Society

There’s another resignation from the Murdoch empire tonight. Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton has left the building. But Hinton’s departure is related to his time in Britain as executive chairman of News International. Hinton was one of those at the company to testify to select committees that phone hacking was not widespread at the News of the World. There are two things to watch for after this announcement. First, how does it play in the States? If this scandal gets going over there, a much bigger profit centre for News Corp than here, then Murdoch might take drastic action. Second, if more senior people end up having to resign over

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s 126-page Fiscal Sustainability Report really oughtn’t make for electrifying reading. But it does. What Robert Chote and his gang of number-crunchers have done is to gaze into our fiscal abyss, and summon up forecasts so that the abyss can gaze back into us. I mean, look at the graph above. On the OBR’s account, our country’s debt burden could well rise from around 70 per cent of GDP now to over 100 per cent in 50 years time. It is a perturbing trajectory, to say the least. But, before we go any further, we should slap all kinds of health warnings across this. Long-term forecasting

So far as today’s inflation figures are concerned, it’s April all over again. Just like then, CPI inflation has fallen (in this case, from 4.5 per cent to 4.2 per cent). And just like then, I’d urge against excitement. We are still, don’t forget, ballooning above the target level by over 2 percentage points. And forecasters, including the Office for Budget Responsibility, expect us to remain above that level for months, perhaps years, to come: Besides, there are some components of today’s inflation figures that are particularly concerning. Take food prices. As we said on the Coffee House Twitter feed, they’re inflating at their fastest rate for 2 years. Meat

For years, teachers have been increasingly reluctant to restrain unruly pupils — for fear of being slapped with a lawsuit. But now, it seems, the government is trying to ease those concerns. Its guidance today may not change any laws, but it does encourage schools to change their approach. Among the directions is that “schools should not have a ‘no touch’ policy”: teachers can use reasonable force to restrain pupils, remove disruptive children from the classroom or prevent them from leaving the classroom when they shouldn’t. However, the guidance does stress that there are limits on the use of force, making it clear that “it is always unlawful to use

Earlier this year, a journalist friend excitedly informed me that, in a frantic internet scramble, he had managed to get two tickets to see David Cameron’s favourite artist, the ex-Smiths front man Morrissey. (I’ve always been slightly bemused by Cameron’s love affair with Morrissey, especially considering the singer’s famous comment, ‘The sorrow of the Brighton bombing is that Thatcher escaped unscathed’.) Did I fancy going? I did. Except that the gig was in Bradford, and on a school night to boot. To gee me up, my friend sent an email saying, ‘The sheer madness of going to Bradford for a concert appeals to me.’ I thought, ‘Yes — that makes