Society

Saturday

19 Feb 2011

Letters | 19 February 2011

The army’s example Sir: Ross Clark and Martin Vander Weyer have hit the nail on the head again with their customary precision (‘Councils of Despair’ and Any Other Business, 12 February). The only aspect of ‘best practice’ that seems to have thrived in the public sector is eye-watering levels of remuneration for top management. I certainly hold no brief for fat cat bankers, but at least they do not pretend to be ‘delivering’ public services — they do what they do to make money for their shareholders and for themselves. If they fail to perform, they are sacked. There are some parts of the public sector which have been mercifully

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern | 19 February 2011

The Egyptian people want power in the face of government intransigence. So what happens next? Ancient Rome went through this phase, and very destructive it was. For 50 years, Romans from aristocrats to plebs had broadly agreed that the final say on all major political matters should be the Senate’s (senex, ‘old man’), an oligarchy consisting of current and retired executive officials (consuls, praetors etc.). But after the defeat of Hannibal in 202 bc and the expansion of Roman power into North Africa, Spain, Greece and Asia Minor (western Turkey), the gap between rich and poor widened radically, and the soldiers who had done the fighting did not feel they

The Spectator

Barometer | 19 February 2011

Gay marriage The government has proposed to allow gay couples the full rights of marriage. The first country to do this was the Netherlands in 2001, but the world’s first gay ‘wedding’ is often reported as that between 74-year-old Axel Lundahl-Madsen and 67-year-old Eigil Eskildsen in Copenhagen City Hall on 1 October 1989, the day on which the Danish Registered Partnership Act came into force. —While hailed by gay activists around the world at the time, registered partnerships would now be regarded by many as illiberal. Gay couples were banned from adopting children and, in the case of women, from undergoing artificial insemination. Although the ban on adoption was later lifted, Denmark

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 19 February 2011

How is it that, having said become instinct all their lives, people suddenly start to say go extinct? I use this as an example. I can understand the acquisition or disposal of a piece of slang, such as cool. It might have been possible for a young thing in the 1950s who looked on the enemy as ‘squares’ to say something like, ‘I am just one cat in a world of cool cats,’ as Norman Mailer did in 1957. With maturity and a change of fashion it would have been impossible in the 1970s to utter with a straight face the word cool in this sense. Now we pick up from

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 February 2011

Home Inflation rose to an annual rate of 4 per cent in January from 3.7 per cent in December, far above the Bank of England’s target of 2 per cent. The rate according to the Retail Prices Index rose to 5.1 per cent from 4.8 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, defended his idea of the Big Society and the government’s economic policy, saying: ‘We have to make these cuts, we have to raise those taxes,’ even though ‘it will make me unpopular’. Unemployment rose to 7.9 per cent, with 965,000 16- to 24-year-olds without jobs. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said that big banks should be split up

The Spectator

Leader: Against the grain

In Britain, surging grocery prices are painful, but not life-threatening. For much of the rest of the world, by contrast, food prices are a matter of life or death. China, the world’s largest wheat producer, is suffering a severe winter drought which looks likely to devastate this year’s harvest. It is setting aside a billion dollars to snap up supplies in the market, with the inevitable result that other, poorer countries will lose out. When global food costs surge, starvation usually follows. At times like this, it is harder than ever to justify why we in the West are encouraging farmers to grow crops to fill car petrol tanks, rather

Matt Ridley

Breaking the ice

Has Antarctica been getting warmer? To the frustration of many environmentalists, it’s not an easy question. Manned weather stations have existed there for over 50 years, unmanned stations from 1980 onwards. Coverage is patchy both in space and time, with weather stations clustered in a few spots and records full of gaps from when sensors got buried in snow, breakdowns occurred or stations were closed. From 1982, satellites have measured the temperature over the continent but inaccurately, because of clouds and instrument inconsistencies. So taking Antarctica’s temperature involves considerable mathematical skill and leaves much room for statistical disagreement. The disagreement has just became a lot less polite, as several scientists exchanged

Guy Newey

Tinkering with solar panel subsidy risks making bad policy worse

The fallout from Chris Huhne’s sudden review of the government’s system of subsidies for small-scale renewable energy gathers momentum. Solar firms, who built business cases on the system of subsidies, are threatening judicial review over the Energy Secretary’s change of direction. So why did the government raise concerns about the policy? Apparently, because it has been too successful. The scheme encourages householders, communities and businesses to cover their roofs in solar panels and erect wind turbines by offering them a generous subsidy for the electricity they produce. It was introduced by the Labour government with three aims: to cut carbon emissions; to help reduce the costs of the technologies; and

David Blackburn

Bad banking

No wonder the banks like Britain’s corporation tax regime. This morning’s newspapers all tell that Barclays paid just £113m in corporation tax in 2009, despite making profits of more than £11bn. In a rare instance of justified anger, Labour’s chosen men have launched an attack on the government’s failure to ‘take the robust action needed to make sure that the banks which caused the crash pay their fair share, and will stick in the stomachs of small businesses struggling to borrow and ordinary people feeling the pinch of the government’s austerity measures.’ Whatever the absurdities of Labour’s position, this news will ‘stick in the stomachs’ of the little people, whose

Alex Massie

America is Talking to the Taliban

This is likely to shake things up. Steve Coll, who tends to be pretty impeccably sourced, reports in the New Yorker that Washington has begun to talk to the Taliban: Last year, however, as the U.S.-led Afghan ground war passed its ninth anniversary, and Mullah Omar remained in hiding, presumably in Pakistan, a small number of officials in the Obama Administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again. Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban

Alex Massie

Unions vs Government: Wisconsin Edition

Something is happening in Wisconsin*. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before. Nevertheless, there are aspects of the show down between Governor Scott Walker (Republican) and the public sector unions that may become familiar over here too. The details* of the dispute in the Badger State need not concern us unduly – though James Joyner has a good round-up – save to observe that the combination of deficits, a conservative administration and unhappy unions is hardly limited to Wisconsin. David Cameron’s government will face its own union-led challenges soon enough. Nor do I think it terribly surprising that Barack Obama has backed the unions. So I’m a little surprised

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 19 February 2011

In Competition No. 2684 you were invited to take a well-known literary figure and cast them in the role of agony aunt/uncle, submitting a problem of your invention and their solution. Some of you interpreted ‘literary figure’ as a fictional character; others as an author. Either was acceptable. You were all so good this week that it was difficult to whittle down what was a larger-than-usual entry to just six, so congratulations all round. The winners earn £25 each. George Simmers gets £30. Dear Uncle DHL. There is a pleasant young lady in accounts, whom I wish to invite to the firm’s Christmas ‘do’. What should I say to her?

James Forsyth

Politics: Cameron is betting it all on BS

Those who hoped they had heard the last of ‘the big society’ should look away now. Those who hoped they had heard the last of ‘the big society’ should look away now. A fightback has begun. Normally, power shifts within No. 10 are visible only to those who read between the lines of prime-ministerial speeches. But since Andy Coulson departed, the influence of the big society’s biggest champion, Steve Hilton, can be seen in headlines. This week there was even a ‘big society’ Cabinet meeting — with the Prime Minister and seven Cabinet ministers in attendance — before the normal meeting. Hilton, Cameron’s closest advisor, is now free to pursue his

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 February 2011

The National Health Service has now lived almost long enough to test its claim of full treatment ‘from cradle to grave’. The National Health Service has now lived almost long enough to test its claim of full treatment ‘from cradle to grave’. Certainly most of those now dying under its care have paid taxes for it throughout their working lives, in the name of this proposition. Now we hear from the Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, that it frequently neglects old people, often to the extent of killing them. Why does this surprise anyone? It is in the nature of a service which forbids genuine choice to patients that it

Melanie McDonagh

Take my DNA, please

What are the chances, do you reckon, of my finding a taker for my DNA? I’d like to make the offer on account of the forthcoming (Protection of) Freedoms Bill, which promises to make the police drop the DNA details of roughly a million people from the national database who have never been found guilty of an offence. I’m against, which I know puts me at odds with the mass of right-thinking opinion. From the Daily Mail to Nick Clegg, liberals and libertarians are united in regarding the database as one of the more Big Brotherish manifestations of the state, and its restriction as a return to the spirit of

Toby Young

Queens of the blog age

What’s the right analogy to describe the parallel careers of Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown? The hare and the tortoise? All About Eve? Alien vs Predator? Nothing quite works, not least because the race isn’t over. But there’s little doubt that with the sale of the Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, Arianna has momentarily eclipsed Tina Brown as Queen of All Media. Arianna is said to have pocketed $100 million. I don’t envy the person standing next to Tina when she heard that. The career paths of Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (b. 1950) and Christina Hambley Brown (b. 1953) are remarkably similar. Both come from relatively modest backgrounds —

Michael Henderson

Speaking for England

Three decades ago, when his voice still carried some weight, Malcolm Muggeridge reckoned that social historians of the future would be puzzled by the middle-class death wish that took root after the second world war. It isn’t hard to see what he meant. Some time in the Sixties, politicians and other public figures who had been educated at private schools started to feel ashamed at their good fortune, and moved heaven and earth to deny those who followed the advantages they had enjoyed. Today the consequences are evident wherever one looks. Thousands of lives have been blighted by the doctrine of bogus egalitarianism, and we are all weaker for it.

James Delingpole

If homeopathy is just water and sugar pills, why do doctors get so upset about it?

Just because you’re a hypochondriac doesn’t mean you’re not suffering from an obscure and terrible disease which is going to kill you very horribly. Just because you’re a hypochondriac doesn’t mean you’re not suffering from an obscure and terrible disease which is going to kill you very horribly. That’s why, high on the long list of osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and other alternative practitioners I spend fortunes on every year, is a miracle worker called Fiona Gross. In another age, Fiona would surely have been burned as a witch: the things she does with her array of potions baint natural. Just recently, for example, she cured a woman (a successful author)

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 19 February 2011

Another reason to cut bankers’ pay: the softer the product, the easier the job Is it harder to run a country or a global company? Variations of this dinner- party gambit cropped up wherever I went last week, offering a way of drawing together half a dozen business stories and political arguments. So here’s this week’s Any Other Business competition. Place the following in descending order of the difficulty of their jobs: David Cameron, George Osborne, Bob Dudley, Stephen Elop, Marius Kloppers, António Horta-Osório and Gerald Jones. Bob Dudley is the American who was recently promoted to chief executive of BP and is now dug in on the Russian front.

Interconnect

Dear Mary | 19 February 2011

Q. My new boyfriend holds his knife like a pencil. How can I gently correct this without him thinking I am starting to nag too early on in the relationship? My parents will be appalled. — Name withheld, Godalming, Surrey A. You may be unable to break the habit but you can explain its origin to your parents. In the words of Madame de Staël, ‘Tout comprendre rend très indulgent.’ The epidemic of incorrect knife-holding is an evolutionary response to the mass production of painful cutlery. Until the 1950s even cheap cutlery was moulded and the handles attached to the blades. Then cutlery began to be made by stamping