Society

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Strippers vs Christians

As a Michigan man, Jon Chait naturally takes a great interest in monitoring life in the World’s Worst State the great state of Ohio. Hats-off to him for alerting me to this story that, with its elements of absurdity and obsession, bloody-mindedness and defence of free expression is, in a small way, a quintessentially American tale: WARSAW, OHIO: The owner of an Ohio strip club and a few of his dancers have been protesting the services at a church that has kept heat on the club. Women in bikinis sat in camp chairs Sunday outside the New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, about 60 miles northeast of Columbus. Owner Tommy

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Graduate Tax is a Bad Idea

But not because of the argument Iain Dale makes here: Just a thought on the graduate tax. We already have a graduate tax. It’s called income tax at 40 per cent. This is an off-hand comment, sure, but it would also be a better argument if it were true. There are about 31.7 million taxpayers in Britain; only 3.8 million of them pay any tax at 40%. I’m all for widening tax bands to take some people out of higher tax rates but there are millions of graduates who don’t earn enough to pay higher rates of tax. Nevertheless, the belief that everyone pays tax at 40% is a constant

David Blackburn

Prepare to be nudged

‘Nudge’ posits that people can be subtly cajoled into changing their behaviour. The Cameroons were convinced nudgers at one stage. Greg Clark and Grant Shapps designed The Green Deal, a free home insulation programme to encourage green living, paid for by savings on energy bills. Then David Cameron and Steve Hilton conceived the Big Society and nudging was discarded as some unwanted puppy.    But, James Crabtree reports that nudging is back. There’s even a ‘nudge unit’ in No.10: ‘The group, whispers one insider, was first set to find alternatives to the constant regulations flowing through Whitehall, but is becoming increasingly influential. Officially titled the “behavioural insight team”, it is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Strange bedfellows

As the row over Naomi Campbell’s testimony at Charles Taylor’s war crimes trial fills up acres of space in the newspapers and hours of airtime for the news channels, I can’t help but remembering the friendship between the model and Sarah Brown. Brown even selected Campbell as her 21st century heroine in a 2009 Harpers Bazaar poll, praising her as a “loyal friend”. Now, it should be stressed that the work Brown and Campbell did together was for a series of worthwhile causes, improving maternal health and helping Haiti post-earthquake. But it struck me as surprising at the time that a savvy former PR woman married to the Prime Minister

Peter Hoskin

The questions surrounding Cameron’s benefit crackdown

There were hints of toughness in his article at the weekend, but now David Cameron has rolled up his shirt sleeves and pulled out the baseball bat. In a combative piece for the Manchester Evening News the PM outlines out a zero tolerance approach to welfare fraud and administrative error. The two problems “cost the taxpayer £5.2 billion a year,” he says, “that’s the cost of more than 200 secondary schools or over 150,000 nurses. It’s absolutely outrageous and we can not stand for it.” And so IDS is going to prepare “an uncompromising strategy for tackling fraud and error,” which will be published this autumn.    Two things are

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron, Villa and the succession

The Prime Minister is, as we know an Aston Villa fan. So we can expect him to be disappointed at Martin O’Neill’s departure. On his trip to Birmingham the other week, Cameron’s support for Villa caused the PM to, as the phrase has it, misspeak. He told the Birmingham Post that with “the Governor of the Bank of England as a supporter, the next King of England and the current Prime Minister, [Aston Villa] got a good set” of fans in high places. But his reference to the next King of England being a Villa fan will raise a few eyebrows as it is Prince William — not Prince Charles

Peter Hoskin

Disquiet at the Beeb

Well, well, it seems like there’s some internal disgruntlement about the changes at the Beeb. We’ve been forwarded this image of a message which has appeared on screens across Television Centre today. Look to the bottom line:       

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 9 August – 15 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

Peter Hoskin

Maintaining the private sector motor

There’s a lot of economic speculation swirling around the Westminster washbowl at the momment, but little of it is as eyecatching as today’s report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Its finding that a third of employers are expecting to cut jobs in the next quarter is bound to spark double-dip fears, even if that expectation is more keenly felt in the public sector than in the private. 36 percent of public sector employers foresee job losses, against 30 percent in the private sector. Perhaps more worryingly, both sectors are expecting more redundancies than they did in last quarter’s report. Look below the headline figures, though, and there

Alex Massie Alex Massie

If We Kill America, We Can Save It

Sensible opponents of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” have been careful to argue that it’s not the idea of the mosque per se that offends them but the sensitivity of it’s location. Not everyone bothers with that distinction: In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting. In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby. In Sheboygan, Wis.,

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Headline of the Day | 8 August 2010

Obviously it’s from Western Nevada County, California: SWAT Team Requested for Violent Midgets Details, alas, remain sketchy but here’s what we have so far: At 12:32 p.m., a caller from West McKnight Way reported steroid-using body-builders from Reno had beaten up the caller’s son and might have killed him. Midgets from Fulton Avenue had been following and trying to poison the caller. The body-builder and the lead female midget, who the caller reported as being “really violent,” allegedly had been driving the caller’s truck. The caller wanted the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office to activate the SWAT team. God bless America. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]

David Blackburn

Opposing social housing reform looks like a marginal issue

The Sunday Times YouGov poll (£) contains some statistics that will warm Cameron’s cockles. ‘The poll also backs the idea, floated by the prime minister last week, that new tenants in council and social housing should have a limited term of five or 10 years before they have to make way for others if their circumstances have changed. The proposal, criticised by Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, is supported by 62% and opposed by 32%. Even among Liberal Democrat supporters there is strong support for the idea, by 67% to 26%. Tory supporters overwhelmingly back it, by 78% to 18%. Labour voters are only narrowly in favour, by

Saturday

Taki

Art on water

On board S/Y Bushido If a boat can be called a work of art then surely ones designed by William Fife qualify him as the Degas of yacht construction. Fife was a Scot, but unlike fellow Scots such as Blair and Brown, he handed down beauty, not misery, modern maritime Parthenons rather than debt and anarchy. No one has ever got near him as far as art on water is concerned. Cambria, Altair, Mariquita, Moonbeam, Fintra, Viola, Nan of Fife, Mikado, Jap, I could go on. My son sailed on Mariquita as a deckhand while she raced in classic contests, and has been hooked on beauty ever since. The visual

Robin Oakley

Cause for celebration | 7 August 2010

Thanks to jams on the A3 it took me nearly four hours driving from central London for the last day of Glorious Goodwood. It would have been worth it if it had taken 24. It was the day of the good guys with whom we all enjoy sharing success. Critical Moment, his impressive cruising speed complemented by a gutsy finishing kick under son Michael, provided another winner for Barry Hills, who had already saddled his 50th at the famous meeting. Then Midday, both saucy madam and serious racehorse, triumphed again in the Nassau Stakes for Henry Cecil. Conscious of her attraction and a little bit of a professional show-stealer, she

Alan Judd

Shape of things to come

I don’t know about China, but here it’s the Year of the Jaguar — 75 years since baptism, sales up 42.5 per cent, the launch of the new XJ — and for one of their birthday parties, Jaguar took some hacks to try out the current model range on Germany’s notorious Nürburgring. I don’t know about China, but here it’s the Year of the Jaguar — 75 years since baptism, sales up 42.5 per cent, the launch of the new XJ — and for one of their birthday parties, Jaguar took some hacks to try out the current model range on Germany’s notorious Nürburgring. My brother lapped it last year

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 7 August 2010

Q. I am a British MEP which is, you will agree, a heavy social cross to bear. For six years I have tried to set a sartorial example to my fellow MEPs, wearing nothing that did not emanate from Jermyn Street or Savile Row. Now an old rugby injury to the knee necessitates the wearing of orthopaedic shoes. The design of these shoes is so appalling I fear people who do not know me might think I am foreign or, worse, a British Liberal Democrat. Can you help me to find a solution? G.B., by email A. You are right to be anxious. Shoe-ism is an underacknowledged factor in social

The Spectator

Letters | 7 August 2010

Neocon Coughlin Sir: Con Coughlin’s article (‘How we lost the war’, 31 July) criticising David Cameron’s supposed disenchantment with our bogged-down campaign in Afghanistan confirms him as the Henry Newbolt of our day. He does not see this conflict in terms of a cost-benefit analysis in relation to the security and wealth of the United Kingdom, but in terms of moral obligation — ‘a mission’. But why should Cameron, as the Prime Minister of a Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition in 2010, be morally bound by a commitment unwisely entered into in 2001 by Tony Blair in the aftermath of 9/11? Surely Coughlin might at least acknowledge that our present predicament

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 August 2010

Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Mr Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, rather oddly wrote a letter to the rest of the Cabinet. ‘Deficit reduction and continuing to ensure economic recovery is the most urgent issue facing Britain,’ they said. Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that banks had an ‘obligation’ to increase their lending: ‘Every small and medium-sized company that I have visited in recent weeks has had some problem with their bank,’ he said. The profits of HSBC, which took no money from the government during the financial crisis, doubled for the first half of the year to £7 billion. Lloyds, 41 per

The Spectator

Capital stuff

The Spectator on Boris Johnson’s new bicycle-sharing scheme Boris Johnson’s new bicycle-sharing scheme has had its share of ‘teething problems’, as the Mayor himself admits. Some Londoners have had to be refunded, for instance, after they were overcharged by the complicated bike ‘docking’ system. But it’s a tribute to Boris that Londoners have taken the difficulties in their stride as part of the general fun, and with their jolly, chunky design, the London bikes could become icons of the capital — thought of as fondly as red buses or black cabs. Boris’s cycling revolution has begun: bright blue ‘cycle superhighways’ come next, and a new unit of bicycling bobbies. The

The Spectator

Double standards

Some prime ministers settle immediately on the international stage, others take their time to adjust to the nuances required in dealing with the assortment of democratically elected politicians, benign dictators and outright rogues who lead the world. David Cameron, so far, has struggled, achieving within three months something that took Blair six years: having his effigy burnt on the streets of a foreign capital, just weeks before a meeting with the president of that country. At least Mr Cameron and Pakistan’s President Zardari should be able to talk convivially about the cricket — unlike the last one, the current England vs Pakistan Test series has not been sullied by accusations