Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 June 2010

In the Budget, Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the balance of cuts to tax rises would be 77 per cent to 23 per cent. Whitehall departments would have to cut spending by 25 per cent. Borrowing would fall from £149 billion this year to £20 billion in 2015-16. Debt would be 67 per cent of GDP by 2015-16, compared with the 75 per cent planned by Labour in its budget in March. Current expenditure of £637 billion this year would rise to £711 billion in 2015-16, to meet debt interest. Mr Osborne raised VAT from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent, from 4 January

Daniel Korski

Britain’s foreign aid should empower women

Here is a question. Which politician said the following: “We’ve seen too that when women are empowered economically they are more likely to have a voice in the community and to be advocates for other women.” Or “Britain will be placing women at the heart of the whole of our agenda for international development”. Clare Short? No. Hillary Clinton? Nope. Harriet Harman? Wrong. It is former Army officer and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell speaking yesterday to the think-tank Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC.   To some, his comments will illustrate how the Conservative Party has moved to far away from its roots. But in fact it is both a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Immigration cap to be announced on Monday

The Mail reports that the government will announce a cap on non-EU immigration to Britain on Monday. It also refers to objections from within the Coalition to the policy. But as the paper notes these came from Tories, not Lib Dems. My understanding is that in the Cabinet Committee meeting where the issue was discussed, David Willetts gently raised concerns about the idea and the effect it could have on the global competitiveness of British universities. Michael Gove then echoed these objections more forcefully; saying—I’m told—that he was ideologically opposed to the measure. Nick Clegg, who was chairing, and who opposes the policy was placed in a very odd position:

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The oracle speaks

Robert Chote’s Institute of Fiscal Studies is widely seen as the source of all wisdom on economic matters. So what did its director make of the Budget? Fraser Nelson asks him A British Budget is never over until Robert Chote has spoken. It’s unclear just when this was inserted into Britain’s unwritten constitution, but his status was obvious from the audience gathered to hear his verdict on Wednesday. Policymakers, economics editors, broadcasters — all had come to note down, and take as gospel, what this friendly, slightly gangly 42-year-old had to say. ‘It’s amazing how one man came to wield so much power,’ muses a Treasury source. Just what to

Mark Palmer

A social pariah in the shires

We like our little cottage in a pretty Wiltshire village on the River Kennet — and we just hope the village likes us. It’s hard to tell. ‘I see you’ve been doing a lot of work on the house. So, have you finally moved in or are you [slight pause, crinkle of nose] weekending?’ asked one of the village’s grand dames. ‘Oh, yes, we’re very much here and loving it,’ I said. There was no need to mention that London is where we live, Wiltshire is where we flop, and that we don’t even get down every weekend. Don’t tell anyone, but we are guilty of fortnighting. Even so, we

William Cook

Belgium meets its Waterloo

Last weekend, on a windswept plain about ten miles south of Brussels, 3,000 grown men dressed up as soldiers to re-enact the Battle of Waterloo. Performed every five years, on the original battlefield, this noisy extravaganza attracts more than 50,000 visitors, and on Sunday I was one of them. It was an extraordinary experience, more vivid than any movie. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Yet what’s most intriguing about this surreal Belgian spectacle is what it reveals about our muddled idea of Europe — and the people in the biggest muddle are the Belgians themselves. For British schoolboys of a certain age, Waterloo remains a glorious victory

Tom Bower

The real villain of BP

At Tony Hayward’s inquisition in Washington last week, the hapless BP chief executive resisted the temptation to condemn his predecessor, Lord Browne of Madingley, by name. Instead, pressed repeatedly to explain why BP had breached safety regulations on over 700 occasions, Hayward described 2006 as the corporation’s worst year. That was John Browne’s last full year as chief executive. He left the job humiliated, having been exposed for signing an untruthful court statement. Ever since, Browne has defended that dishonesty as a unique aberration. But as the American investigation of the Gulf catastrophe develops, the blame for the poisonous legacy inherited by Hayward will increasingly be heaped on Browne. The

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What we need is a glorious alliance between all sorts of people who hate each other

I once wrote a column about Camden Council, the total bastards, stealing my car. Never had a response like it. Lawyers got in touch, offering their services. Motorist groups wanted to sign me up. Readers wrote in, offering other tales of total Camden bastardy, or similar bastardy from elsewhere, and Tom Conti invited me round for a coffee. It was the first time I properly realised that modern Britain does, after all, possess a fearless, freedom-loving backbone. It’s just peculiarly preoccupied with things like parking tickets. No disrespect intended to the glowering love interest from Shirley Valentine, but I always thought freedom was supposed to be sexier than this. It’s

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I feel the need to offer Wikipedia some ammunition in its quest to discredit me

James Delingpole says You Know It Makes Sense The most excruciatingly awful thing I have ever done in my entire life happened in my penultimate year at school. At the time I was learning classical guitar and occasionally I would meet up with one of my English teachers, ‘Mattie’ Simpson, so that we could play duets together. On the fateful day I’m about to describe the piece we were practising was Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’. Now my other main activity at the time was cross-country running. Like many of the boys in my house I would train regularly and hard, killing myself up and down the Malvern Hills

Edie Lush

Small can be beautiful in difficult times

Uncertainty reigns among UK investors. Will this week’s Budget cuts wither the green shoots of growth? Whatever happened to safety in blue chips when BP’s dividends can vanish into an oil slick? Where’s a stock-picker to turn? If the words ‘small cap’ don’t send you rigid with fright, then there are good reasons to look towards AIM, London’s market for listed smaller companies. You’ll find businesses there that are an unusually good bet in tough times. And you’ll find some that are sufficiently global, despite their modest size, not to flinch at a prolonged UK downturn. Long time AIM watcher Tom Bulford, author of the Red Hot Penny Shares newsletter,

Alex Brummer

Despite BP, high yields are still worth chasing

Alex Brummer says blue chip stocks that pay a handsome stream of dividends are — usually — a reliable bet First, I have a serious confession to make. For as long as I can remember, my informal advice to any UK investor considering a share purchase — particularly during the volatile years of the ‘great panic’ followed by the ‘great recession’ — has been to buy BP. In a world ever more desperate for energy, the oil price had only one direction to travel over the long haul and that is upwards. BP looked particularly well placed to benefit because of its exposure (around 40 per cent of its income)

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

A VAT rise makes sense — and is the least painful sting in this bold Budget

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I wrote here in February that I did not believe the Conservatives’ pretence of having ‘absolutely no plans to increase VAT’, and that, having examined this fiercely complex issue at some length with an ice pack on my head, I had come down in favour of a VAT rise — as indeed had the experts at the Institute of Directors, who wrote: ‘The VAT rate should be increased to 20 per cent, in order to allow for more substantial and rapid tax reductions elsewhere than would otherwise be possible.’ That has now come to pass, and despite the howls of protest in the House

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 26 June 2010

In Competition No. 2652 you were invited to submit an extract from the autobiography of a sportsman packed with as many clichés as possible. The World Cup will no doubt provide a feast of words and phrases that have had the life squeezed out of them, as well as ample opportunity to mock players and pundits for their unimaginative use of language. But no less a literary giant than Kazuo Ishiguro has come to the defence of footballing clichés, describing them as poignant and beautiful. ‘At the end of the day’ was singled out by the Booker prize-winning author as an expression of stoic ruefulness that comes close to reflecting

Patrick Carnegy

Camelot on Avon

Morte d’Arthur Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in rep until 28 August The quest for King Arthur is not to be undertaken lightly. The RSC’s éminence grise, John Barton, has devoted much of his life to it — or at least what has remained to him after Tantalus, his nine-hour dramatisation of the literature piled up around the walls of Troy. It’s not Barton, though, but Mike Poulton who’s now claiming the Grail of a completed stage adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s massive Arthurian epic. It’s taken Poulton ten years and the result, running for nearly four hours, arrives at Stratford directed by Gregory Doran. In 2005 Poulton and Doran came up

Deborah Ross

Hair brained

Good Hair 12A, Key Cities Get Him to the Greek 15, Nationwide When Chris Rock’s four-year-old daughter Lola came up to him crying and asked, ‘Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?’, he did not do what I would have done, which would have been to send her to bed without supper. Honestly, don’t today’s parents have enough to do without answering awkward questions? (For more child-neglecting tips, please see my Big Book of Child-Neglecting Tips, which is the definitive work of its kind.) Instead, Mr Rock, the American black comedian, lets us all down by thinking seriously about Lola’s question, and making this documentary as a kind of reply

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Dizzying heights

The veteran Himalayan mountaineer (70 next year) and now indefatigable fundraiser for his Nepalese charity, Doug Scott, held a packed audience spellbound at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington last week describing the moment he was swept from west ridge of K2, second only to Everest in height but far more dangerous. ‘I thought, this is the first time I have been in an avalanche,’ he said. ‘And then I thought, I am going to die.’ He added he felt very serene. Scott had already endured the world’s highest bivouac, without tent or sleeping bag, just below the summit of Everest, and the year before in Pakistan’s Karakoram crawled down

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Afghan Hearts and Minds are Decided

A terrific, if gloomy, Afghanistan dispatch from William Dalrymple, published by our friends over at the New Statesman. I don’t know how useful comparisons with the First Afghan War are but the psychology of occupation is a different matter: The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly of tribal elders, to which the greybeards of Gandamak had come under a flag of truce to discuss what had happened the day before. The story was typical of many I heard about the current government, and revealed how a mixture of corruption, incompetence and insensitivity has helped give an opening for the return of the once-hated Taliban. As

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Swedish lessons | 25 June 2010

I’m in Stockholm today to celebrate the summer solstice. It’s a magical part of the year, best illustrated by the newspaper column (below) giving times for sunrise and sunset in various parts of Sweden. In Kiruna there’s just a dash – the sun doesn’t rise or set in this part of the year. (The same is true in winter, the poor things). Normally, the Swedes disguise their pagan festivals with a Christian veneer (like Santa Lucia) but today’s all-out dance-round-the-fertility-pole without apology. It’s like a cross between the Waltons, Woodstock and the Wicker Man. Events like these drive home the limitations of taxing alcohol: it’s far from unusual, in the evening,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Abbott gives no answers

There’s one thing that people want to talk about today and that’s Diane Abbott’s appearance on This Week last night. As you can see above, it was a total disaster for Abbott. She was all over the place on her taxi claims and she got into a total tangle on whether she had meant to imply with her comment that ‘West Indian mothers will go to the wall for their children’ that West Indian mothers were better than mothers of other ethnicities. Under repeated questioning, all she would say is that she had said all she was going to say on the subject.  Even when it was clear that this

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Time to leave?

The Spectator’s summer debating season ended with a strident appeal. ‘Too late to save Britain. It’s time to leave’. Proposing the motion, Rod Liddle claimed to have mis-read his invitation. ‘I thought this was a foregone conclusion and we’d come here to arrange the tickets.’ Surging immigration, he said, was ruining the education system and our love lives. ‘By 2029 no one will be having sex, we’ll be so crowded out.’ The recent election had proved nothing but democracy’s impotence. ‘The poverty gap keeps widening, financiers still get bonuses and schools support Lesbian Gay and Trans-gender History Month.’ Soon he predicted that the definition of disability ‘will cover everyone except