Society

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 3 December 2010

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson argues that David Cameron can be proud of his World Cup bid, and reveals Sweden’s recession remedy. James Forsyth says that England’s defeated World Cup bid was a national embarrassment, and says that the Lib Dems need to get their act together over tuition fees. Peter Hoskin digs out a leaked embassy memo about Margaret Thatcher, and observes a grim turning point for Ed Miliband. David Blackburn outlines what the statist left thinks of the liberal right, and watches the government take the fight to students. Daniel Korski highlights the Guardians Wiki-spin. Martin Bright reveals

Peter Hoskin

Frank Field’s report highlights the coalitions within the coalition

Frank Field’s review of child poverty policy covers a daunting expanse of ground. From breast-feeding to the little society (“the younger sister of the Big Society”), it’s stuffed with more ideas than reviews that are twice the size – and will take some time to digest properly. But, in a way, that’s precisely the point. Field’s central argument is that New Labour took an overly simplistic view of poverty. For Brown & Co. it was all about funnelling cash handouts to poor families, often to lift them from just under an arbitrary poverty line to just above it. For Field, it is more about improving opportunities across the board, with

Peter Hoskin

From the Archives: 1966 and all that

Yesterday, Coffee House recommended that disappointed English football fans take solace, as always, in memories of 1966. To that end, here’s The Spectator’s review of England’s World Cup victory at the time. These were clearly more innocent times, as evidenced by the closing observation: “whether we win or not is not a matter for negotiation between heads of states or men in striped pants.” Their cup runneth over, D.N. Chester, The Spectator, 5 August 1966 Let it be for ever recorded. At 5.15 pm on Saturday July 30 1966, the Swiss referee blew his whistle and England had won the World Cup for the first time, having just beaten West

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New Life-Form Discovered

In California: Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything. At their conference today, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon will announce that they have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the bacteria uses arsenic. All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks

Martin Bright

The ultimate Jewish conspiracy theory

This has to be the ultimate Jewish conspiracy theory story. Why have the Wikileaks disclosures been so soft on Israel? Here is Tariq Shahid from the Palestine Think Tank. I’m hoping it’s a spoof but here’s my favourite section: “Browse through all the news sources available on the latest Wikileaks revelation, and try to find even only one revelation that actually damages Israel, even though so many of the revealed documents are directly or indirectly connected to Middle East politics, and to a large extent to Israeli affairs. Did you find any document among them that either creates difficulties for the government of the Zionist entity, or even slightly embarrasses

Peter Hoskin

BREAKING: England lose their 2018 World Cup bid

Bad news, I’m afraid: Russia has won the contest to host the World Cup in 2018. According to some sources, England didn’t even make it beyond the first round of voting. So, not the fairytale result that David Cameron, or most English football fans, would have wanted – nor, indeed, the one that was expected earlier today. We’ll just have to console ourselves, once again, with memories of 1966:

Peter Hoskin

Who got good value-for-money in the general election?

Coffee House has wrung today’s party expenditure figures through the calculator to produce the colourful graphs below. As the headings suggest, they show how much was spent by each party* for every individual vote and seat they won in the general election: *That is, each party that received over 100,000 votes. Excluding Northern Ireland-based parties.

Daniel Korski

Uncharitable action

After CoffeeHouse raised a virtual eyebrow and a few questions about the behaviour of War on Want and the Jubilee Debt Campaign, Tory MP Matthew Hancock has written to the Charity Commission asking for an investigation into their status: “Quite apart from the issue over whether a charity should support an organisation that seeks to disrupt the operations of UK companies, I also believe that the charities’ support of UK Uncut clearly appears to breach Charity Commission guidance on political activity.” Let us see what Dame Suzie Leather, the Chairman of Charity Commission, thinks.

Peter Hoskin

A winning bid?

Football and Coffee House rarely mix, except of course when Manchester United win the European Cup. Yet I’m sure plenty of CoffeeHousers want to see England come out on top when the winning nation of the 2018 World Cup bid is announced later today. This morning saw the English delegation – including Davids Cameron and Beckham, and Prince William – make their final presentation to FIFA dignitaries. To my eyes, it was schmaltzily effective stuff, but you can judge for yourself from the video above. All that remains to do is echo Iain Dale’s call of “Come on England!” And if we don’t win, then it was obviously fixed. P.S.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Another double standard

If that had been Millwall supporters fighting with police, invading the pitch and firing flares at the opposition fans, there would have been demands to have the ground closed, points deductions, fines, statements in parliament and the involvement of the UN and almost certainly the Equality and Human Rights Commission. But it wasn’t, it was Birmingham City supporters and the most stringent action taken so far is that the club has announced it will have a quick look at the problem and see if anything needs doing. Premier League clubs get away with it all the time. Just wait until we play them in the FA Cup………………..

Matthew Sinclair

Putting a stop to taxpayer funded environmentalism

It’s that time of year again, time for the world to pay attention to climate change policy for a few weeks.  Most of the year, schemes like the EU Emissions Trading System and the Renewables Obligation just wallow in dysfunction and quietly cost us a fortune, adding to our electricity bills in particular.  Manufacturers pay attention, and higher energy costs threaten to drive industrial jobs abroad, and the poor and elderly feel the effects, even if they don’t know why their bills are rising.  But the only people who really have the staff and the organisational clout to pursue this issue all year round are the environmental campaigns.   Many

Wednesday

Blair Gibbs

The welcome arrival of elected Police & Crime Commissioners

Directly-elected Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are the boldest reform of policing since the 1960s. In May 2012 there will be 41 new political beasts in England and Wales with large, direct mandates. They look set to transform policing and public debate about crime. The new Commissioners will replace weak and invisible police authorities who, despite costing £65m a year and spending £25m in the last 3 years alone on expenses and allowances, have failed to hold chief constables to account. As a result, police chiefs have become too powerful, too detached and too risk-averse – with failure to tackle crime often just excused. Commissioners will be elected to oversee

Daniel Korski

The Guardian’s Wiki-spin

In today’s Wikileaks revelations, it is Mervyn King’s turn to be pushed through the mill. Did he act politically when pushing for a deficit reduction plan? Was he critical of David Cameron and George Osborne or just pointing out the obvious: that the Tory leaders had not held power before and – shock horror – were keen to get elected? The Guardian’s reading of the cables suggests that the government’s Batman and Robin (to keep with US diplomatic style) were unprepared for the task ahead. But re-read the key passages and it is clear that Cameron and Osborne were no different from any other opposition leaders – reliant on a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Devolution 2.0: A Centre-Right Revival?

On this, at least, there is consensus: devolution has proved a disappointment. How could it be otherwise when the Scottish parliament was granted power without responsibility? A parliament that may spend but cannot raise money is but half a parliament. Politicians like spending even more than they like taxing; removing that latter part of the deal leaves the equation unbalanced. It encourages the attitude that more money is the answer to every public policy problem and, in Scotland, has reinforced an already distressingly statist consensus. Yesterday’s Scotland Bill, then, is a modest step forward. The proposals, based on the Calman Commission’s recommendations, are needlessly complex and, in places, batty but

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Help!

Anyone got a shovel? We’re cut off from the world, here in north Kent, a foot and a half of snow in the garden, the lanes impassable and no sign of respite. The only answer is to get pissed, I suppose. That’s usually the answer. But sooner or later I will have to walk four miles to buy fags. The Met Office predicts that this will have been easily the coldest November since 1993, and perhaps beyond. This will, in turn, mean that Autumn will have been slightly colder than the mean, or around about average at best. December is projected to be colder than usual too. Last winter (Dec-Jan-Feb)

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A child of Thatcher

David Cameron has a complicated emotional relationship with the Conservative party. The party picked him and follows him because it thinks he’s a winner. But it worries that the leader doesn’t love it, that he views the Tory party as a vehicle. So when Ed Miliband threw the ‘son of Thatcher’ line at Cameron today, the Tory benches waited nervously to see how the PM would respond. As Cameron  started off by making a rather lame joke about his mother being able to confirm that she was his mother, the Tory benches looked disappointed. Cameron appeared to be distancing himself from the party’s heroine. But when he changed gear and

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Lansley gives us a nudge

Andrew Lansley’s rhetoric is strident: ‘It’s time for politicians to stop telling people to make healthy choices. Rather than lecturing people about their habits we will give them the support they need… we will support leadership from within communities.’ One could be forgiven for thinking that the Health White Paper will inaugurate a completely new dawn. It doesn’t. Many of Lansley’s initiatives are resuscitated Labour policies: taxes on alcohol and tobacco and incentivising healthy living through choice are tried and tested formulas that have had limited past success in every field bar raising revenue. Lansley’s White Paper is not a testament of radicalism, but it is quietly revolutionary nonetheless. Of

David Blackburn

Palin versus Romney

The GOP is ambling towards the start of the 2012 nominations race. Two probable candidates are busy pitching their media tents. Sarah Palin is on a coast to coast tour, flogging her latest book; she has also been cheering on her daughter on Dancing with the Stars and she recently gutted a halibut on her Alaskan reality TV show. It’s all action and personality from the Mamma Grissly. By contrast, the cerebral Mitt Romney has agreed to appear on…Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Leno makes Parky look almost vital. As one Democrat strategist observed: “On the hipness scale, this is far from Bristol Palin on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ It’s more

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Wikileaks: bang on the money

1. Prince Andrew is an arrogant berk. 2. Vladimir Putin is an “alpha dog” 3. Medvedev is his puppet. 4. David Cameron is lightweight. 5. Prince Charles commands next to no respect. 6. Angela Merkel is the only strong European leader. 7. Berlusconi is feckless, vain and ineffective and likes parties. 8. That Argie babe, Kirchner, is hysterical and should be on medication. 9. Sarkozy is ‘orrible. 10. Colonel Gaddafy is a bit odd. I know it’s a bit embarrassing to have this stuff out in the open and, probably like most of you, I find the Wikileaks man Julian Assange a self important and potentially dangerous gimp. But those