Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama’s budget proposes cuts

President Obama’s new budget proposal is an interesting moment as Obama is now admitting that the time for fiscal stimulus has passed and that cuts needs to be made. As one administration official tells The New York Times, “The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend… The question is how we cut and what we cut.” Interestingly, Obama has proposed a ratio of two third spending cuts and one third tax rises. By contrast, the bi-partisan Simpson Bowles commission on the deficit proposed something very similar to the 80 percent spending cuts, twenty percent tax rises model that Osborne is using. But the most interesting contribution

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Defining the BS

Of all the broadcast hours devoted to the Big Society, only one discussion has made me think that the whole thing is not completely doomed. Channel4’s 10 O’Clock Live show, staged last Thursday. It’s up on YouTube now (34 mins in). The comedian David Mitchell kicked off. “The clearest thing anyone can say about Big Society is that it’s the opposite of Big Government,” he said. Now, I haven’t heard anyone not paid by the Conservative Party say anything as clear (or as positive) about the BS. But, then again, neither Phillip Blond (who has built a think tank from the success of his Red Tory theme) nor Shaun Bailey

Tim Knox

Soon we will all be paying £1,000 a household for gold plated public sector pensions

Public sector pensions are grossly unfair. At a time when private sector pensions have collapsed, not least because of Gordon Brown’s infamous pensions raid on private pensions, public sector pensions have continued to be unreformed. The coalition was quick to recognise that this must change. And by appointing former Labour Cabinet Minister John Hutton to come up with suggestions for reform, there is a chance of some cross-party agreement in this difficult and sensitive area. In his recent Centre for Policy Studies report, leading pensions expert Michael Johnson gets a grip on the problem. And, to continue a favourite Coffee House theme, how is it best measured? Many have argued

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 14 February – 20 February

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

David Blackburn

DD’s having a shindig

The FT’s Alex Barker has a sweet little scoop. David Davis is having a knees-up for all 234 of his comrades in the prisoner voting debate. Here’s the invitation: It’s been a while since newspapers and the public commended parliament, so why not throw a ‘little party’. True, normal service will be resumed if Mark Reckless and friends fall into old habits; but last Thursday was a great moment for parliament, they’ve a right to some latitude. Of course, as Paul Goodman has conceded, it was a greater day still for Davis.

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The big-society counter-offensive

Last week Steve Hilton set up a war room in Downing Street. In daily meetings, Hilton plotted the ‘big society’ fight-back that started today with Cameron’s op-ed in The Observer. Hilton, who is predominant in Downing Street at the moment, knows that Cameron will never u-turn on the big society. It is what the Prime Minister thinks defines him as a politician. Cameron is desperate to be seen as more than a deficit hawk and the big society is what he wants to be his legacy. The big society is sailing into quite a headwind. Francis Maude’s unintentionally comic comment today that the big society has been a massive ‘communications

Andrew Neil

Why work experience matters more than ever

In my recent BBC2 documentary, Posh & Posher, I explained how networking and contacts played a crucial role in giving those with the right connections an early leg up in their careers. Internships and work experience are proving increasingly crucial to opening doors and opportunities in later life. Many have expressed the view that the best intern and work experience opportunities in fields like politics, finance and the media are going disproportionately to those who are already privileged and well-connected. From what I’ve seen myself in recent years I suspect that to be true. The Mail on Sunday gives a classic example (and a potentially embarrassing one for the Tories) of how it

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Spotify Sunday: Fill Your Ears

To conclude our ‘True Grit Week’, we’ve asked our favourite Country and Western aficionado, our colleague Alex Massie, to compose a special C&W playlist. Hickory Wind – The ByrdsThe Byrds were never better than during the spell Gram Parsons was present. Sweetheart of the Rodeo is a near-faultless album and ‘Hickory Wind’ perhaps its standout track. Boulder to Birmingham – Emmylou HarrisYou could cheerfully pick any number of Emmylou songs but her tribute to Parsons is as good a place to start as any and, frankly, better than most. Sublime. Tecumseh Valley – Townes van ZandtNo collection is complete without a nod to the prince of Texas singer-songwriters. ‘Tecumseh Valley’

David Blackburn

Cameron downgrades the Big Society

It’s written in print: the Big Society has become the “big society”. David Cameron has responded to criticism of his flagship agenda by downgrading it from a proper noun to a compound adjective. He makes no attempt to define “big society”; rather, Cameron suggests that the term is descriptive of the impulses he hopes to encourage. He writes in today’s Observer: ‘Take a trip with me to Balsall Heath in Birmingham and I’ll show you a place once depressingly known as a sink estate but now a genuinely desirable place to live. Why the transformation? Because even in a tough neighbourhood, the seeds of a stronger society were there and residents boldly decided they’d

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 12 February 2011

Missing in Egypt Sir: Your pundits on the Egyptian crisis (‘The Egyptian explosion’, 5 February) left out one major consideration. The ballast for a solid democracy depends more than anything else on the commitment of a professional, educated middle class with a stake in stability as well as human rights. In the Arab world, this class may play a prominent and vocal role in the removal of tyrannies, but, as soon as things get difficult in the messy aftermath, they are all too ready to jump ship to the West. How can there ever be democracy in the Arab world, so long as the Arab middle classes play at politics

Melissa Kite

Real life | 12 February 2011

When you start writing to-do lists that need paginating you know you’re in trouble. Also, a good to-do list should only ever have one major item on it. A bad to-do list looks something like this: Remortgage house, negotiate lease extension, buy car, book skiing holiday, remodel spare room, get pregnant, climb Kilimanjaro. I don’t know which of these fills me with more panic. The order troubles me, too. I spend a long time shuffling the items around, the last two in particular, for obvious reasons. I cannot work out why some of them are even on there. I have simply no idea why I told a friend I would

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 12 February 2011

My boy and I were standing together outside the front door of his partner’s house while he smoked a cigarette. Since my boy’s first (and his partner’s fourth) child was born, they haven’t smoked inside the house. Fine drizzle was swirling in the orange glow of the streetlight. In comfortable silence we stood and contemplated the view of the council estate where he lives. A tradition has grown up for dumping ‘problem’ families here from across the county, so this particular slough of despond is notorious for drugs, petty vandalism and domestic violence. The most pathetic of last week’s crop of court cases reported in the local paper was that

Taki

High life | 12 February 2011

Philosophy has been known to be a bit of a struggle for many of us, except, of course, if we happen to be professional footballers, pop stars, film actors, reality TV performers or hedge-fund managers. Although in last week’s Spectator Quentin Letts offered a primer on how to pretend to be an Egypt expert, the poor little Greek boy, always ready to offer more to the sacrosanct Spectator readership than an Englishman, will now take you to the wilder reaches of philosophy as applied to real life. One of the reasons I always write about the past is ‘anamnesis,’ which is the exact opposite of amnesia, the latter a condition

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 12 February 2011

Q. In the light of WikiLeaks and Facebook, should the Chatham House rules still apply in civilised society? My life is rather mouvementé just now and, although I have no immediate plans to publish it, I feel it a duty to keep a diary. Unfortunately my wife thinks there is an element of sneakiness about my doing this. My view is that if you have the kind of access I have, then it is almost a moral obligation to keep a record of who said what, for the moment when, as they say, the history books come to be written. Can you rule, Mary? —Name withheld A. A diary, written

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety: This isn’t an argument, it’s a war

As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. It comes with the territory and after 25 years I’ve developed quite a thick skin. But ever since I started leading the efforts of a group of parents and teachers to set up a free school in west London, the level of vitriol directed against me has increased a thousandfold. In a bizarre twist of fate, I’ve only become a truly reviled figure since I decided to do something good. Scarcely a day passes without someone on the left launching a vicious personal attack. I naively thought that my opponents might respect

The Spectator

Barometer | 12 February 2011

Whose cultures? David Cameron declared multiculturalism a failure last week. But where does the idea come from? — In the late 1960s the Canadian government set up a Royal Commission into ‘Bilingualism and Biculturalism’ to unite the English- and French-speaking parts of the country. It suggested a policy to champion other ethnic groups, too. Prime minister Pierre Trudeau welcomed this as ‘the most suitable means of assuring the cultural freedom of Canadians’. — Canada set up a Multicultural Directorate in 1972, then a Ministry of Multiculturalism in 1973. — One of the fundamental themes was that Canadians of all ethnic backgrounds should learn at least one of English or French.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 February 2011

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, called for Islamist extremism to be countered by ‘a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone’. Speaking at a security conference in Munich, he said that ‘under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives’. About 1,500 supporters of the English Defence League and 1,000 of Unite Against Fascism marched through Luton. Three Muslims serving life sentences went on trial charged with the attempted murder of a Bosnian war criminal held in Wakefield jail. The Queen caught a train from King’s Lynn to King’s Cross at a cost of £47.20, or £31.50 with a

The Spectator

Leader: Family fortunes

It is a curious fact about modern Britain that while we romanticise marriage and stable families as never before, our government still bribes us to split up. There has been much nonsense talked this week of the perils of introducing a ‘marriage bias’ into the tax system. But the truth is that a distinct and deplorable bias already exists — against couples. Families on low incomes are usually financially better off apart than they are together — in terms of various state hand-outs and housing benefit. The payments offered by the welfare state have robbed the low-income family of its economic function. Although one hesitates to say so on the

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language

Charles Moore told of a headmaster (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 January) who found that no one knew the meaning of the proverb: ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’ I suppose the antique syntax baffled them. Charles Moore told of a headmaster (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 January) who found that no one knew the meaning of the proverb: ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’ I suppose the antique syntax baffled them. They probably wouldn’t get ‘Penny wise, pound foolish’ or ‘Don’t spoil a sheep for a ha’porth of tar’ either. It is in the nature of proverbs to embody archaisms, and antiquarianism is quite alien to the current generation, for all its interest

Daniel Korski

The World’s Egyptian dilemma

In a few weeks, the World Bank will issue its Development Report, a document of canonical importance to the DfiDs of the world. But the recent events in Egypt will make it useful reading for laymen too. The reason: it shows empirically – having looked at hundreds conflicts in hundred of countries – that young democracies are much more vulnerable to conflict than either mature democracies or authoritarian states. This means that when fostering transition, the international community encounters faces a dilemma: do we push for stability, or do we push for democracy? We may not be able to get both, in the short term. In the long term, democracy