Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Hague Affair

This so-called story is fast becoming an ideal case study for any student of politcs and the British press. Neither party comes out of it looking especially good. I’m sure James is correct: the press wins (or loses, if that’s how you view it) either way. If Hague ignores the innuendo then it’s fodder for bloggers and diarists (and eventually columnists) and if he addresses the matter then that means that it’s “officially” a story fit for public discussion. Heads gossip wins, tails Hague loses. If the rumours about Hague’s relationship with his young and now-former SpAd were true then, yes indeed, you’d have a scandal that would cost the

David Blackburn

Darling: bankers’ super tax failed

Honesty is an attractive though rare quality in a politician, and Alistair Darling’s self-awareness and morose delivery always grabs attention. Last night, the former chancellor told a conference of bankers that the 50 percent levy on bonuses over £25,000 was a failure. The FT reports him saying: ‘I think it will be a one-off thing because, frankly, the very people you are after here are very good at getting out of these things and . . . will find all sorts of imaginative ways of avoiding it in the future… what I wanted to do was send a message to them that we all live in the same world together.’

The Spectator

Access this week’s Spectator for free

This week, for one week only, we are making this week’s magazine available to non-subscribers online, courtesy of Saab 95 Saloon.   Click here to access the best written magazine in the English language, featuring Fraser Nelson’s and Bruce Anderson’s verdicts on the Blair memoirs, Ed Smith and Roger Alton on cricket’s latest betting scandal, as well as Taki and Joan Collins on what the future holds for St.Tropez. Subscribers have free access to The Spectator through the website, iPhone and iPad. See new.spectator.co.uk/digital for more.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Today Programme has its Hague cake and eats it too

The Today Programme this morning demonstrated the problem with putting out an official statement on your private life: it makes the media feel that they have official sanction to discuss the matter. There were three separate discussions of Hague’s statement on the programme this morning. In a classic case of the BBC trying to both have its cake and eat it, one of the segments spent several minutes debating whether they should be talking about the matter at all. Hague’s problem is that the press is now obsessed with this story; it isn’t going to let it go even after this extraordinarily personal statement. I understand why Hague felt he

Peter Hoskin

Coulson under the spotlight again

The New York Times Magazine‘s article about phone hacking at the News of the World comes, it must be said, a little out of the blue. It’s over a year since the story last exercised printing presses in the UK – and a year, too, since David Cameron’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, was hauled in front of MPs to explain what happened under his editorship of the paper. Back then, he distanced himself from the dubious methods of some Screws reporters, saying that he was neither aware of, nor complicit in, any phone hacking. And, in the absence of any countervailing evidence, the process left Coulson with a few light

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Andy Coulson’s Phone Problem Returns

I’m not sure why the New York Times Magazine thinks its readers will be interested in a long piece about the News of the World and its history of phone-hacking but I’m glad that the Times has published this article anyway. Among the most damaging allegations: the suggestion that, for various reasons, the police limited the extent of their inquiries into law-breaking at the Screws. To wit: That fall, Andy Hayman, the head of the counterterrorism branch, was in his office when a senior investigator brought him 8 to 10 pages of a single-spaced “target list” of names and mobile phone numbers taken from Mulcaire’s home. It read like a

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Hague statement on Christopher Myers

William Hague has just released this statement: “I feel it is necessary to issue this personal statement in response to press and internet speculation over the last ten days.

 Earlier this year a Sunday newspaper began questioning whether my marriage to Ffion was in trouble, and last week another media outlet asked whether there was a statement about our supposed separation. This seemed to be linked to equally untrue speculation surrounding the appointment of Christopher Myers as a Special Adviser.

 Christopher Myers has demonstrated commitment and political talent over the last eighteen months. He is easily qualified for the job he holds. Any suggestion that his appointment was due to

Ed Howker

Blair: the sex scenes

Not just a Prime Minister, not just a global statesman, in A Journey Tony Blair also demonstrates he knows how to treat a girl: CHERIE: “I DEVOURED HER LOVE” “…that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that I was about to do was right … On that night of the 12th May, 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated,

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Britannia ruled the waves

As Pete wrote this morning, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is controversial. It seems that concerns over sovereignty, job losses and differing strategic interests reduce to the one issue that no government has addressed: the protectionist system of defence procurement, which hampers the operational effectiveness of our armed forces. Typically forthright, Douglas Carswell identifies the problem: ‘Seems like protectionist defence procurement isn’t quite giving us sovereign capability the way we were promised, eh? Had we ordered much of the new carriers to be built overseas, we could have had them at a fraction of the £5 billion cost. But the asinine logic of the Defence Industrial Strategy

Peter Hoskin

The stars of the spending review

Insightful work by the FT’s George Parker, who traces the choreography of the spending review in an article for the paper today. What’s striking is how much the coalition expects to achieve by what Parker calls “peer pressure”. Ministers who get through their spending settlement quickly and successfully will be held up as examples to their colleagues, and will be drafted into the the “star chamber” to cast an axeman’s eye over other departments’ plans. Ken Clarke, we are told, “can hardly wait”. According to Parker, the process is already producing its darlings. Jeremy Hunt has exceeded the Treasury’s demands by identifying 50 percent cuts in the budget for running

Peter Hoskin

A totemic austerity measure

As austerity measures go, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is totemic stuff. Not only could it save the Exchequer a heap of cash – by reducing the need for two replacement carriers – but it also says a lot about how our government wants to operate in the world: multilaterally, flexibly and, perhaps, with less emphasis on military force. Divvying up one’s navy with another country does not suggest a strident foreign policy. Indeed, future operations would have to be planned and conducted with the aid of phonecalls to Paris. Of course, this will likely be a controversial move. There are issues of national sovereignty at play

Monday

Madsen Pirie

The role of libraries

New government statistics show that libraries are less popular than ever, with a drop over 5 years of nearly one-third in the number who visit them. Over 60 percent of adults do not use them even once a year. Libraries seem vulnerable. With government striving to make economies and councils made to cut budgets, libraries could see their spending cut dramatically. Libraries face a downward spiral in which councils try to make savings by cutting hours, letting some staff go, and closing some facilities altogether. Libraries then become less convenient to use, and usage figures decline even further. There are alternatives. Although libraries mostly loan popular bestsellers and do-it-yourself books

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 30 August – 5 September

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

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Prohibition Doesn’t Work: Cricket & Gambling Edition

The News of the World’s revelations about connivance between cricketers and bookmakers is dismaying; the story can’t alas, be considered wholly surprising. If proved – and on the face of it there’s every reason to suppose that the allegations are accurate – then it’s difficult to see how Salman Butt and the other players implicated can escape heavy punishment (and perhaps in the skipper’s case a lifetime ban). The consolation, in as much as there is one, is that the evidence points to spot-fixing rather than match-fixing. Saying that the former is not as serious as the latter does not mean it’s unserious. It just means that matters could be

Alex Massie Alex Massie

To A Foulkes

George – now Lord – Foulkes is taking his leave of Holyrood and returning to the comfort of the red benches in the House of Lords. It’s fair to say that Foulkes’s ability to wind up nationalists has not endeared him to SNP supporters. Still,  Lallands Peat Worrier is quite right that the national bard would, were he still drawing breath, have felt the need to mark this heavyweight departure with some stirring lines in the old Scots demotic. Happily LPW was on hand to take dictation. It begins: To a Foulkes   So ye’re gaun at last, ye Lairdly ferlie? Your impudence protect you sairly! ‘Tis time again for

David Blackburn

No tax cuts in England’s green and pleasant land

Danny Alexander has told the Observer that substantial tax cuts are highly unlikely for five years. Alexander argues that ‘the tax burden is necessary as a significant contribution to getting the country’s finances in order. So it will have to stay at that level for quite some time.’ Given that the income tax threshold will rise to £10,000 over the course of the parliament, designed to help lower earners, we can take it that there will be no tax cuts for the well-off and hard pressed middle classes. So the 50 percent rate stays, which is not wholly foolish strategically as Labour would preserve it. The squeezed middle classes pose more

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Change or die

I’d been away for three weeks and when I came back the lockers had been moved. I was directed to a space on the gym floor between the drinking fountain and the rowing machines. On the rowing machine nearest to the lockers was a woman with the face of Gina Lollobrigida and the body of Silvia Saint. She was rowing slowly, almost voluptuously. I’d seen her — you couldn’t really miss her — several times before, working out with her strongman husband. She is a sort of cartoon version of my teenage fantasy of the perfectly proportioned woman. It’s a ludicrous fantasy which has unfortunately lost little of its power

Taki

An eye for an eye

Gstaad It was a balmy June day, Pentecost Sunday, a major holiday in France. The Casino de la Corniche was a chic and popular establishment on a rocky spur between Saint-Eugène and Pointe-Pescade. The beach was the finest in the area, and the young French lieutenant, scion of a ducal family, went for a swim with a friend. After he walked up the hill, with its plush gardens surrounding the casino, where from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. there was a matinée dansante with couples dancing the foxtrot and the tango. By all accounts it was an idyllic scene. ‘The deep blue of the Mediterranean, the cloudless sky, the honey-coloured

Toby Young Toby Young

My socialist father sent me to grammar school to save me from being a ditch-digger

Thirty years have passed since I received the envelope containing my O-level results, but I can still recall the moment my eyes scanned the letter. I got a C in English Literature, a Grade 1 in CSE Drama and failed the rest. I relayed the news to my mother and suggested I embark on a residential Work Experience Programme with a view to learning a trade. She enthusiastically endorsed this plan. From that moment on I was fixed on a path of downward social mobility and would now be a labourer were it not for two things. The first one was the Work Experience Programme. The idea was that you

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 28 August 2010

Q. I am getting married next year and I read with interest your recent correspondence concerning public medal-wearing. I am a former Royal Auxiliary Air Force member and had hoped to wed in uniform. Sadly however, several years ago forces beyond my control meant I had to retire from the RAuxAF, and so I cannot now wear uniform, having returned it to Her Majesty. Could you ask your regimental adjutant friend what his views are on wearing my medals at such a very public celebration, please? M.S., by email A. I think the previous advice holds: ‘I would never wear medals when attending a funeral or memorial service. In fact,