Society

Saturday

Pavel Stroilov

Moscow’s jihadi

The Russian secret service and the new al-Qa’eda commander What do we know about the new head of al-Qa’eda, Ayman al-Zawahiri? Not very much. We know he’s a former ‘emir’ of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad who spent three years in an Egyptian prison after his group assassinated the pro-western President Anwar Sadat. He’s also said to be a qualified surgeon, who became bin Laden’s personal physician and adviser in the late 1980s. But there is one curious fact about him that it would be foolish for the West to ignore: his links with the KGB, and its successor, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. It was Alexander Litvinenko, the rebel

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Daily Mail is not so uniquely British after all

I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. I am thinking of starting up a free internet site called ‘Cancer and House Prices’. Every day, a new piece of information, which I will make up, about tumours and property values and perhaps how these two phenomena are unexpectedly linked. I will also run photographs of young people you have never heard of but who sing in The Saturdays or star in things like Hollyoaks — largely nubile women in thongs with large breasts and tattoos — and supply a paragraph or two about how they haven’t got cancer or that they are about

John Laughland

Liberty, equality, fecundity

At a wedding in the Loire last weekend, in the grounds of the groom’s parents’ small château, an acquaintance from work unexpectedly materialised out of the crowd. In his early thirties, he introduced me to his blonde, gangling wife, maybe a year younger than he. The conversation turned to children: they have four, including a five-month-old baby — ‘and a fifth is on the way’. ‘Where are they?’ I asked. They were staying with his wife’s siblings, of which there are ten. The phenomenon of young parents and large families is widespread in France, and unique among Europe’s native populations with the exception of gypsy families in Slovakia or Albanians

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Making waves | 25 June 2011

The title Her Deepness is partly satirical, partly reverential. The woman herself, Sylvia Earle, is an American oceanographer and a global campaigner for maritime preservation. She dropped into London last week to collect a medal from the Royal Geographical Society and her visit coincided with a month-long promotion at Selfridges in Oxford Street. The shop decked itself out in deep-sea livery to alert us all to the perils of overfishing. Frogmen patrolled the escalators. Kids cavorted on whale-rides. Cardboard silhouettes of leaping marlin dangled from the ceilings. The shop windows were blazoned with slogans intended to foster alarm. ‘For every shrimp caught, ten other lives are lost.’ ‘In the blink

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Whose revolution is it anyway?

It is no criticism of our redoubtable corps of foreign correspondents to remark that once an arena goes (in the modern military jargon) ‘kinetic’, sociology goes out of the window. It is no criticism of our redoubtable corps of foreign correspondents to remark that once an arena goes (in the modern military jargon) ‘kinetic’, sociology goes out of the window. When there are battles to report, a correspondent’s instinct is to find the action and describe it. News is what good journalists do, first and foremost. In the claimed Arab Spring this year, therefore, the ebb and flow of conflict is at the centre of media reports. And of course

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Communitarianism is a freedom-hating totalitarian philosophy like any other

The most unsettling aspect of modern politics is that the Enemy is no longer plain in view. We may feel in our bones that we are as oppressed, disenfranchised and generally shat upon, in our way, as those who suffered under Nazism, Marxism and fascism. But the actual evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out. We’re free to fly wherever we want on our hols. No one is starving. We can vote. There are no death camps. We don’t dread the small-hours knock at the door. Our politicians consult focus groups because they feel they ought to care what we think. There are lots of channels on TV, not all

Julia Stephenson

Pet hate

When my mother died last year, her small 13-year-old sheltie, Nutty, came to live with us in our London flat. I knew it would be difficult to keep a dog in town, but it was a terrible shock to discover how anti-dog the city has become. While taking him out and about on my daily rounds, I am often booted out of shops. In the bank, the chemist, most boutiques, the post office and department stores, it is No to Nutty. Even in our local garden square, dogs are forbidden, even if I have a poop-a-scoop and Nutty’s on a lead. I was recently refused entry to a bus, which

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 25 June 2011

Tony Hayward’s making the headlines, but Rothschild’s the one they’re betting on Remember Lasse Viren, the Finnish policeman who fell over halfway through the 1972 Olympic 10,000 metres final in Munich only to rise again, sprint past the leaders, and win gold in world record time? Well, he’s got nothing on Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP who stumbled so woefully in his handling of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster that he seemed to have been howled right out of the stadium of big-corporate life. Less than a year after that global public humiliation, Hayward is back on his feet and fronting a new venture called

Melissa Kite

Real life | 25 June 2011

Midway through my pruning session I realise I am cutting the wisteria up into really neat pieces. I mean, seriously neat. Each branch is carefully chopped into three and then placed in a garden waste bag. I do the same with the ceanothus until I have filled both my regulation green bags. Then I stand in the bags and squash the branches down to make things even neater. I sweep the pathway and put the leaves on top and rearrange them to make the bags match each other. I spread equal quantities of leaves evenly over the chopped-up branches and stand back to admire my handiwork. These must be the

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Golf supremacy

What is it that defines the greatest sporting spectacles? Is it competition or coronation? It made you gasp as Frankel laid waste the field to win the 2000 Guineas by a mile, but watching Mickael Barzalona drive Pour Moi from last to first in the Derby and take Carlton House in the last stride of the race could make a strong man weep. What was the greater Wimbledon final — the epic between Federer and Nadal in 2008, or a massacre such as when John McEnroe destroyed the Kiwi Chris Lewis in the early 80s? Well, I know which I’d prefer to watch. You looked on in awe as the

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Headline of the Day | 24 June 2011

It’s New Jersey so nothing should surprise anyone. Still, it turns out that the problem is that the cocaine has been cut with levamisole, a drug traditionally used to deworm livestock. So caveat coker if you’re in America this summer. Also, of course, one of the problems with illegal but popular markets is that the people who run them are so often so dashed unscrupulous… [Thanks to Jersey-girl RF for the tip-off]

The Spectator

The week that was | 24 June 2011

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Fraser Nelson dispels the myth of cuts. James Forsyth explains when U-turns matter, and watches Mark Hoban wobble in the House of Commons. Peter Hoskin witnesses Cameron muscle Ken Clarke from the stage, and listens to Michael Gove re-affirm his faith in free schools. David Blackburn says that the World Service’s reprieve is a reaction to foreign policy failures. Jonathan Jones reveals that public opinion on international development is not where David Cameron would like it to be. The Taxpayers’ Alliance and the proponents of high-speed rail do battle.   Daniel Korski notes that some countries still

Matthew Sinclair

Solving the government’s aid conundrum

Earlier this week, Jonathan Jones reported on the problems facing the government on international development spending.  Their plan to increase the DFID budget is deeply unpopular. Today we’ve released a new YouGov poll that sheds a lot more light on the situation, and suggests a way out whereby the government can still fund their most prized objectives but take the heat out of public anger on the issue. The first thing to understand is that the public doesn’t just resent any money being spent on international development. Freezing the budget is significantly more popular – with 69 per cent support and 12 per cent opposed – than scrapping it outright

Peter Robins

Local interest | 24 June 2011

This is the third entry in our new series collecting notable stories from Britain’s regional newspapers. It appears here each Friday, and continues on Twitter in the meantime. Bournemouth: The family and friends of a fallen soldier have repatriated a formerly stray dog that he adopted while serving in Afghanistan. Brighton: The owner of a convenience store has been told that he cannot have a licence to sell alcohol until he has counter staff who speak better English. Worcester: A 63-year-old woman broke her wrist while attempting to feed biscuits to a kitten through her neighbour’s letterbox. The letterbox also trapped her hand; she had to be rescued by firefighters.

David Blackburn

Ancient hatreds mask Stormont’s current challenge

Ignore the antediluvian hatreds for a moment. As Anne Dawson says, the recent violence in East Belfast was largely inspired by current economic distress. Northern Ireland’s economy is a serious cause for concern. Central expenditure per head is 25 per cent higher in Ulster than the UK norm and 70 per cent of Northern Ireland’s economy lies in the public sector according to parliamentary one estimate. Although the province has much to commend itself to business – competitive operating costs and excellent transport links serviced by substantial capital investment – private enterprise remains depressed. A report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in March found that growth was negligible and that unemployment is running

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Apparently, Britain is less stable than a country in danger of collapse

If there is one global index it is best not to be on, it is the Fund for Peace’s annual Failed States Index. It ranks 177 countries using 12 social, economic, and political indicators of pressure on the state. This year, the FSI ranked Somalia as number one for the fourth consecutive year, citing widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, conflict, crime, and pirate attacks against commercial vessels as reasons for the country’s billing. Finland, on the other hand, has displaced Norway at the bottom of the index. “Slight fluctuations in demographic and economic indicators, though minimal, lowered Norway’s scores, allowing Finland, with its continued stability, to slip in front of

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Alex Salmond Retreats to Sanity

Sometimes changing course is the prudent option. The SNP’s grim plans for their Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill have been put on hold for the next six months. The government still wishes to legislate on this matter by the end of the year but at least we are saved the unseemly scramble to rush this rotten bill through Holyrood before the next season begins – god help us – next month. For that recognition alone Salmond deserves some credit even if he’d have more left in the bank had he never embarked upon this reckless enterprise in the first place. Doubtless this will be spun as the

Peter Hoskin

Gove steps in to keep the schools running

A letter is bouncing around Whitehall, and I thought CoffeeHousers might care to see a copy. It has been penned by Michael Gove, and is being dispatched to all headmasters today. It urges them to Keep Calm and Carry On during the impending strikes over teachers’ pensions. “My view,” pens the education secretary, “is that we all have a strong moral duty to pupils and parents to keep schools open, and the Government wants to help you achieve that.” You can read the full thing below. While much of this missive is dry, dry stuff — certainly drier than Gove’s usual prose — it’s also quite revealing of the government’s

Anne Dawson

Why Belfast is ablaze

I live three miles away from where the rioting was happening in East Belfast last night, and heard the helicopters whirring overhead. It was the kind of sound that anyone living in the city hoped never to hear again. As a child, I’d lie in bed and hear bombs and sirens and helicopters — and we had all hoped that dark chapter had been closed. A tipping point of violence has now been reached. A press photographer has been shot, another given a fractured skull after a second night of riots. And in the aftermath, the blame game cacophony begins: Who started it? It was them. No it was them

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Devil in the detail

David Cameron is not a details man. He has always been more comfortable with the grand sweep than the nitty-gritty of policy. Ed Miliband, by contrast, is a natural-born policy wonk who is never more confident than when discussing detail.   Miliband is trying to turn this to his advantage at PMQs and, for the second week in a row, succeeded in catching Cameron out on the details of government policy in an emotive area. Last week it was benefits for cancer sufferers, this week it was the retention of DNA from those arrested for, but not charged with, rape.    The Prime Minister is a good enough performer at