Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama’s Hit Squad: Still Reprehensible

Andrew Sullivan suggests my concerns about the Obama administration’s belief it need not justify the assassination of American citizens are overdone: [A] single American al Qaeda terrorist in a foreign country actively waging war against us seems to me to be a pretty isolated example. And Obama always said he would fight a war against al Qaeda more ruthlessly than Bush. As he has. I agree that invoking state secrets so comprehensively as to prevent any scrutiny of this is a step way too far. But I do believe we are at war; and that killing those who wish to kill us before they can do so is not the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Conservatives Against Assassination: A Small But Honourable Band

Predictably, commenters criticised with my aversion to the Obama administration’s view that not only may it declare any American citizen an enemy combatant anywhere in the world but that it may also assassinate that American without having to give any grounds for doing so. Predictably, I say, because one thing we’ve learned, or been reminded of, in recent years is that there are many people who think that the problem with a Jack Bauer approach to counter-terrorism is that Mr Bauer is dangerously soft on terror and too keen by half on respecting the rule of law and constitutional niceties. Props to National Review’s Kevin Williamson for opposing this extension

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Mr Bean

‘Stop moaning, start spending!’ It’s a cry worthy of Gok Wan. In fact, it was uttered by Charlie Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England. The Telegraph has a front page splash on the Bank’s admission that low interest rates are part of a strategy to encourage greater economic activity. The plan insisted that savers spend funds that are yielding nothing. Savers, Mr Bean sensitively put it, cannot expect to live off their nest-eggs when times are bad. Spend now and interest rates will improve in the future, or so the thinking goes. Douglas Carswell and John Redwood both point out the obvious flaws in this aspect of the

David Blackburn

The eagle has landed

Shades of Jack Higgins in Whitehall this morning: the Prime Minister is convening the furtive sounding National Security Council, which will be presented with initial drafts of strategic defence review. As Richard Norton-Taylor puts it, the government has the opportunity to be radical and make this a ‘horse versus tank moment’, which is ironic given that the tank is poised to pass into obsolescence. In truth, the drama is some way off; the government has delayed decisions rather than take them. The nuclear deterrent is not part of the review – the politics and economics of Trident’s replacement proving too contentious for the precious coalition. Personnel cuts are being resisted

Interconnect

Diary – 28 September 2010

Natasha Stott Despoja opens up her diary We celebrate my husband Ian’s 45th birthday at our beach kiosk, Joe’s. Our Adelaide western suburbs community rocks up (long after the kiosk has closed) with BYO bottle and plate. We are such a close neighbourhood that we holiday together, babysit each others’ children and mow each others’ lawns. We meet for coffee at Joe’s every weekend. Friends from out of state think it is a Home and Away set, such is the camaraderie and familiarity. Joe knows everyone’s name. We are a mix of different professions, incomes, family status: cops; a judge, council workers; retirees, former and current MPs, a sign-writer, a

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When Newspapers Meet Science

Yup. This is a news website article about a scientific paper  In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding? In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”. If the research is about a potential cure, or a

Peter Hoskin

The IMF delivers a boost for George Osborne

The proclamations of economists and economic bodies shouldn’t be taken as the be-all-and-end-all of fiscal policy – for every one claiming that a decision is right, you can find another insisting that it is wrong. But the coalition will still be pleased by the influential International Monetary Fund’s latest report, here. It begins: “The UK economy is on the mend. Economic recovery is underway, unemployment has stabilized, and financial sector health has improved. The government’s strong and credible multi-year fiscal deficit reduction plan is essential to ensure debt sustainability. The plan greatly reduces the risk of a costly loss of confidence in public finances and supports a balanced recovery. Fiscal

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 27 September – 3 October

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

Peter Hoskin

The Whelan factor

Is Ed Miliband is in cahoots with the unions? My guess is that he will have to be – and perhaps is – more centrist than all that. But, in any case, this kind of testimony from Charlie Whelan, speaking to the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, is hardly going to defuse the issue: “The former spokesman for Gordon Brown told me in the Radisson hotel how the ‘Big Four’ union leaders had sat together in the summer working out who was best placed to be the ‘stop David’ candidate. Their own personal preference would probably have been Ed Balls, but a lack of initial support among MPs suggested his chances were

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 25 September 2010

Your problems solved Q. I was recently at my local library with my two-year-old daughter. A woman sat next to me with a daughter of about the same age. In the spirit of polite conversation she asked me what my daughter was called. When I told her, she looked absolutely horrified and exclaimed loudly that it was her name and how she had always hated it and had been mocked at school because of it. Mary, we opted for a very traditional name (clearly in common usage) that we both love. I thought this woman’s comments extremely rude. There are many women with the same name as my daughter. If

The Spectator

Blame Games

India has given a good impression of a country that views the Commonwealth as an embarrassment. It should be an honour to host the commonwealth Games. We hoped that India would use the event to show the world that it is not just an emerging superpower with nuclear weapons and a space programme, but a country with a sense of pride — as China did with the Beijing Olympics. Instead, India has given a good impression of a country that views the Commonwealth as an embarrassment. Advance parties from England, Scotland, Australia and Canada arrived to find squalid and even incomplete accommodation. There were reports of walls bubbling with mould

Carla Powell

Diary – 25 September 2010

Carla Powell opens her diary Few state visits can have stirred up more advance controversy than Pope Benedict’s, though I do recall Private Eye’s cover ahead of the visit of the Japanese Emperor in the 1960s: ‘Nasty Nip in the air’. There was the child abuse scandal, the juvenile antics of the Foreign Office planners, the stories that the Catholic hierarchy were trying to keep Irish gypsies away, and Cardinal Kasper’s late own goal in labelling Britain a third world country on the eve of the visit. At least the Vatican still knows how to arrange a diplomatic illness, which they did to avoid the embarrassment of bringing Cardinal Kasper

The Spectator

Barometer | 25 September 2010

Party conferences • Public-sector pay • Who we blame for the deficit • British mammals Party conferences When the Liberal party and SDP merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats, diehards of both parties went on alone. — Not even David Owen’s attempt finally to wind up the SDP in 1990 prevented some carrying on: 20 years later it has two councillors in Bridlington and three in Aberavon, South Wales. Its 2010 conference will be held at the Community Centre, Victoria Road, Bridlington, on Sunday 26 September at 10 a.m. sharp. — The Liberal party boasts 24 councillors and put up five parliamentary candidates in the 2010 election. Its

Toby Young Toby Young

Schools vs the architects

Are architects the new Muslims? They certainly seem to be giving the mullahs a run for their money in the sensitivity stakes. A couple of weeks ago, I had the temerity to question whether a shiny new building actually improved a school’s academic results, and as a result I have incurred the wrath of the entire profession. The offending remarks were included in an interview I did with a trade magazine called Building. ‘Architects have managed effectively to perpetuate the myth that academic attainment is crucially dependent on the building that the school is in,’ I said. ‘And there is just no empirical evidence. Academic attainment is almost wholly independent

The Spectator

Letters | 25 September 2010

Spectator readers respond to recent articles Thought crime, style crime Sir: I welcome the new presentation of The Spectator, along with the continuing commitment to ‘elegance of expression and originality of thought’, and providing ‘a refuge from an often censorious and humourless world’. These are the reasons why I subscribe, and I am seldom let down. Yet I see with disappointment that Melanie Phillips has been quick to exercise her right to oppose Spectator doctrine (‘I think, therefore I’m guilty’, 18 September). While I agree with the thrust of her argument, a less elegant, more censorious and humourless way of expressing it is difficult to imagine. Isn’t style crime just as

Melissa Kite

Real life | 25 September 2010

The last time I hired a car it nearly killed me. This is because Avis Geneva, in its infinite wisdom, issued me with a 4×4 and waved me off to a ski resort cheerily insisting that the great hulking thing had snow tyres and that as such I should feel free to climb every mountain, ford every stream, etc. Till you slip over the edge and plunge to your death, it should have added. Because it didn’t have snow tyres at all. And 4×4 + normal tyres + sheet ice = unstoppable death trap. I know Avis is hoping I’ll forget about this, but weirdly enough I remain intrigued by

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 25 September 2010

The chaps thought I was mad going to Stoke. Several reasons. Number one was that the match was being shown live on telly and could be watched in the comfort of our local pub. Number two was the fact of our poor form. We’ve played four and lost four. And reason three was that it was a lunchtime kick-off on the advice of the police. A lunchtime kick-off is meant to act as a deterrent to visiting fans, as it means their having to rise before dawn for the long journey, and with little or no prospect of a decent pre-match drink on arrival to fortify themselves for the game.

Taki

High life | 25 September 2010

I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus avoided the disgraceful anti-Pontiff showing off by the cheap, publicity-seeking and repellent poseurs that signed up to the orchestrated campaign against the wonderful Pope Benedict. New York I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus avoided the disgraceful anti-Pontiff showing off by the cheap, publicity-seeking and repellent poseurs that signed up to the orchestrated campaign against the wonderful Pope Benedict. Mind you, all these grotesque losers have a point — against God, that is. If I looked like Polly Toynbee or Claire Rayner, or Stephen Fry for that matter, I,

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 25 September 2010

It is not so much Hawking’s squawkings about God and science that are the problem — though one wished he did not appear to think that either phenomenon told one anything significant about the other — but rather the failure of our education system to engage with the ancient Greeks. The first Greek philosophers like Thales (c. 580 bc) were really physicists, trying to describe, organise and explain the universe and all its contents. They gave accounts of natural phenomena like stars, planets, weather, plants, animals and man, and asked questions about whether and how the universe began, what it was made of, why it changed and so on. Thales

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Risky Business

The Spectator/KPMG conference explored investment opportunities in today’s uncertain geopolitical climate We live in an age of uncertainty. The predictable threats of the Cold War have been replaced with more nebulous dangers: great power politics might be stable but across large parts of the world instability rules. The Spectator’s ‘Global Risk and Opportunity’ conference in association with KPMG explored the consequences of this uncertain global environment for business. Andrew Neil opened the event by observing how the all-party desire in America to withdraw from costly foreign entanglements threatened the Pax Americana that has kept the peace since the end of the Cold War. The Conservative MP Malcolm Rifkind, who served