Society

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trouble on the horizon | 18 August 2010

100 days in, a danger emerging for the coalition: the idea that it is balancing the budget on the backs of the middle class. The Daily Mail front page today warns in apocalyptic font of a ‘Bonfire of the middle class benefits’ while the Times says ‘Families to lose out in bonfire of the benefits.’   The problem for the coalition is that because it is committed to protecting the poorest and the most vulnerable, the cuts will have to be concentrated further up the income scale. This means that a lot of will what go in the cuts are the middle class bits of the welfare state. To compound

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The coalition’s choice over Winter Fuel Allowance

The Winter Fuel Allowance has tapdanced back onto the political landscape today, and it’s all thanks to some insightful work by the FT’s Alex Barker. He had an article in this morning’s pink ‘un which suggested that IDS is lobbying to have it, and and some other “middle-class benefits”, trimmed to help pay for his benefit reforms. And he’s followed that up with a blog-post explaining how even an apparent “cut” in the allowance may not result in savings for the Treasury or the DWP. Strange but true, as they say. This could be a delicate situation for the coalition. In the background to it all is David Cameron’s pre-election

Peter Hoskin

Is Cameron slowly winning the argument on public service reform?

Guido has already highlighted one of the most important graphs from this Ipsos MORI treasure trove, showing that the public have overwhelmingly accepted the need for spending cuts. But this other graph forms a striking companion piece: Sure, the public may be split on whether the coalition will be good for public services. But the main thing to note is that overall optimism is at its highest level since 2001 – and rising. Maybe, contra Brown and Balls, people are realising that you can get more for less.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Sky News survey has the Lib Dems down to 8 percent

It is just one poll and of the Sky News Panel but a survey to mark the Coalition’s 100 days has the Lib Dems down to 8 percent. (One note of caution, the sample seems to have more Tory voters from the last election than you would expect).   The Lib Dem’s falling poll ratings is rapidly becoming the biggest political problem facing the coalition. Combine it with the fact that The Sun’s You Gov poll today shows a plurality in favour of keeping first past the post and you have a pretty toxic brew for the Liberal Democrats.   If AV is rejected in a referendum next May and

Monday

David Blackburn

The university funding debate continued

University funding is beginning to dominate op-ed pages. Yesterday, Matthew d’Ancona put the case for a graduate tax from the conservative perspective; and to which Douglas Carswell has responded. Today, Professor Alison Wolf, a specialist in Public Sector Management at KCL, makes the point that any debate about higher education funding is prejudiced because Britain’s politicians and policy makers are predominantly Oxbridge educated, and the structure of Oxbridge undergraduate degrees is radically different from anywhere else. Writing in the Times (£), she asserts: ‘I’ve sat in many meetings, in Whitehall and Westminster, where people have talked up credit systems (a modular system of assessment) without the faintest idea that we

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 16 August – 22 August

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

Sunday

Dale Bassett

What you need to know ahead of the Spending Review

This is the second of our posts with Reform looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first, on health, can be found here. What is the budget? Education is the biggest area of government spending after welfare and health, totalling £89 billion in 2010-11. This budget increased by 64 percent in real terms between 1999-00 and 2010-11. Total, per-pupil school spending doubled in real terms over the same period. Where does the money go? Expenditure on schools was £46 billion last year. The vast bulk of school spending goes on people: the average school spends 78 percent of its budget on staff. The byzantine arrangements for school funding mean that

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Suffering syndrome

Have you noticed how no one gets tired any more, they get one of those frightening fatigue syndromes? Post-viral, chronic, adrenal, muscular, neuro-cognitive…It’s terrifying. I’ve lost track of the number of parties I’ve been to where one of the guests has suddenly announced that they’re really excited to be out because they’ve been in bed for the past six months. (It’s always six months. Never five and a half, or seven.) And before the Alliance of Fatigue Sufferers accuses me of insensitivity, I must make clear that I’m not denying these debilitating conditions exist. I’m saying that if everyone who claims to be is suffering from an official fatigue syndrome

Jeremy Clarke

Away with the elves

We circumnavigated Iceland in a clockwise direction, calling on successive days at Reykjavik, Grundarfjordur, Isafjordur and Akureyri. At each of these places we disembarked and took an excursion led by a local guide. At Grundarfjordur, I took the Snaefellsnes national park coach tour. Our guide was a smartly dressed, highly educated Icelandic woman who spoke better English than me, albeit more slowly and methodically. Her commentary revealed a comfortableness with contemporary discourses on geopolitics, ecology, economics, culture and technology. Though because we were British, renowned for our philistinism, and willing to laugh at anything, even if it isn’t funny, she tried to keep things simple, and even attempted one or

Taki

Give and take

On board S/Y Bushido Sailing down the eastern coast of the Peloponnese I thought I spotted some anti-Semites adrift, but they turned out to be Norwegians, flying a British flag. Although becalmed they needed nothing but a breeze, so we wished them good day and motored off. Ever since Shimon Peres accused the UK of anti-Semitism, I’ve been very careful to whom I offer help on the high seas. Peres, who once upon a time made some sense, recently claimed that the English were pro-Arab and anti-Israel. He was also rude about my new best friend, David Cameron, who referred to Gaza as a ‘prison camp’. But now that the

Ursula Buchan

Rising to the occasion

Of all the reasons for making a garden, providing a space for entertaining people probably generates the most anxiety. When we moved to our present house 16 years ago, the relatively large size of garden, and its adjacent Christmas tree plantation, inevitably turned my thoughts to how best to make it a suitable stage for summer parties. This influenced me when we laid out the paving and paths, and planted the hedges, trees, borders, orchard and small ‘meadow’. Although, of course, I wanted the garden for solace, physical and mental refreshment, creative expression and horticultural experiment, I always acknowledged that, just occasionally, it would have to brace up and act

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 14 August 2010

Q. Please can you advise on a matter that, although seemingly trivial, is causing some tension in our household. Like many families, rather than spreading butter on our toast at breakfast time, we have switched to one of the supposedly healthier alternative low-fat spreads. Our problem is by what name should we refer to this new product? My wife continues to ask if I’d please pass the butter, but as it isn’t butter, I find this irksome. If I refer to it as margarine, she is annoyed by the implication that we are using some inferior low-quality butter substitute. To request that someone passes the low-fat spread is hardly elegant.

Toby Young Toby Young

If you want something trashy to read on the beach, I’ve got a recommendation

The summer holidays are upon us and like most people I’ve been taking the opportunity to do a bit of light reading. I’ve put aside the heavy tomes I’ve been wrestling with for the best part of the year and accumulated a vast pile of trashy paperbacks. So far, my favourite ‘beach read’ is The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Talk about junk food for the brain! Its argument, in a nutshell, is that there’s a causal link between inequality and social dysfunction. The more unequal a society, the higher its levels of mental illness, obesity, teenage births, homicides, infant mortality, etc. For that reason, claim the

The Spectator

Letters | 14 August 2010

Vive le TGV Sir: I was surprised to read about the vexations of Ross Clark on the TGV (‘Train à Grande Vexation’, 7 August). My experiences on this train have always been excellent. Last winter I was able to buy a return ticket between London and Avignon for only £110. Changing trains in Lille was perfectly easy, as the platforms were adjacent. And I find it a particular blessing that passengers are not allowed to use mobile telephones in the carriages. Rail passengers are far more likely to encounter problems in France when they are using ordinary trains, particularly those travelling from east to west or vice versa. It is

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 14 August 2010

Mr Peter Andrews writes to tell me that he was told by a lawyer with whom he used to be a school that a moot point is not one that is debatable, but one that has already been decided. This is not news that has reached the Oxford English Dictionary, which happens to have revised its entry on moot only a few weeks ago. Originally, a moot point was one proposed for discussion at a moot. A moot, in the legal sense, was either ‘a discussion of a hypothetical case by law students for practice’ or ‘a hypothetical doubtful case that may be used for discussion’. The dictionary then gets

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 August 2010

When I asked him whether we needed any waterproofs for our visit to Afghanistan, our leader, Sandy Gall, was firm. No need whatever, he said. But when we reach Bamiyan on a UN plane early in the morning, we look down from the cliff above the town and see our hotel cut off by flood. A lorry has capsized in the torrents, and men with their salwars hoisted high are wading ineffectually about. Sandy’s solution is to book ten donkeys to carry us across later, and meanwhile breakfast in the rather broken-down hotel where, pro tem, we find ourselves. From where we sit, we can survey the niches in which,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 14 August 2010

Mrs Anne Milton, the Health Minister, tried to abolish free milk for children under five in nurseries, as it costs £50 million a year and ‘there is no evidence that it improves the health of very young children’, but Downing Street said that Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister ‘did not like the idea’, so it would not go ahead. Mrs Anne Milton, the Health Minister, tried to abolish free milk for children under five in nurseries, as it costs £50 million a year and ‘there is no evidence that it improves the health of very young children’, but Downing Street said that Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister ‘did

The Spectator

Taleban justice

For anyone still clinging to the idea that we have brought democracy and human rights to Afghanistan, the latest news from the country should come as a shock. The Taleban seem to be growing in confidence and influence. First there was the shooting of aid workers in Badakhshan; now a widow accused of becoming pregnant after the death of her husband has been flogged 200 times, then shot in the head. Rather than mobilising troops to rescue the woman, the local security chief simply condemned the punishment as ‘very severe’. Now that both President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron have signalled their intention to withdraw troops, it is as if

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 14 August 2010

Romans were always sensitive to the controllability of any territory that abutted their empire. What on earth would they have made of Afghanistan? Let alone its army? Rex sociusque et amicus, ‘king, ally and friend’ was the honorific term applied to the ruler of people on the edge of their empire who agreed to come on board. The relationship was a delicate quid pro quo: Rome ensured that their new best friend remained securely in power, as long as he had a grip on his people, remained loyal to Rome and jumped when asked. The push-pull between Rome and the Parthian empire over Armenia offers a good example, both sides