Society

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Funding: Local heroes

I was acting and directing at Helmsley Arts Centre last week, in a little piece of ‘café theatre’ performed in the bar to an audience of only 50. But it was a sell-out every night and, I hope, a light-hearted distraction for the citizens of my Yorkshire town from all that gloomy talk about cuts, more cuts — and who deserves to be cut most. I was acting and directing at Helmsley Arts Centre last week, in a little piece of ‘café theatre’ performed in the bar to an audience of only 50. But it was a sell-out every night and, I hope, a light-hearted distraction for the citizens of

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 30 October 2010

Good news for the governor: a groundswell of responses to the era of bad banking ‘Of all the many ways of organising banking,’ declared the Governor of the Bank of England this week, ‘the worst is the one we have today.’ That spurred me to continue my search for ‘relationship banking’ — and the latest batch of readers’ nominations suggest, encouragingly, that unreformed practitioners still survive even within our shamed and bailed-out mega-banks. Julie Clark of NatWest in Yeovil represents ‘a return to the days of kindness, courtesy and great competence’; for Marc Roxby of Lloyds in Guernsey, ‘nothing is difficult’; as for Barry White — not the late, great

John De-Falbe

The start of the affair

In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great American Novel. In this season of Franzen frenzy, spare a thought for André Aciman, an American writer whose name, I think, is so far unmentioned in the daft pursuit of the Great American Novel. His new novel will achieve only a tiny fraction of Freedom’s sales, but, within its tight parameters, it is perfect. Aciman was not always American. His first book, Out of Egypt (1996), chronicles his extended Jewish family which migrated from Istanbul to Alexandria after the first

Byron Rogers

Laughter from the Gallery

This is an amiable book. The parliamentary sketchwriter Simon Hoggart, also the wine correspondent of this magazine, for which he drinks as selflessly as Zorba the Greek, has set out to record anecdotes that have amused and appalled him in the course of his long professional life. He also throws in some, mainly Jewish, jokes whenever the mood takes him, so at times this reads like one of those gag books that professional comedians lose, then loudly appeal in the press for the return of, but it is none the worse for that. This is a book you are meant to read, put down, read, and put down. It is

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Barack Obama: suspicious packages contained explosives

The terror scare surrounding two planes in the UK’s East Midlands Airport and Dubai is now, officially, serious. In a statement this evening, Barack Obama has confirmed that packages on both aircraft contained explosive devices. The packages were sent from Yemen, and were headed for synagogues in Chicago. As Obama put it, this is a “credible terrorist threat” against the US. There is little detail yet, although the Yemeni connection suggests that this is an al-Qaeda plot. And the White House is not ruling out the grim possibility that there are more packages out there. Sadly, Islamist terror is casting its shadow across the West once again.

The Spectator

The week that was | 29 October 2010

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson explains how free schools benefit all schools. James Forsyth sets out the new fairness battleground, and reports on a double boost for the coalition’s economic strategy. Peter Hoskin watches Clegg get angry, and says that Cameron’s certainty contrasts with Miliband’s equivocation. David Blackburn charts the growing need for elected police commissioners, and observes the Big Society in action. Alex Massie reports back from Israel. Melanie Philips reveals the true reason for the Middle East impasse. And the Spectator Arts Blog picks a selection of films for Halloween.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Israel Notes: The Price of Gilad Shalit

Gilad Shalit’s mother, speaking earlier this summer at a rally demanding his release. At dinner in Tel Aviv last week discussion turned to the strange, awful case of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured and held prisoner by Hamas for the past four years. The rumour was that Israel was prepared to offer an extraordinary deal to bring Shalit home and that this would involve releasing hundreds, perhaps even as many as a thousand, prisoners in exchange for the life and liberty of a single Israeli soldier. What, asked our hosts, did we think of this? Would the British government countenance such a deal? No, our visiting troop of journalists

Peter Hoskin

More perspective on housing benefit

A useful reminder of the opinion polls on housing benefit from ConservativeHome’s Harry Phibbs: “…in coming out with such hyperbole Labour show themselves to be out of touch with the voters. An ICM poll in June asked: “Do you support or oppose imposing a maximum weekly limit of £400 on Housing Benefit.” Support was 68% with 23% opposed. Even among Labour voters there was strong support – by 57% to 35%. A YouGov poll in August asked: “Here are some policies the coalition government have announced in their first hundred days. For each one please say if you oppose or support it?” Among them was: “Putting a limit on housing benefit.”

The Spectator

Lazarus’s legacy

Some minutes before a scraggly Q&A audience member threw his shoes at John Howard, the former prime minister said he was ‘in broad agreement with the thrust’ of last week’s cover editorial in this magazine titled ‘Howard the Great’. Some minutes before a scraggly Q&A audience member threw his shoes at John Howard, the former prime minister said he was ‘in broad agreement with the thrust’ of last week’s cover editorial in this magazine titled ‘Howard the Great’. Well, we are not sure that were he to go a second round with Tony Jones, he’d be so positive about this week’s Spectator Australia. Because with the official launch of his

Thursday

Alex Morton

Some perspective on housing benefit

Depending on who you read, the planned £400 a week cap on housing benefit is either comparable to Nazi concentration camps, death squads in Brazil, or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans Critics have ranged from the Mayor of London to the ultra Left. So it is worth taking a moment to get some perspective. Firstly, the general caps on housing benefit don’t even impact on social tenants because they pay lower, subsidised rents, (though the £26,000 cap on the total amount of benefits per household might hit them). But for housing benefit claimants in the private sector outside London, less than 1% are affected by the cap. And even in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Let Us Now Praise…Conrad Black

As a general rule, newspapers are owned by ogres. As with the Presidency of the United States, desiring the office or, in this instance, the title, should be considered enough to disqualify anyone from consideration. Nevertheless, it matters what kind of ogre it is. There’s a chasm between a Richard Desmond (Express) or a Sam Zell (Tribune Company) and a Rupert Murdoch (half the English-speaking world). Conrad Black, bless him, is in the latter camp. A newspaper proprietor of the proper, old-fashioned brutish school. That is, one who likes newspapers while having a suitably low opinion of both journalism and journalists. He rightly says, in this review of three books

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Great Moments in Analysis: Argentine Edition

I don’t really have anything to say about the death of Nestor Kirchner and nor, it seems, do the analysts consulted by the New York Times: His death could either bolster or hurt Mrs. Kirchner’s political prospects, analysts said. Well that clears that up. On the one hand this is typical of the he-said, she-said approach that bedeveils American newspapers; on the other it’s a welcome and sadly all-too-unusual admission that, actually, most of the time most people don’t know anything and the most honest answer to most political questions is Who the Hell Can Tell? [Hat-tip: Sacha Issenberg]

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Labour’s Augustinian Approach to Welfare Reform

Sometimes you wonder why government ministers ever speak to journalists. Exhibit A: the fool who told Ben Brogan that the coalition’s changes to Housing Benefit amount to a modern version of “the Highland Clearances*”. Sure enough, Jon Cruddas picks up on this in the New Statesman this week. Reading Cruddas you’d think that capping rent allowances and subsidies will bring about the End of Britain As We Know And Love It. For reals: This brutal social engineering will have profound effects on families across the country. As many as one million people could be affected by the changes to housing benefit: children will be uprooted from schools and friends; extended

Peter Hoskin

Another fine mess | 28 October 2010

You know that child benefit cut for higher-rate taxpayers? Yeah, well, it may not be quite as straightforward as the government have hitherto indicated. In an important post on his Wall Street Journal blog, Iain Martin sets out a problem that is exercising nerves and minds in the Treasury: simply put, there’s no existing method for establishing whether mothers (who receive child benefit) are living in a household which pays tax at the higher rate. In effect, this means that the policy is “unenforceable” – although there are some possible solutions, as Iain points out: “I hear that ministers are considering (and tell me which part of the rest of

David Blackburn

The Big Society in action

The Big Society, in so far as it can be defined at all, envisages an empowered people taking responsibility for their local communities. The little platoons’ efforts could determine the atmosphere of a place, by helping to deliver public services, founding employment schemes, running activities that unite the rich and the dispossessed, and exercising more influence over planning authorities. It is, in effect, an assault on adamantine local government, overbearing central government and predominant corporatism. This morning’s Independent has a cockle-warming tale of how the fledgling culture of localism and voluntarism is taking flight: ‘More than 230 separate local campaign groups against wind farms are operating across the UK, from

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Weak, weak, weak

Weak again. For the second session in a row Miliband was feeble at PMQs. He opened in his quiet-assassin mode with a quickie question. ‘There are reports that the government is planning changes to housing benefit reforms. Are they?’ Clearly he meant to wrong-foot Cameron by tempting him into admission which could be instantly disproved. But Cameron simply denied the suggestion and Miliband had no embarrassing disclosure to fire back with. Pretty duff tactics there. He fared slightly better when he asked Cameron what advice he’d give to a family facing a 10 percent cut in housing benefit after the chief bread-winner had been unemployed for a year. Cameron replied

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The new fairness battleground

The f word, fairness, got another outing today at PMQs as David Cameron attempted to defend the coalition’s proposed housing benefit changes from attack by Ed Miliband. Cameron’s argument was that it isn’t fair for people to be subsiding people on housing benefit to live in houses that they couldn’t afford to live in themselves. On this, I strongly suspect that most people in the country agree with him. If Labour wants to turn housing benefit into a big issue, the wedge will work to the Conservatives’ advantage. However, what should be worrying the coalition is that the changes to housing benefit will have to be implemented by local authorities,

Peter Hoskin

The pros and cons of tweaking the housing benefit cuts

It says a lot about the Lib Dems that a meeting between their party leader and deputy leader can throw up so many policy differences. When Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes chatted behind closed doors yesterday, the latter sought concessions over the coalition’s housing benefit cuts – the cuts that Clegg then had to defend in the House. This morning, it was reported that he might just get some of them, even though Downing St are denying the story. Regardless of the outcome, the situation is reminiscent of the child benefit cut for higher-rate taxpayers. A policy was announced, only for the coalition to start pulling back from it in

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 27 October 2010

VERDICT: The housing benefit cuts inspired Ed Miliband’s chosen attack – and he deployed it quite effectively, with none of the unclarity that we saw last week. For the most part, though, Cameron stood firm – leaning on his favourite rhetorical stick, What Would Labour Do? – and his final flurry against Ed Miliband was enough, I think, to win him this encounter on points. But don’t expect this housing benefit issue to dissipate quickly. Bob Russell’s question was evidence enough of how tricky this could be for the coalition. 1232: And that’s it. My quick verdict shortly. 1231: Bob Russell, a Lib Dem, says that housing benefit cuts are