also plans to remove restrictions on using copyright material to create parodies, which is excellent news for Downfall enthusiasts. And he will rationalise copyright law to legalise supposedly forbidden practices like copying CDs onto an i-Pod. Finally, Cable has permitted an exception from copyright for data mining for research purposes. The Business Department and the Treasury believe that these reforms will net the economy an extra

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

An open letter to Will Straw about deficit reduction…

…or why the US cuts are actually faster than, and just as deep as, ours. Dear Will, We hope you don’t mind us writing a letter-form response to your latest post on Left Foot Forward, which argues that the “coalition government’s cuts are deeper and faster than the Tea Party’s”. But, as we see it, there are several problems with your figures which are easier to explain in a conversational format. Here they are, as best as we can express them: i) The first obvious problem comes when you say that Obama set out $83 billion of deficit reduction for 2012 in his March Budget. Actually, he didn’t. The Congressional

Peter Hoskin

The IMF manages to please everyone

A bet-hedging sort of report into the UK’s economy from the IMF today, which largely supports George Osborne’s deficit reduction plan, but will also give some encouragement to his detractors. By way of a summary, here are the parts that might satisfy Osborne himself, as well as Vince Cable, Ed Balls and Mervyn King: The passage that the Chancellor will flash around Westminster comes on the very second page of the IMF document. “Strong fiscal consolidation is under way,” it reads, “and remains essential to achieve a more sustainable budgetary position, thus reducing fiscal risks.” And the endorsements for the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan continue inside, not least in the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

There is a Government Car Parking Policy? Jesus Wept.

Blimey David, the startling aspect of Eric Pickles’ announcement that central government will loosen the guidelines it issues to local councils concerning the proper provision of car parking spaces is not that this modest proposal has somehow made it through the Whitehall machine but that it was ever thought sensible for Whitehall to tell the Shires how many parkig spaces could be allocated on any given high street or what fees could profitably be levied from them. Not that this is the only example of this kind of mindless interference. There was the great question of the government’s rubbish bin policy recently too. If ever you needed a reminder that

Peter Hoskin

Which department could be replaced with a mathematical equation?

I answer the question in an article for the Times (£) today, in response to Francis Maude’s announcement yesterday. But for those CoffeeHousers who can’t vault the paywall, here’s the relevant passage: “I have been told of an internal report that makes the argument sublimely well. Before last year’s spending review, the Treasury asked a group of outside experts whether plans for a 40 per cent headcount reduction at the Department for Communities and Local Government were too ambitious. Their response? It wasn’t nearly ambitious enough. The staff cut ought to be at least 90 per cent. Responsibilities for fire prevention could be transferred to the Home Office; responsibilities for

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama Loses

Hurrah! We have a deal! Financial meltdown has been avoided! Well done Congress! As has to be the case in these circumstances it’s a case of making the best of a rotten and also ridiculous situation. Whether it lasts is a different matter, not least since this Congress cannot bind its successors. In the larger scheme of matters it’s a smaller deal – $900bn in cuts now and, perhaps, $1.5trillion in the future – than most of what has been proposed in recent weeks. That’s not a surprise. Nor is it a great shock to discover that President Obama – and Congressional Democrats – have been forced to accept a

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 1 August – 6 August

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