Society

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In this week’s Spectator | 27 January 2011

The new issue of The Spectator is out in the shops today – subscribers can read it online, or on Kindle/iPad – and here are a few pieces that I thought might interest CoffeeHousers.   1. The death of meritocracy. Social mobility – or the lack thereof – is a subject that no political party feels comfortable with. And why? For the very good reasons that Andrew Neil outlines in the cover story of this week’s Spectator. One vignette is that when Cameron’s inner circle convened to discuss the recent school sports fiasco, the conversation turned to who played which positions in the Eton Wall game. If you missed his

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Andy Gray: The View from the Sports Desk

After expressing some doubt yesterday that Andy Gray was as wicked or the journalists denouncing him were as virtuous as the media were claiming, I received the following email from a British football correspondent based in Europe. ‘Hi Nick, Just wanted to say spot on with the Spectator blog on Andy Gray and the media. There is also something very unpleasant about the mob justice element of it all that seems to be intensified by cretins on twitter calling for heads. The sports press has plenty of previous on this – Glen Hoddle’s hounding from his job for silly comments about reincarnation being one. You usually find the victim has

Daniel Korski

The dangers of CameronCare

A consensus has formed in the commentariat that besides George Osborne’s stewardship of the economy, Andrew Lansley’s healthcare reforms could become the government’s vote-loser. The political facts are as simple as the forms are complex. One, David Cameron ran a campaign based on a promise to protect the NHS. Many people thought that meant from cuts and culls alike. The Health Secretary’s reforms look, whatever the truth may be, like they are going back on the PM’s promise. Second, the reforms can only be successful if a range of stakeholders – voters, practitioners, analysts – have been brought along, and had a chance to debate the issues. What Michael Gove

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

This Ed’s no Goliath

Ed Milliband took up his position at PMQs today flanked by Caroline Flint and Ed Balls. Between a rock and a hard face. His proximity to so many colleagues who wish him ill can hardly have helped his performance. He was like a stale doughnut. Layers of stodge surrounding a hole in the air.   His battle-plan wasn’t entirely useless. He wanted to tempt the prime minister into foolish speculation about the causes of last quarter’s poor growth figures. Cameron stood up and admitted that the numbers were pretty lousy whether the weather were blamed or not. And that whether-the-weather left Miliband completely stuffed. He’d expected Cameron to shift at

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Unusually Unimportant State of the Union Address

Last year I suggested that the State of the Union speech was an unexpectedly important moment for Barack Obama. Except in as much as it was needed to steady Democratic nerves frayed by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, I don’t think this was true. In part that’s because I can’t remember anything about it and had to remind myself what I thought of it at the time. So let’s try something different this* year: this is an unusually unimportant State of the Union address. As Ezra Klein notes, these things rarely make much of a difference (they rarely confirm or reverse any prevailing media “narrative”) and, in any case, the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Government Efficiency vs Cost of Government? Why not try both!

Hey ho, it’s the State of the Union speech tonight and as usual there’s no shortage of advice for President Obama. Via Steve Benen, here’s Ruy Teixeira: Make no mistake: a more effective government is the public’s priority, not a smaller government. In a survey I helped conduct for the Center for American Progress’s Doing What Works government reform project, we found that, by a decisive 62 to 36 margin, the public said their priority for improving the federal government was increasing its efficiency and effectiveness, not reducing its cost and size. Significantly, we found an identical result among the independents in our survey. I’m sure this is true just

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The touchline is the best place for a woman

Magnificent schadenfreude being shown by all and sundry over the case of Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray and their off-mic comments about how useless woman are. This is at least partly because Keys and Gray are genuinely awful and nobody liked them very much anyway. And their off-mic comments were precisely what you might have expected from them. You wouldn’t have expected to overhear Gray saying, for example, “how refreshing to see a woman running the line today – it is about time that football, like so many of our institutions, showed a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusiveness. Incidentally, Richard, you must try to catch Marton

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Brutal Bigotry of Low Expectations

Bagehot has a properly righteous post lambasting teachers who complain that it’s too difficult to teach their charges to read and write and count properly. A week later, a BBC Radio 4 phone-in programme, Any Answers, featured a pair of state school teachers, both with 30 years of experience, again pouring scorn on the dangerously “academic” bent of the English baccalaureate, and Mr Gove’s related desire to see a more rigorous syllabus in history, involving such things as learning a framework of important dates and events to give children a sense of the essential chronology of British and world history. Such history is never going to be relevant to many

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Pawlenty: The Movie!

This is quite extraordinary. And in its way, rather fine. The contrast between this trailer and the reality of Tim Pawlenty’s brand of blandish midwestern competence is itself entertaining. This suggests he’ll run a campaign blending Top Gun with Independence Day plus the soundtrack of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Which, of course, he won’t. Still: Courage to Stand? Really? I know it’s mandatory for politicians to make it sound as though they are only running for the leadership of the free world because, dang, someone has to be selfless enough to do the job but is anyone really fooled by these attempts to wrap ambition with

Peter Hoskin

Ed Balls: I don’t think a double dip is the most likely outcome

And this, folks, is a day where Ed Balls is having his cake and eating it too. Not only is he basking in the grim light of the growth figures, but he is using the opportunity to recast his own stance on the economy. Speaking on the Daily Politics just now, he de-emphasised the argument that in-year cuts were to blame for today’s numbers, instead claiming that people have “changed their behaviour in anticipation of what’s coming in the future.” And, more ear-catching still, he added: “I don’t think [a double dip] is the most likely outcome.” This, as Fraser suggested earlier, is surely necessary caution on Balls’s part. He

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What to make of the GDP fall?

“Recession here we come, a snow-dabbed double-dip” tweeted Faisal Islam, Channel Four’s economics editor. He summed up much of the hysterical reaction. It may spoil a good story, but here is what I suspect the broadcasters won’t tell you today. 1. Erratic GDP swings are common when recovering from a recession. Remember how stunned everyone was with the surging quarter three data? Now, we’re all shocked by plunging quarter four figures. I’d advise CoffeeHousers to treat these two imposters just the same. After the 80s recession, quarterly growth rates swung between -0.7 percent and 1.5 percent. Following the ERM-induced recession in the 90s, growth rates swung between -0.2 percent and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010

These provisional GDP figures showing that the economy shrank in the fourth quarter have come as a shock, the consensus was for growth albeit at a slower pace than in the third quarter. These figures can, obviously, be significantly explained by the winter weather which brought the country to a halt. The ONS is saying that without the weather growth would have been flat. George Osborne is stressing that he won’t be ‘blown off course’ by these weather-affected numbers. But it’ll be fascinating to see how Ed Balls responds to these numbers. Does he double-down on his warning of a double-dip recession—which would damage his credibility if it did not

Kristian Niemietz

The pressing need to redefine poverty

What is ‘poverty’? It might sound a basic question but, when we hear about x percent of people ‘living in poverty’, what does that actually mean? The policy review conducted by Frank Field last year offered a number of insights into the issues of life chances and their determinants. But it failed to address that fundamental question: what is poverty? Until we know what we are measuring, it is impossible to attempt to tackle it. Poverty continues to preoccupy us. According to the British Social Attitude Survey, the majority view is that there is “quite a lot” of poverty in Britain today, and many expect it to increase over the

Monday

David Blackburn

Outgoing head of the CBI slams the government on growth

Richard Lambert has launched an uncompromising but constructive assault on the government’s growth strategy, or lack of it. He said: “The government is…talking about growth in an enthusiastic and thoughtful way… But it’s failed so far to articulate in big picture terms its vision of what the UK economy might become under its stewardship. “What I feel is that a number of their initiatives – I’m thinking of the immigration cap, I’m thinking about their move on the default retirement age, about the carbon reduction commitment – have actually made it harder for companies, or less likely for companies to employ people. And what we want, actually, is a sense

David Blackburn

The coalition needs to address bonuses

Much ado about bankers’ bonuses this afternoon. Tim Montgomerie reports that the proposed banking deal has run aground in Whitehall. The timing is inconvenient: Cameron and Clegg are due to fly to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum. The government hopes to allay public resentment by coercing banks into increasing their lending; which is also a crucial part of its nascent growth strategy. It adds to the impression that the government is failing to make progress in any other realm than cuts. For the time being, Tory spinners are content to distract attention by telling anyone that will listen about Ed Balls’ record on bank regulation and boundless enthusiasm

David Blackburn

Sexism is a red-herring; it’s family that matters

I’m afraid that women have been faking it, having us men on. You see they understand the offside rule and always have done. How could they not? It’s so simple that even a brace of abject football pundits know that an actively involved player is offside when he is closer to the opponent’s goal line than both the ball and the second-to-last defender, but only if he is in his opponent’s half of the pitch. Messrs Keys and Gray may not be too sharp on interpretation – unlike the ‘young lady’ (£) they berated – but they’re smoking hot on the theory. So do me a favour love and drop

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 24 January – 30 January

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

Daniel Korski

The Gaza flotilla raid was legal – but stupid

Yesterday saw the publication of a report into Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, the Hamas-run part of the Palestinian crypto-state, and the Israeli military’s raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for the coastal enclave last year. The inquiry, headed by former judge Yaakov Turkel, argued that: “The naval blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip… was legal pursuant to the rules of international law” The inquiry defined the fight between Israeli forces and Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups as “an international armed conflict”. Critically, the panel’s two international observers – former Northern Ireland first minister David Trimble and Brigadier-General Ken Watkin of Canada – both agreed with the

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

DD’s classy intervention

David Davis’ interview on Jon Pienaar’s show this evening has revived the debate about whether or not it matters how posh the Cameron top table is. Andy Coulson was the most senior person there who understood what it is actually like to work your way up the ladder and with him gone that experience is missing. But what matters far more than the personalities involved is the policy outcomes. As I said in the Mail on Sunday, the most important thing for Cameron to do is to deliver for these voters. To cut their taxes and give them public services that offer them value for money. One other thing worth

Beeban Kidron

An Education by Film

Nick Hornby’s Oscar-nominated film, An Education, seems at first to have a misleading name. After all, the central character struggles with Latin, is discouraged from French and gives up a very privileged education for an older man, who turns out to be married. Thankfully, in both film and in real life, the protagonist – the impressive journalist and theatre critic Lynn Barber – learns her lesson. Barber gets into Oxford and then the rest, as they say, is history. When we first tried to get children to watch An Education at FILMCLUB (an after-school club that shows quality films to over 200 000 children a week), it was greeted with