Society

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Real life | 9 October 2010

No matter how many scatter cushions they put on the beds, British hotels are just faking it. Thirty-five years after Basil Fawlty, we still can’t do hospitality. Oh, yes, we can do fancy little feedback forms and chocolates on the pillow. But we absolutely cannot do the basics. To visit a British hotel is to embark on a Ray Mears-style expedition into a hostile environment. Granted, it’s all very nicey-nicey down at reception, where the youngsters with gold lapel badges and tight waistcoats have got their degrees in Catering and Customer Care Technology from the University of East Grinstead and know a thing or two about raising your expectations —

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 9 October 2010

My car overheated in slow-moving traffic so I rang the local garage and the man said bring it in on Monday and he’d have a look. I was anxious to find out why my car was overheating because if the head gasket was blown, it would cost more to fix than it was worth and I’d have to throw the car away. ‘What time shall I drop it round?’ I said. ‘Quarter to nine,’ he said. I remember that, his being specific about a time. I dropped the car in on the dot and on the Friday I went round to collect it, assuming he had forgotten to ring to

Taki

High life | 9 October 2010

Some of our readers may be aware that the sainted editor’s wife is Swedish — and she has a sister — but I swear on the Koran that what follows has nothing to do with that. The sainted one wrote about Sweden in these here pages two weeks ago. About how the Swedes have bucked the recession by lowering taxes. What I will tell you is about the fun I’ve had with the hyperborean beauties of that country, starting with my first great love Kerin, wife of a great tennis player of the late Fifties. We were touring together and as he would compete all week and I’d be out

The Spectator

Barometer – 9 October 2010

Although elder siblings are often claimed to be natural leaders and second children natural rebels, none of the last seven prime ministers have been eldest siblings.     Although elder siblings are often claimed to be natural leaders and second children natural rebels, none of the last seven prime ministers have been eldest siblings.     —David Cameron is third of four children. —Gordon Brown is middle of three sons. —Tony Blair has an elder brother and younger sister. —John Major is younger of two brothers; Margaret Thatcher younger of two sisters. —Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson both had elder sisters. Families on benefit George Osborne said this week that, from 2013,

Ed Howker

Spectator Exclusive: Britain’s welfare ghettos

Today we are releasing a brand new picture of the nation’s welfare ghettos. Our research gives a disheartening insight into the extent of dependency in England and Wales. The top line: things are getting worse. This is much more detailed and useful information that the statistics often bandied about by politicians. It is well known, for example, that nearly 2 million people have been claiming out-of-work benefits for more than five years. But what does that look like? We’ve examined the smallest measurable units recorded by the Department for Work and Pensions (the technical term is ‘Lower Super Output Areas’) which are smaller even than council wards – they contain

David Blackburn

Lansley tries to reassure the doubters

Andrew Lansley has been on the defensive today, calmly reassuring the political nation that GPs are content with his NHS commissioning reforms. A majority of GPs are not at all happy, according to a Com Res BBC poll. 57 percent are unwilling ‘personally to take on the extra responsibility of planning and buying healthcare’ for their local communities. There are a number of reasons for their wariness, but lack of skill and training is the predominant one. Lansley says that GPs favour the reforms in principle – measures that turn GPs into suzerains, able to improve outcomes by designing patient care to local and individual needs and also to take

David Blackburn

Huhne and the universal benefit conundrum

Chris Huhne has given an interview to the Telegraph. According to the front page report, the Energy Secretary has nothing to say about nuclear power, new wind farms or energy security; but rather a lot to say about economic and social policies that are strictly beyond his purview. Jeremy Hunt’s belief that child benefit should be limited across the board is dismissed because there are ‘limits to how much we can achieve through changes in the tax and benefits system’ – this week’s Spectator argues otherwise. Huhne also registers his profound cynicism for the marriage tax break – no surprises there and he has a point that austerity should not

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A question of motive

Charles Moore’s column in the Telegraph today is one of the best articles you’ll read this year. The nub of his argument is that: “Mr Cameron finds himself the heir both to Blair and to Thatcher. To Blair, because he has had to take his party away from its preferred territory and pay attention instead to what actual voters worry about. To Thatcher, because he confronts a crisis of the public finances even more severe than the one she faced. He also leads a coalition. So, unlike Mrs Thatcher, he wants to woo and to warn, please and prophesy at the same time. Can it be done, as she implied

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Sunday morning

In Competition No. 2667 you were invited to supply a reflection, in verse, on Sunday morning. In Competition No. 2667 you were invited to supply a reflection, in verse, on Sunday morning. You split into two camps: some infused with the bleak spirit of Billie Holiday’s ‘Gloomy Sunday’ (‘Gloomy is Sunday with shadows I spend it all, / My heart and I have decided to end it all’); others full of the joys of lie-ins, an ocean of colour supplements, bacon and eggs, and Sunday worship. It was Wallace Stevens’s meditation that inspired this challenge, and Basil Ransome-Davies’s response to it earns him the bonus fiver. His fellow winners get

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: The inefficiency of email

To me this is a silly line of attack. That’s not to suggest there are no possible improvements to Royal Mail services — I can think of several. For instance someone should ask postmen to reverse their round every year, so that it isn’t always the same hapless householders (me, in this case) who receive their post after lunch. When they’ve finished that, they could also question the increasingly surreal placement of letter boxes (it’s now easier to post a letter in a peat-bog nine miles outside Thurso than at Victoria Station), or even adopt that clever Finnish idea where you can pay for postage using your mobile phone. However,

The Spectator

Barometer | 9 October 2010

Family politics Although elder siblings are often claimed to be natural leaders and second children natural rebels, none of the last seven prime ministers have been eldest siblings. Family politics Although elder siblings are often claimed to be natural leaders and second children natural rebels, none of the last seven prime ministers have been eldest siblings. —David Cameron is third of four children. —Gordon Brown is middle of three sons. —Tony Blair has an elder brother and younger sister. —John Major is younger of two brothers; Margaret Thatcher younger of two sisters. —Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson both had elder sisters. Families on benefit George Osborne said this week that,

Rachel Johnson

How to spend it

Leisure and pleasure have always been Scylla and Charybdis for politicians. Vacation on a yacht called Monkey Business, borrow a Caribbean pile from a billionaire, spend time with Cliff Richard, and you’re tabloid toast. Not this lot. The Cameron and Clegg sets have steered through the whirlpools without hitting the rocks. David Cameron, the 19th Prime Minister to have been to Eton, and his Westminster-educated deputy, Nick Clegg, are wealthy, healthy, educated and entitled. They have connections to crowned heads of Europe. But neither is taking the toff path. On paper at least — in the news pages of the dailies — they’re taking the high street, loading the boot

Quentin Letts

A perfect spad: young Cameron was as guided as a Navy missile

My wife, a keen gardener, has a cold-frame forcing pen. It contains privileged seedlings which, thus sheltered, are hardened off before planting. These are the star blooms of seasons to come. In Britain’s New Establishment we call such specimens ‘ministerial special advisers’. They are placed in the Whitehall cold-frame and given special treatment. Within a few years these ‘spads’ become vigorous bushes. David Cameron and George Osborne used to be special advisers, as did all but one of the candidates in the recent Labour leadership contest. Nick Clegg was a special adviser in Brussels. The lucky lad worked for Leon Brittan when that housewives’ favourite was a European commissioner. Spads

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Brinkmanship in Dublin – but at least Bill Clinton says Ireland will get through its crisis

The Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan may (or may not, depending which report you read) have been jeered by international investors and bond traders on a conference call last week, but he is widely admired by his own business community, both for his determination to steer a straight course through the banking crisis and property crash that have overwhelmed the former ‘Celtic Tiger’, and for his personal battle with pancreatic cancer. The Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan may (or may not, depending which report you read) have been jeered by international investors and bond traders on a conference call last week, but he is widely admired by his own business

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern | 9 October 2010

So the Bruvvers have chosen the younger Bruvver, Ed, and Big Bruvver has chosen to keep his powder dry and leave him to it. So, probably, would any ambitious Roman — for the time being. Romans philosophers might have recommended getting out of government entirely and become an Epicurean, seeking ataraxia — the absence of physical and mental pain. The key lay in avoiding a desire for anything that might cause anxiety, especially anything that had no limits, like wealth, status or power, because these could never be satisfied. Alternatively, Roman Stoics would have suggested, in Seneca’s words, that he ‘deal with his own ills, sift himself, see for how

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

This week’s journalistic lesson: never let a cow get in the way of a good rant

Let me first say that I would have written exactly the column about the dead cow that my friend and Times colleague Alice Thomson wrote, if she hadn’t pipped me to the post. En route to Labour’s conference in Manchester, Alice had been stuck on a railway paralysed by a dead cow on the line. I had heard about the cow from dozens of people at the conference, and planned a rant at safety-first attitudes — until I learned that Alice was already penning such a rant. So, making a virtue of necessity, I decided on a more in-depth investigation of how and why these idiocies come about. And the

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jonathan Powell: Blair felt physically threatened by Brown

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, is the latest veteran of the Brown Blair era to have his say and he is even more vicious about Gordon Brown than Peter Mandelson was. In his memoirs, which are being serialised in The Guardian tomorrow, he says that Blair ‘felt physically threatened’ when Brown leaned over his desk and demanded a departure date in 2001. But the charge which is sure to most infuriate the Brownites is Powell’s allegation that in the aftermath of 9/11: “The only time I saw him [Brown] appear to cheer up during that period was when the war cabinet was told there was a specific terrorist

The Spectator

The week that was | 8 October 2010

Here is a selection of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson groans as David Cameron resuscitates the Big Society, and urges George Osborne to go even further on middle class benefits. James Forsyth denies that the Tories have committed their ‘10p tax mistake’, and awaits the end of universal benefit. Peter Hoskin watches IDS set out a vision to alleviate poverty, and explains how Osborne and IDS are working closely on welfare reform. David Blackburn wonders what the Tory right and libertarians made of Cameron’s disavowal of laissez-faire, and reveals that the Scottish Tories won’t oppose AV. Martin Bright goes in search of the Big

David Blackburn

How should Miliband respond to the child benefit reform?

Daniel Finkelstein and Philip Collins’ email exchanges are always enlightening. This week, they discussed child benefit. Both think it has altered the markings on the playing field of politics. Ed Miliband is yet to respond: how should he? ‘From: Daniel Finkelstein To: Philip Collins If you were Ed Miliband, where would you go now on child benefit? First option: total opposition to the Government’s plan. You get to hoover up discontent but you don’t look much like a governing force, do you? And it seems hypocritical. Plus, you said you were going to support the Government on many cuts. If not this, then what? Second: you go with it. You

Peter Hoskin

Cameron sells the Big Society to the public sector

David Cameron clearly wants us to waltz into the weekend with the Big Society on our minds – so he’s written an article on the idea for the Sun. It rattles through all the usual words and phrases, such as “responsibility” and “people power”, but it strikes me how he applies them just as much to the public sector as to the general public. This is something that he did in his conference speech, describing the “Big Society spirit” of a group of nurses: “It’s the spirit that I saw in a group of NHS maternity nurses in my own constituency, increasingly frustrated by the way they were managed and