Society

Saturday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Was it in the public interest to stitch up Lord Triesman?

No, says Rod Liddle, in fact it was against it — but you won’t see the Press Complaints Commission punishing the Mail on Sunday for breaching its own code You know as soon as you see the posed photograph of some sweetly smiling young and hitherto unknown bint on the front page of your morning newspaper that somewhere a man, probably a famous and powerful man, is in the doghouse. Stitched up by the papers, having been dragged towards his doom by the relentless, exhausting power of his own gonads. I say stitched up by the papers, but most of the time we can be more specific than that; it

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

‘I never talk to anybody’

So Ben Kingsley, or, as he apparently demands to be called, Sir Ben Kingsley, who are you? I’m sitting in a windowless corridor in the Dorchester Hotel, waiting for him. It’s amazingly pink, this corridor. It looks like a cake. He comes out to collect me and he doesn’t look like he belongs here at all. Perhaps it’s because misery clings to all his famous roles — Gandhi, Simon Wiesenthal, Otto Frank, the sociopath gangster Don Logan, the accountant Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List. And now he’s neither in prison nor a concentration camp, but standing behind an enormous teapot, looking as Home Counties as a John Lewis valance. We sit

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

China’s parents have begun to rebel

Brendan O’Neill says that the state’s cruel and antiquated one-child policy is being propped up by British environmentalists with an agenda — but the Chinese are striking back Professor Yang Zhizhu is a brave man. In flagrant defiance of China’s womb-policing one-child policy, he and his wife have chosen to become outlaws by having two children and flat out refusing to pay the second-child fine (around £18,000). ‘Why should I pay money for having my own kid?’ asked Professor Yang in an interview last month. ‘It’s our right as citizens.’ For the crime of starting a two-child family, Professor Yang was fired from his job at the Beijing Youth Politics

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The Will of the People does not exist. It is the abominable snowman of politics

I shall now attempt something in which I fully expect to fail. My pessimism is not unfounded. I’ve been trying to put across this case for 30 years, without ever seeing in my hearers’ eyes that glint of recognition that signals the successful communication of an idea. Failure to convey an argument that I’m sure is important and right has been frustrating. But this is the fate of advocates of theories that challenge the very terms of a debate. The same difficulty is encountered by advocates for atheism; may well be encountered if the Hadron Collider in Geneva fails to verify the existence of the Higgs-Boson sub-atomic particle; and was

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Don’t blame the hedge funds, they’re less culpable than governments

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business Hedge funds can be accused of many different sins, not least because they operate in many different shapes and forms across the investment universe. As a label, ‘hedge fund’ is so loosely generic that generalising about the sector is almost as pointless as trying to corral it with tighter regulation, as EU finance ministers have been doing this week. Some hedge funds pursue, with brilliant results, the contrarian hunches of individual fund managers. Some cheat by trading on insider information or false rumours. Some are ‘long-only’, meaning that they buy and keep things that they expect to appreciate in value. Some are habitual short-sellers,

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 22 May 2010

In Competition 2647 you were invited to invent new social types for the current decade. This assignment, which takes you into the terrain of anthropologists and marketing men, clearly failed to inspire, producing an entry of modest size that fell short of your usual standard. There were some harsh portraits of the digital generation. Josephine Boyle was kinder than most — ‘Fritter: Frivolous and romantically minded individual who tweets and twitters every passing thought and chance encounter’ — while Bill Greenwell appeared to indulge in some wishful thinking: ‘Wii-Frees: Parsimonious techno-hostile teenagers who insist on books with paper, Monopoly competitions, fresh vegetables and other curiosities from the previous century.’ Barry

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 22 May 2010

With the single exception of the in- flight live map with its wonderfully eccentric ideas about the relative importance of towns and cities (what’s so special about Chartwell?), I don’t often use the in-flight entertainment systems on planes. I’m not sure I want to watch Avatar on a nine-inch screen — or on any screen, come to think of it. In fact I think it would be better if, a week before the flight, your airline just sent you a £10 Amazon voucher along with a few book recommendations. In a way, the best improvement to in-flight entertainment has been the BBC’s and Sky’s creation of desktop software which means

Tobias Hill

Lost and found | 22 May 2010

The winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize was announced this week. Tobias Hill, one of the judges, appraises the shortlist By the time you read this, the Lost Man Booker Prize will have been announced. You may know the winner, in which case you have the advantage of me. Though I judged the prize from longlist through shortlist, whittling down 21 novels to six, the ultimate decision isn’t mine to make: like the special 2008 Best of the Booker, the Lost Man Booker 1970/2010 will be determined by public vote. I’m afraid I find myself begrudging you the privilege. Dear reader, I hope you’ve chosen well. I hope you’re

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A taxing question

During the coalition negotiations, the Tories agreed to introduce the Lib Dems’ plan to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000. As part of paying for this, they agreed to increase Capital Gains Tax to 40 percent. But, crucially, this increase only applies to non-business assets. What makes this so important is that there is no legal or HMRC definition of a non-business asset. All the definitions are of what business assets are, not what non business assets are. Tory MPs don’t like this hike in Capital Gains because they don’t like raising taxes, they think that the increase will make Britain uncompetitive compared to European countries and because a

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

118 rebels

Today was a day with two significant developments. First, the publication of the detailed coalition agreement. Second, the fact that 118 Conservative MPs have rebelled against David Cameron before his first Queen’s speech. The coalition agreement is a document that, I suspect, most Conservatives can get behind. It is not perfect but then no coalition agreement was ever going to be. All of which makes me feel that the 118 is the more significant development of the day. When you consider how many members of the parliamentary party are either on the government payroll or newbies you realise how substantial, in terms of numbers, this rebellion was. The leadership can’t

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s move is tactically smart but strategically foolish

David Cameron’s move to neuter the 1922 has been pulled off with great tactical skill. He sprung the move on the party and then called an instant ballot, denying any rebellion time to gather strength. But however tactically smart this move might have been I can’t shake the feeling that it is strategically foolish. Tory backbenchers are talking about their leader in a way they never have before. As one senior MP told me, ‘resentment has turned to hate.’ Even those backing the measure expect a quarter of the parliamentary party to vote against it. Once these MPs have rebelled once, even in a secret ballot, they will find it

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mind the culture gap

Danny Finkelstein’s column this morning is one of the most important things to have been written since the coalition was formed. Danny makes the point that the coalition has no ideas infrastructure in place. There’s nowhere for it to go to get new ideas. Think tanks will rush to fill this void. But as Danny notes, there will also have to be a cultural comfort with the other side. That there isn’t at the moment is demonstrated by the look on Tory MPs’ faces when you debate whether Nick Clegg should be invited to address Tory conference. One of the clever things that the coalition agreement has done is to

Peter Hoskin

Trouble averted or trouble ahead?

“The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832.”  That’s how Nick Clegg is describing the legislative package that he’s announcing today.  And, even if that’s pure bravado, there’s certainly plenty of encouraging stuff in it.  Scrapping ID cards; restricting the storage of innocent people’s DNA; and the government is even set to ask the public which laws they’d like to see repealed.  Sign me up. But it’s one omission which is really ruffling Tory feathers today.  There will not, it seems, be an immediate move to supplant or even dilute the European Convention on Human Rights with a British Bill of Rights.  Speaking on Radio 4 this morning, Theresa

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition should Budget in Labour’s long leadership contest

Labour’s decision to opt for a long leadership contest means that the new leader of the opposition will not be in place when George Osborne presents his emergency Budget on the 22nd of June. This presents the coalition with a significant political opportunity. Harriet Harman is a consistently underrated Commons performer, she came off far better than most people expected she would in her clashes with Hague at PMQs when Brown was absent. But one subject she was not comfortable on was economics. Combine this with the fact that a Labour party involved in a leadership contest is not going to talk with one voice and the coalition’s honeymoon and

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s inflationary problem

Only a week into his new job, and George Osborne has already had to exchange letters with Mervyn King about inflation.  And here’s why: the CPI index hit 3.7 percent in April, up from 3.4 percent in March.  Which is worrying enough when looked at in isolation – but when put alongside headline rates from other countries, it becomes damning.  In China, it’s 2.8 percent.  In France, 1.9 percent.  In Germany, 1 percent.  In the Eurozone as a whole, 1.5 percent.  And in the US, 2.3 percent (for March, with the latest figures out tomorrow).  Indeed, thanks in part to quantitative easing and the removal of the VAT cut, inflation

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jon Cruddas won’t run for Labour leader

The Guardian has just broken the news that Jon Cruddas won’t run for Labour leader. This is a pity. Cruddas is one of the most honest and engaging politicians you could ever hope to find. He was prepared to speak up about immigration and its effects on the working class when most Labour politicians just wanted to ignore the issue. There are also few people in public life keener to debate and explore ideas than Cruddas. In an article in The Guardian, Cruddas says—with characteristic frankness—that he’s not running because being a major party leader requires ‘certain qualities I do not possess’. He does not, however, rule out taking on

Lawrence Kay

What to do with all that knowledge on welfare

Is Frank Field back? The Labour MP has spent much of his life talking about the poor. Judging by reports today, he might be offered a job chairing a commission on child poverty. This is good news but, as Mr Field has already said, there is not much point in him debating the finer points of poverty definitions. He would need to be given remit to suggest policy. What should those suggestions be? First, he should argue that we need to be a lot less self-indulgent about how we think about child poverty. It may be great to think of ourselves as tackling a major social ill, but the past

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 17 May – 23 May

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

Daniel Korski

The life of a Tory MP

A Norwegian MP once told me that every time he thought life on the opposition benches was terrible he would think about life on the government backbenches – and realise how much he enjoyed his job. Life as a government-supporting backbench MP is difficult; if you are not willing to cap your ambition, you have to support the government, keep criticism muted and hope for elevation to ministerial rank in any future reshuffle. It is doubly difficult for the hard-working Tory MPs who lost out on government jobs because of the need to find space for Lib Dems, rather than because of their personal abilities. I can think of at