Society

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

The Institute of Education is a brilliant spoof, I concluded from its website

Last week the BBC website ran a story about some new research casting doubt on the effectiveness of free schools. ‘The Swedish model of free schools, lauded by the Conservatives, has not significantly improved pupils’ academic achievement, a study suggests,’ it began. So what was this study? It purports to be a paper written by ‘Rebecca Allen’, a lecturer at the ‘Institute of Education’. Is this organisation for real? If you visit the website for the ‘Institute’, the suspicion starts to creep in that it is a brilliant hoax devised by a fiendishly clever group of satirists. If you click on ‘About the IOE’, you’ll see the following sentence: ‘Our

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 3 July 2010

A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’. A reader has written to complain that a contributor to The Spectator used the construction ‘I was sat’. Veronica has also shown me an article in the Daily Mail about sex tourists in Thailand, which says: ‘Sat at a crowded bar at 2 a.m. is Peter.’ This is a most unaccountable usage, rolling over us unstoppably. Yet when I turned to The Spectator (no relation) written by Joseph Addison for July 20, 1711, I found this: ‘The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but notwithstanding all the Justices had taken their

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 July 2010

The government’s committee on public expenditure, otherwise known as Pex or the Star Chamber, gave departments a month to come up with spending cuts of up to 33 per cent. The government’s committee on public expenditure, otherwise known as Pex or the Star Chamber, gave departments a month to come up with spending cuts of up to 33 per cent. Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he would spend the summer seeking ways to reduce welfare spending in order to cushion the cuts in other areas. Mr Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, proposed fewer short jail sentences, which were ‘costly and ineffective’. Sir Hugh Orde, the president

The Spectator

Passion play

Following England’s dismal world cup defeat to Germany on Sunday, the nation’s football pundits struck up a familiar refrain: our boys lacked passion. Following England’s dismal world cup defeat to Germany on Sunday, the nation’s football pundits struck up a familiar refrain: our boys lacked passion. This is something of an English obsession: players win because they play with pride; they lose when they don’t show enough commitment. Talent is for foreigners, the English are meant to play with heart. But passion is overrated; too often just code for a lack of discipline. Time and time again, the most ‘passionate’ players let their country down. On Sunday, the England players

The Spectator

Who benefits?

The cries of unfairness which have gone up in reaction to George Osborne’s assault on the £12.5 billion annual bill for disability benefits are a sign of just how ingrained the welfare culture has become among Britain’s workshy millions. The cries of unfairness which have gone up in reaction to George Osborne’s assault on the £12.5 billion annual bill for disability benefits are a sign of just how ingrained the welfare culture has become among Britain’s workshy millions. They are also an indication of how hard the Chancellor will have to battle against the assortment of quangos and charities which stick up for their rights to taxpayer-funded lives of leisure.

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 03 July 2010

Taxes, spending cuts, and a few sweeteners — rather how the emperor Vespasian dealt with his financial crisis when he came to came to power in Rome in ad 69, but less inventive. Taxes, spending cuts, and a few sweeteners — rather how the emperor Vespasian dealt with his financial crisis when he came to came to power in Rome in ad 69, but less inventive. Nero had poured gazillions into military campaigns and the construction of a fabulous palace (the ‘Golden House’) for himself. The great fire of Rome in ad 64 burned another vast hole in the accounts. But Vespasian was a man suited to the task ahead.

Peter Hoskin

The coalition’s big choice on Incapacity Benefit

The coalition’s plan for moving claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work is, at heart, an admirable one.  For too long, IB has been used a political implement for massaging the overall unemployment figures, and it has allowed thousands of people to wrongly stay unemployed at the taxpayers’ expense.  There is, quite simply, a moral and economic case for reform. But that doesn’t mean that Professor Paul Gregg’s comments in the Times today should be ignored.  Gregg is one of the architects of the current system for moving claimants off IB, and he raises stark concerns about how that system is currently operating.  The main problem, he says, is the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Duncan Smith make work — not welfare — the logical choice?

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics For one night only, the band was back together. On Monday night, Tony Blair — looking toned and tanned — addressed the Institute for Government, the think-tank set up by his ally Lord Sainsbury. Cherie was in the front row, resplendent in a white salwar kameez. Blair’s two loyalist Cabinet allies, Tessa Jowell and Andrew Adonis, were also in attendance. There was even a question to the former prime minister from a fellow member of Ugly Rumours, Blair’s university band, to add to the reunion feel. This former rocker is now a civil servant at the Department for Work and Pensions. Most of

Charles Clover

The scramble for the seas

Almost unnoticed, in May, during the first weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a new era in man’s exploitation of the oceans began. The Chinese government lodged an application with the United Nations to mine for minerals on a ridge 1,700 metres down in the south-west Indian Ocean, outside any individual nation’s jurisdiction. It is the first application of its kind for mining in international waters, and so has potentially vast implications — for international law, for the price of metals, and for the marine environment. It is likely to be the first of many. Experts have expected that someone would want to mine

Carol Sarler

Do you want someone like you in charge?

Why must government be ‘representative’, asks Carol Sarler. It makes no sense. We must fight back against this pernicious new orthodoxy Only a week ago, as Julia Gillard was sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia, the sheilahood could scarcely believe its luck. A woman, no less! And not just any woman, either: Miss Gillard ticked all the righteous boxes as an avowed feminist, a pro-choice campaigner and a proud member of Emily’s List, an organisation founded — there as here — to promote sex equality in all things, especially in governance. By Monday this week, the most fervent of fans didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Gillard’s first

Sholto Byrnes

Is monarchy the answer in the Middle East?

The name Bernard Lewis provokes very different reactions in different people. For some he is the world’s foremost historian of Islam and the Middle East, the English academic who originally coined the term ‘clash of civilisations’ (as Samuel Huntingdon, who popularised it, freely acknowledged). For some he is a Princeton man, a neocon who celebrated his 90th birthday (four years ago) with Cheney and Kissinger; whose ‘Lewis Doctrine’ was said to have inspired the invasion of Iraq and botched the war on terror. For still others he is an international sage, who saw the threat of both Khomeini and bin Laden before most people had even heard of them. Or,

William Cook

A brave new Germany

William Cook, a ‘closet Kraut’, grew up feeling ashamed of his country. This summer, during the World Cup, he finds that the stigma has finally lifted I’m standing in a noisy bar in south London, watching a World Cup match on a giant TV screen, hemmed in on all sides by happy, tipsy football fans. The place is packed, but no one seems to mind. There are lots more people outside, peering in through the windows, all desperate to see the game. Yet these aren’t England fans. These supporters are all German. They’ve flocked to this German bar, called Zeitgeist, to cheer on the German national team. They’re a symbol

Piers Paul-Read

Misogyny is not just for men

‘Was it Vauvenargues or Chamfort,’ asks Pierre Costals in Henri de Montherlant’s novel Pity for Women, ‘who said that one must choose between loving women and understanding them?’ Most men would rather love women than understand them, and most women would rather be loved than understood. Women particularly resent men taking a scalpel to dissect, let alone disparage, the feminine psyche, which makes it difficult for a man to write about misogyny; yet there are signs that it is on the rise and, since good relations between the sexes is so fundamental to human happiness, it is perhaps pertinent to ask why. Misogyny is found in pagan antiquity but today

Deborah Ross

Let’s blame Fabio

Shrek Forever After U, Nationwide Shrek Forever After proves, once and for all, that this franchise is now a busted flush — personally, I’ve never seen a flush so busted — and while it would be wrong to blame Fabio Capello, just because he’s being blamed for everything else around here, let’s do it anyhow. Fabio: how could you? Yes, it is wrong, but it’s also jolly handy, and kind of fun. I even blamed Fabio for meaning to go to the gym this morning and then not bothering. That’s how handy he is. Anyway, Shrek. Shrek is the big, silly, noisome green ogre whom, in the past, I have

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Children, beware

Sorry! Footsbarn Theatre, Victoria Park and touring As You Like It Old Vic, until 21 August Footsbarn Theatre’s new production Sorry! isn’t the greatest show on earth but it may well be the strangest. The conjunction of opposites permeates every level of this peculiar enterprise. The name is English. The players are French. They perform in English and French simultaneously. Sponsored by the Barbican, the show is staged several miles from the City in an east London park. The arena is a big top but the show transcends the circus tradition and offers a bizarre mixture of drama, acrobatics and trained livestock. Most strangely for a circus it has no

Aidan Hartley

Battle lines

South Africa Rarely is Jonathan Clayton, the Times man in Africa, far from the front lines — but this month when I stayed at his Johannesburg house the battlefield came home. My visits tend to cause distress to Christiane, Jonty’s German wife. Christiane hasn’t trusted me since I got her husband drunk at a Christmas Eve lunch in 1993, when he was my Nairobi Reuters bureau chief. I recall how, just before he downed his last bottle of champagne, he had revealed that all his German in-laws, together with his parents, were staying in Kenya for the holidays. En route home I had put him in a health club sauna,

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We should all be free to call each other ‘coconut’

I asked my local greengrocer for a couple of blood oranges last weekend. They were to go with an orange cake I’d baked for some left-wing friends who were coming over — a nice left-wing cake, I thought. No flour or butter in it (both right-wing ingredients, historically), just ground almonds, eggs, sugar and oranges. A cake eaten in parts of Spain which were implacably opposed to the Falangists, and also enjoyed in Morocco which is, de facto, a left-wing place because it’s in Africa. Or that’s what I thought at first. Then I noticed a line in the recipe that said I had to examine the cracked eggs with

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 3 July 2010

In the end I ignored my own advice and bought an Apple iPad, purely, as I explained to my wife, ‘for the purposes of research’. The very same ‘research’ that has by now filled two or three desk drawers with a ridiculous assortment of electrical chargers, the devices they once charged mostly lost, burnt out or forgotten. Weeks later, my verdict on the thing is curiously complicated. What I mean by this is that the Apple iPad is a magnificent, life-enhancing device, which in many ways lights a future path for technology… and I really do like it: but I’m just not quite sure that you should buy one. What

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 3 July 2010

In Competition No. 2653 you were invited to submit a poem, written in the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, describing Hiawatha’s experiences at his computer. Longfellow’s epic, with its readily imitated metre, has spawned countless parodies. This is from the Literary Digest in 1925: ‘Have you ever noticed verses/ Written in unrhymed trochaics/ Without thinking as you read them,/ This was swiped from “Hiawatha”?’ And in an introduction (written in trochees) to his fine contribution to the genre, ‘Hiawatha’s photographing’, Lewis Carroll made the following observation: ‘In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The leaked Treasury slide was wrongly labeled

Nicholas Macpherson, the permanent secretary at the Treasury, has sent an interesting letter to Michael Fallon about the leaked figures on public sector job losses that created such a political storm when The Guardian printed them on Wednesday. Macpherson states that the slide was incorrectly labeled; it was meant to represent job losses to 2014-15 not annually. One lesson of this row is the power of the Office of Budget Responsibility. Now that Labour have accepted it, it is very hard for it to quibble with its forecasts. So when on Wednesday, it announced—in response to the Guardian leak—that while there would be job losses in the public sector there