Society

Monday

Eve Atkins

A radical step forward in the health of the nation

The coalition is facing more protests today over its plans to abolish Primary Care Trusts. But PCTs are ripe for abolition. Their bureaucracy and management costs have ballooned in recent years and they have been wildly unpopular in some parts of the country for their role in pushing for hospital closures. They have failed to make the NHS more efficient and innovative and they have been responsible for many of the heart-wrenching cases of patients failing to get drugs for conditions like cancer.   In contrast, GPs are one of the most trusted groups in the NHS. Yes, there are examples of poor practice, but generally patients have high respect

David Blackburn

Dorrell: I have reservations about the Health Reforms

Stephen Dorrell, the former Health Secretary and current Chairman of the Health Select Committee, and Chuka Umanna appeared on the Daily Politics to debate Lansley’s latest reforms. Judging by this interview, Dorrell’s reservations seem to be of the constitutional rather than institutional variety. And Umanna avoided the question about whether these reforms have their genesis in the Blair/Milburn era, which suggests that Ed Miliband will denounce yet more of Blair’s record in the quest to detoxify his party’s brand.

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 17 January – 23 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

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 17 January 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson explains how it is going right for Ed Miliband. James Forsyth watches Ed Miliband deliver a speech to the Fabian society. Peter Hoskin argues that Ed Miliband is still dodgy on the public finances. David Blackburn doubts that a Tory-Lib pact is workable. Daniel Korski unearths the constitutional IEDs left by Labour. James Plunkett and Gavin Kelly examine forthcoming tax changes. Matthew Hancock reckons that Miliband is in denial. Nick Cohen believes the American right has a problem. Rod Liddle calls the Oldham by-election. And Alex Massie says that time is up for Biffo. 

David Blackburn

Too far, too fast?

It is hubristic of David Cameron to talk of his ‘legacy’ at this stage in his premiership, not least because he invites criticism that the government’s public service reforms are going too far, too fast. The leaders of six health unions have reacted to the imminent publication of the Health and Social Care Bill with a concerned letter to the Times (£); they argue that price competition is divisive and that the reforms promote cost above quality. Dissent has spread far beyond the usual union suspects. Dr Sarah Wollaston, the Tory MP for Totnes, has expressed her misgivings and there have been numerous accounts of GPs’ reluctance to embrace commissioning reforms

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Annals of Ahistorical Bedwetting: Simon Jenkins Edition

Amidst the usual stiff competition this week’s palm for Most Abject Commentary goes to Sir Simon Jenkins for this truly miserable column on the aftermath and implications of the shootings in Tucson. It’s not entirely clear what Jenkins is trying to say but since he writes that “Freedom can only flourish in a climate of discipline” and concludes with “If American politics is now going the way of wounding, not healing, it needs the tonic of order. It is the great paradox of democracy. Free speech cannot exist without chains” it seems reasonable to conclude he thinks some kind of Jenkins-friendly authoritarianism would be preferable to the vulgar, boorish, messy

Sunday

Gavin Kelly

Breaking the curious silence on upcoming tax changes

This week, Nick Clegg added his name to the fast-growing list of politicians addressing the critical question of living standards. His phrase of choice was ‘alarm clock Britain’, in effect his version of Ed Miliband’s ‘squeezed middle’. It is, of course, a clunking label for what is a serious topic (hardly the first time a politician has achieved such a feat). But quibbles over terminology aside – and as Miliband’s article on Friday confirmed – these are the first serious shots in the political battle to frame the coalition’s crucial March Budget. It is now increasingly clear that at the heart of that struggle will be attempts by party leaders

David Allen-Green

SPOTIFY SUNDAY: Legal Downloads

This week’s Spotify Sunday playlist has been selected by David Allen Green who is head of the media practice at Preiskel & Co. and legal correspondent for The New Statesman. Last year he was named as one of the leading innovators in technology and journalism by Journalism.co.uk and shortlisted for the George Orwell prize for blogging. You can follow him on Twitter HERE and find him on Facebook HERE. I have never written about music before, and I hardly have the detailed knowledge to show off that other contributors to this series appear to have.  But here goes: some of my choice Spotify tracks, and what I have to say

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 15 January 2011

Q. A friend gives regular dinner parties with all the potential to be brilliant events. She knows wonderful people and always has an interesting mix. She has a flat in Chelsea. She is a beautiful, stylish and generous woman but she rarely gets the food on the table before 10 p.m., by which time people are feeling a bit tired and irritable and also drunk and full of nuts and crisps. Our friend is a businesswoman and seems to be hard-wired to do everything at the last minute. She laughs when we tease her but nothing changes. She is giving another dinner soon but my husband is losing patience with

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety: Free schools in the front line

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the most militant trade unions have education reformers in their sights. A month of industrial action is due to begin at the end of March, culminating in a series of demonstrations to coincide with the royal wedding, and free school proposers can expect to be at the business end of these protests. The NUT’s opposition to the coalition’s education policy is hardly surprising, but the involvement of other trade unions in this battle is more perplexing. The keynote speaker at a recent rally in Acton to oppose the West

Melissa Kite

Real life | 15 January 2011

Golden corn spread out on the road; women washing in rivers; pots and baskets and sugar cane balanced on heads; a dead man in his best clothes being carried to his pyre; goats, bullocks, monkeys everywhere; baby elephants ambling through traffic… After a week of it, I turn to my guide Rajai and announce somewhat dramatically, but meaning every word, ‘I think I have lived more in the past seven days than ever before.’ ‘That’s India,’ says Rajai matter-of-factly, as if I’m just one more Westerner having an epiphany. Rajai, a multilingual expert on art history and architecture, is a little frustrated by my emotional approach to sightseeing and is,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 15 January 2011

A kindly old charge nurse once took me aside after I’d appeared before a psychiatric hospital’s disciplinary committee accused of drunken behaviour. ‘Get yourself a good woman, old son,’ he counselled. ‘That’s what I did. Then you can take her to the pub, have a nice conversation, and learn to drink in a civilised fashion.’ Cow Girl enjoys a drink in a civilised fashion. She likes wine and knows a bit about it. When I’d told her, prior to our first meeting, that I was a pint of lager sort of a person and didn’t much like wine, she said she’d educate me. So whenever we’ve stayed at the hotel

Taki

High life | 15 January 2011

Gstaad Back in 1975 Adam Fergusson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the nightmare of Weimar hyperinflation, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by reality and talent shows on the idiot box, why bother to bring up unpleasant subjects? Only recently I read somewhere that the obnoxious John Prescott defended the war criminal Tony Blair and his party’s record, which in a way is not unlike arms manufacturers being praised by Greens for population control. People are simply too

The Spectator

Letters | 15 January 2011

Top dogs Sir: I very much enjoyed the excerpts from Dean Spanley (The Spectator’s Notes, 8 January). Hitherto my favourite depiction of the canine mindset had come from Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome: Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted. Anyone who has ever attempted to shift a beloved pet from underfoot while cooking is surely familiar with such an attitude. I am

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern | 15 January 2011

Last week Geoffrey Wheatcroft speculated whether a regiment of what he called Gay Gordons might not have something to be said for it, giving a whole new meaning to ‘once more into the breach, dear friends’.  Ancient Greeks would probably have approved, but with some reservations. Plato argued that Sparta and Crete were largely responsible for introducing a homosexual ethos into the military, a practice that came to be imitated elsewhere in the Greek world. In Sparta, for example, boys were removed from their parents at the age of seven to spend their time in common messes where they were trained up as soldiers. Every 12-year-old had to take a

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 15 January 2011

Now that we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible, I wonder if we can dispense with the notion that it has greatly influenced the shape of the English language. Macaulay once claimed that if every other book perished, the Bible ‘would alone suffice to show the whole extent’ of the beauty and power of English. But, as Gordon Campbell points out in his admirable new book Bible (Oxford, £16.99), one of the glories of Macaulay’s own style, the subordinate clause, is no feature of the Bible in the translation made in King James’s reign. It follows the paratactic structure of Hebrew, with sentences piled

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 15 January 2011

Home David Chaytor, the Labour MP for Bury North from 1997 to 2010, was sentenced to 18 months for false accounting under the Theft Act 1968 regarding his claims for parliamentary expenses. Eric Illsley, the Labour MP for Barnsley, who was re-elected last May with a majority of 11,000, was convicted of fraudulently claiming more than £14,000 in parliamentary expenses. A sixth-former was jailed for 32 months after admitting throwing an empty fire-extinguisher from the seventh floor of the Millbank building during student protests last November. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, declared his support for ‘alarm-clock Britain’. Stuart Wheeler, who gave £5 million to the Conservative party in 2001, joined

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The American Right’s Problem

I never thought I would write this but Sarah Palin had a point when she said that she was a victim of a “blood libel”. The Left has gone wild and criticised her for implying she was on the receiving end of murderous anti-Semitism – the blood libel is the allegation that Jews delighted in murdering Christians. (For a modern example of the lie that has launched a thousand pogroms readers should note the Liberal Democrat peer Jenny Tonge’s call for an inquiry into invented allegations that Jewish doctors were harvesting the organs of the dead and injured of the Haitian earthquake.)  With equal force, her critics have also accused Palin

Daniel Korski

Freedom in the desert

When in power, authoritarian regimes can look immovable – even when, in hindsight, they turn out to have been brittle. This seems to have been the case with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisian regime. Weeks ago, nobody would have believed that the Tunisian strongman, who has held power for more than 23 years, could have been chased from office so quickly. A diplomat friend who served in Tunis marvelled at the dictatorship, where information was so restricted that he depended on information from colleagues stationed elsewhere in the region. Ben Ali’s rule was apparently total; the opposition was comprehensively suppressed and the population had little scope for expression or assembly.

The Spectator

Grace under fire | 15 January 2011

Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. In the past few months, this clash has become outright war. Christian minorities, who have lived peacefully in Muslim countries for generations, are finding themselves subject to increasingly violent persecution. Churches are being attacked in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines. The recent assassination in Pakistan of a Muslim politician who defended a Christian woman sentenced to death for ‘insulting’ Islam was particularly shocking. Pakistan has had blasphemy laws since its inception, but never before have they been used to persecute Christians. The Church of England has