Society

Saturday

The Spectator

University challenge

A small revolution in higher education took place this week when David Willetts, the universities minister, permitted BPP, a business and law college based in Shepherd’s Bush, to use the title ‘university college’. By doing so he created the first private university since Buckingham University opened its doors in 1976. The move was not to everyone’s taste: the University and College Union (UCU) claimed that the new institution represented a ‘huge threat to academic freedom and standards’, adding that in a survey of 504 professors, 96 per cent apparently endorse this view. Any psephologists among them might question the validity of this exercise on the grounds that respondents to opinion

Ahmed Rashid

Increasingly isolated, Karzai turns to Pakistan

The extraordinary raw intelligence leaks from the Afghan battlefield confirmed what many people already believed, or feared, about the war. But amidst the avalanche of documents, several new facts have emerged. We now know, for example, that civilians are being killed in much larger numbers than officially admitted by Nato. We know that the Taleban has acquired surface-to-air missiles which downed Western helicopters. We know that both Iran and Pakistan are deeply involved in the conflict, working closely with the Taleban. Finally, we know that the Taleban’s deployment of new weapons, tactics and especially landmines has been devastating to Western and Afghan forces — but, above all, to civilians. What

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Mr Haque’s murderers were racists — so why won’t anyone admit it?

The moment on the video that really hurts, that really digs in — if you are a human being, rather than an ape — is when Marian runs to the prone and inert body of her grandfather and, bending down, distraught, implores him to move, pawing at his body with her hands. She is so small and ineffectual against this sudden new thing in her life, death. Her granddaddy will never move again. Marian is just three years old. Her grandfather is, was, Ekram Haque, 67 years old, a Muslim born in Calcutta who moved to this country almost 40 years ago, hard-working — spent his last years earning a

Harry Mount

Dressing down

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the continental midday sun. But at least the mad dogs don’t dress in vests, belly-hugging T-shirts or those cut-off trousers that make short men shorter and fat men fatter. Why do they do it? How has it happened that you can spot Holidaymakerus britannicus in an instant, from the other side of the piazza — from the far end of the tapas bar? The romantic legend that the British provide a model of good dress still lingers on. The British invented the modern suit, so the myth goes, Savile Row stands for the best tailoring in the world, so those sartorial standards must

John Redwood

Time to take the thumbscrews off the banks

The biggest risk to the economy is not government cuts, says John Redwood, but lack of credit. There’s plenty ministers can do to get companies, and people, borrowing again This time it is different. Normally the UK economy bounces back from a downturn, and we have several years of rising prosperity. Today there are many experts who fear another downturn hard on the heels of the big recession we have just lived through. I welcome the government’s decision this week to write about the funding gap for business, and to float ideas including more banking competition. They will need to move quickly and purposefully from consultation to remedies to fuel

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

I have finally seen how the Big Society might work

Like many members of the Tory tribe, I’ve struggled with the Big Society doctrine. As with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity there have been moments when I thought I’d grasped it, but upon being asked to explain it to somebody else, found that it had given me the slip again. After an impassioned Cameron interview I’ve been enthused — but then, challenged to justify my enthusiasm to a sceptic, faltered. Unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, the Big Society philosophy is not arcane. It’s a homely pudding made of voluntarism, local knowledge, local democracy, self-help, civicmindedness, community spirit — and a dash of strawberry jam (homemade) thrown in. But

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 31 July 2010

At first glance the climate change debate is simple: you either believe the doom-mongers or you don’t. Soon, however, other questions arise. Is the world warming up or not? If so, is this warming anthropogenic or the result of a natural cycle? If greenhouse gases are indeed to blame, do we reduce emissions now or leave our children to deal with the consequences? Do we trust more to legislation or technological progress? And is the whole thing a whopping great lie? The Delingpolian view that the whole thing is one great big con might still be right. There are plenty of people who have an ulterior motive in spreading fear.

Lucy Vickery

Competition No. 2657: Pilgrims’ progress

In Competition No. 2657 you were invited to imagine what merry band Chaucer might bring together if he were writing today. It was another bumper entry this week, and you fell into two camps. There were those who reasoned that were Chaucer writing today he’d probably use modern English. Others, though, couldn’t resist the lure of Middle English, which was used to great comic effect. As spelling in the 14th century was a fluid affair (despite Chaucer’s attempts to standardise it), I didn’t worry too much on that score. What was more important was to capture the wit and vibrancy of his writing, and many of you did so admirably.

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Young blood

Spur of the Moment Royal Court, until 21 August The Beauty Queen of Leenane Young Vic, until 21 August Henry IV Part 2 Shakespeare’s Globe, until 3 October It used to be policemen, now playwrights are getting younger too. Spur of the Moment is a debut work by Anya Reiss, who hasn’t left the sixth form yet. Her play takes us into a nice middle-class home where wars over money and sex are raging. Dad has blundered at work. An office fling has earned him the sack, left him in debt and turned his wife into a cauldron of jealousy. The family has taken in a lodger, Daniel, a wan

Deborah Ross

Trail of wounds

Beautiful Kate 15, Key Cities Beautiful Kate is one of those emotional-journey films that begins with a family member returning home after a long, unexplained absence and, whatever else happens, you know they are not all going to settle down to a nice cup of tea and a cheerful catch-up. Instead, old wounds will be reopened, secrets from the past will be reawakened, skeletons will clamour to be released from cupboards and the flashbacks will do what flashbacks do: that is, flash back, rupturing the narrative before bringing it together and creating that satisfying whole. As a cinematic plot, this is as old as the hills, but if you like

Simon Hoggart

Beauty and the beasts

Some 13 years ago, a six-year-old girl called JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in Boulder, Colorado. It was the only murder in the city that year, and a particularly brutal one; she had been dragged from her bed and apparently attacked with an electric cattle prod before being strangled. Which made it all the more astounding that the police quickly came to the conclusion that it was the parents who had killed her. There were, they said, no signs of forced entry to the house, or any indication of how the murderer might have got out. Even more astonishingly, most people in Boulder agreed with the police. The case became famous

Kate Chisholm

Crackle of the universe

‘Is there anybody there?’ is the question that Anne McElvoy could have asked Diane Abbott in their now-infamous Today programme interview last Wednesday. ‘Is there anybody there?’ is the question that Anne McElvoy could have asked Diane Abbott in their now-infamous Today programme interview last Wednesday. If by chance you missed this classic radio moment, Ms Abbott had just been telling us how she intends (as a candidate for the leadership of the Labour party) to address the issues that ‘ordinary members’ of the party want to talk about — rather than to indulge in the highfalutin conversations of those who walk the corridors of power. With remarkable adroitness, Ms

Aidan Hartley

Friendly fire

Laikipia, Kenya My cousin Charlie Williams is a young Irish Guards captain about to deploy in Afghanistan. The other day he came to stay on our farm in Kenya’s highlands and I got a glimpse of what he’s about to go through in an exciting yet poignant way. Charlie brought the British Army along. In fact, they ‘attacked’ us in an airborne assault. The evening before, I was astonished when a British officer pointed at Celestina and said, ‘You’re a suicide bomber.’ In reality, Celestina works on the farm with me. ‘And you, Aidan, are a truly horrible man. You’re the Taleban boss of the suicide bombers.’ At night, we

Lydia Davis

My Neighbors in a Foreign Place

Directly across the courtyard from me lives a middle-aged woman, the ringleader of the building. Sometimes she and I open our windows simultaneously and look at each other for an instant in shocked surprise. When this happens, one of us looks up at the sky, as though to see what the weather is going to be, while the other looks down at the courtyard, as though watching for late visitors. Each is really trying to avoid the glance of the other. Then we move back from the windows to wait for a better moment. Sometimes, however, neither of us is willing to retreat: we lower our eyes and for minutes

Friday

Patrick Nolan

IDS’s welfare reforms aren’t perfect, but he’s right to be bold

So, Iain Duncan Smith has set out proposals to comprehensively reform of the welfare system. The goal is to replace 51 benefits with a single and flexible allowance. It has been claimed that this reform would allow people with jobs to retain more of their benefits and ensure that people who work will always be better off than people on benefits.   There are problems with Iain Duncan Smith’s proposals. Fiscal cost is one, and the Work and Pensions Secretary has already clashed with George Osborne over the price of these proposals. Lowering taper rates to make work more rewarding could mean that more people receive more generous assistance –

Matthew Sinclair

The coalition can do more for less on benefits reform

There is a lot to like about Iain Duncan Smith’s new proposals for welfare reform.  The chance to move towards a radically simplified benefits system is enormously exciting.  As I wrote for Coffee House last week, the current system is a complete mess and failing on just about every criteria.  It is so complicated that £4.5 billion a year is lost to error and fraud; working at the minimum wage of £5.80 an hour can be worth as little as 26p an hour; and too many families slip through the net so that the number living in severe poverty has actually increased from 5 to 6 per cent in the

Peter Hoskin

At last, IDS gets his chance to reform benefits

For some time now, we on Coffee House have been raving about Iain Duncan Smith’s plans for reforming benefits. And, today, it finally looks as though they – or something like them – will soon be put into action. The DWP is releasing a consultation document which aims to simplify and straighten out a benefits system which now acts as a barrier to work. Over the next few months, various think-tanks and other organisations will submit their own ideas for doing just that. Someone who will no doubt take part in that process, Policy Exchange’s Neil O’Brien, has a written a very useful summary of the main questions and arguments

Thursday

David Blackburn

Is the real love affair between Fat Pang and Dave?

We know that Chris Patten is advising David Cameron over the Pope’s visit – the Spectator interviewed him in that capacity recently. But a number of events this week suggest that Patten is very close to Cameron. Patten is currently in India, selling Oxford University with Cameron, but he has found time to pen an article about Gaza for the FT. Like Cameron, Patten believes that Gazans are serving an ‘interminable prison sentence’. He writes: ‘Gaza is totally separated from the rest of Palestine. It is cut off by a brutal siege. The objective is collective punishment of the one and a half million people who live there simply because

Peter Hoskin

The coalition needs to think harder about renewing Trident

What do we have here, then? Another public disagreement between Downing Street and Liam Fox? Certainly looks that way, as George Osborne assures an interviewer in India that the entire cost of Trident should be borne by the Ministry of Defence’s budget. As the Telegraph reminds us, Fox suggests that the running costs of Trident should be part of the MoD’s responsibilities (as they are currently), but the approximate £20 billion capital cost of renewing the nuclear deterrent should be paid for by central government. In his words, on Marr a couple of weeks ago: “To take the capital cost would make it very difficult to maintain what we are

Wednesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A hate crime is a hate crime, no matter who commits it 

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so vile, so sickening, so inhumane as the killing of the pensioner Ekram Haque in front of his little grand-daughter, Marian. It happened in Tooting, south-west London. You can watch what happened on CCTV (above) although you’ll need a strong stomach. It seems to have been a racist attack on this decent, hard-working Muslim chap, but I don’t know that this makes the crime any worse. Simply, I suppose, that it will not attract the same amount of attention as if it had been, quite clearly, a racist attack. Ie, had Mr Haque’s attackers been white instead of black. I’ve written about this