Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

London will soon be the least competitive major financial centre in the world when it comes to personal taxation for top bankers

After April 6th senior bankers and top hedge funder workers who are based in London will pay a greater proportion of their earnings in income tax and national insurance than their counterparts in any other major financial centre, reports The Wall Street Journal Europe today. This research shows just how damaging Labour’s various soak the rich taxes will be to London’s competitiveness as a global financial centre. Once the 50p rate and the increased national insurance rate kick in, a banker earning more than half a million pounds a year would be paying less in personal taxes in any other major financial venue.  Now, the bankers might be the subject

Peter Hoskin

How much does the public need to know about Jon Venables?

There are many arguments, and many perspectives, when it comes to how much we need to know about Jon Venables’ return to prison.  Yes, too much information – and too much publicity – could forfeit his anonymity.  But too little, and there’s the risk that some serious questions about the probation service could remain unanswered.  The boundaries of transparency need to be set and maintained – if only so similar mistakes and tragedies cannot happen in future.   To be honest, I’m not sure where those boundaries should be set.  But, then again, it seems that the government isn’t either.  Jack Straw is to give a statement to the House

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 8 March – 14 March

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

Daniel Korski

Will we lose Turkey?

Earlier this year, Transatlantic Trends, an annual survey of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, was published. Key highlights from the survey included a quadrupling of European support for President Obama’s handling of foreign policy. But what really caught my eye was how badly the relationship between the West and Turkey had frayed. 65 percent of Turks do not think it is likely their country will join the EU. Nearly half of Turks polled think Turkey is not really part of the West, while 43 percent think Turkey should not partner with the EU, the US or Russia in solving global problems. The break-down of the alliance between

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Thank God I was never the prey of the former model who taught me chemistry

This is Sarah Pirie, a ballet teacher and television actress, who is accused of abducting a fifteen year old boy and having sex with him at various hotels in Lancashire. How desperately awful it must have been for the lad, who was allegedly subjected to three months of this sort of treatment. I can only thank the Lord that I was never abducted when I was fifteen by, say, my old chemistry teacher Miss “Pobbles” Johnson – who had done some modeling work I believe, to supplement her meager teaching income – and subjected to three months of absolutely relentless, demeaning, illegal, sordid sex in various hotels. I would have

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Personalising political differences, another issue on which Bercow’s views have evolved

John Bercow was on the Politics Show this morning decrying ‘personal abuse’ in politics. This appears to be another issue on which Bercow’s views have evolved. Back in 2005, in a Tory leadership contest that was relatively free of personal abuse, Bercow, a Ken Clarke supporter, chose to attack Cameron’s candidacy in personal terms, decrying his “Eton, hunting, shooting and lunch at Whites” background.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Muesli Conservatism or Red-Meat Tories?

Tim Montgomerie says it’s “time to stop apologising for being Conservative” and calls for an end to this Red Tory nonsense and, instead, a return to “red-meat Toryism”. As a committed Conservative it’s not too surprising that Montgomerie thinks this is the way to stabilise a wobbly Tory campaign. The base always thinks the problem is that the party has strayed too far from orthodoxy. (This is true of almost all political parties). It’s a perfectly respectable point of view that is also, I suggest, perfectly mistaken. Apart from anything else such a strategy – banging on about europe*, crime and immigration – would delight Labour. Nothing they’d like better

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory front five

According to the Mail on Sunday David Cameron, William Hague, Ken Clarke, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt will be the faces of the Tory election campaign. Obviously, others will play a role too. For instance, we know that Liam Fox has been charged with going on TV to harry the government. Theresa May is also expected to be a regular on the broadcast rounds and I would not be surprised if Justine Greening was camping out at BBC Millbank during the campaign. The Mail on Sunday majors on the omission of George Osborne and Chris Grayling from the Tories’ five faces plan. Osborne’s omission is not as surprising as it

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What does it matter if Samantha Cameron voted Labour once?

So what if Samantha Cameron has voted Labour in the past? When I saw this story flash up on the wires last night, I wondered what the big deal was. But to splash the Mail on Sunday on it? Everyone knows that she is not the stereotypical Tory wife: she has a tattoo on her ankle, she spent her student years shooting pool and hanging out with musicians. Then she married a politician. It happens. But that the Wife of the Leader come with a pure voting pedigree is not something that even Cameron’s fiercest critics would expect. If the wider charge is that Cameron’s social circle is not a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scientology: Cult or Worse?

The problem Scientology has… Let me start again, among the problems with Scientology is that it wasn’t founded a couple of thousand years ago. Had it been it might not seem quite so obviously fraudulent and, well, nuts. Age rubs off the harsh edges and all that and at least permits the creation of a splendid literature, if nothing else. And that literature is a bit more than nothing. But Scientology, apart from its artistic desert, also seems to be a wicked organisation. Consider this New York Times story: Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

YouGov has Labour up one and the Tory lead at five but the story getting all the attention this evening is the claim that Samantha Cameron might have voted Labour previously

Tonight’s YouGov poll has Labour up one and the Tory lead down to five points. There’s also a BPIX survey in the Mail on Sunday which suggests that the Ashcroft operation might only net the Tories an extra 13 seats. While the News of the World reports on a Unite-led campaign to boost the Labour vote in the marginals. But the story getting the most buzz is the Mail on Sunday’s that Samantha Cameron might have voted Labour when Blair was leader. Samantha Cameron has flatly denied this. The story has been caused by Ed Vaizey telling a coming Andrew Rawnsley documentary on Cameron that Samantha ‘would be going into

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Crash course | 6 March 2010

‘Are you sure it’s got snow tyres?’ That sentence will be burned into my memory for a very long time. I was standing at the Avis desk at Geneva airport French side, and my boyfriend was grilling the girl behind the counter about the exact spec of the vehicle we were about to drive into the mountains. He asked her the snow tyres question seven times before I stopped counting. Then he started forensic interrogation about the make and model. Upon learning it was not a BMW X5 but something called a Peugeot 4007 he demanded pictures. And if he hadn’t asked, I would have. Last year, we got stuck

Jeremy Clarke

Wrong footed

On most days of the year there is a guide-led walk on Dartmoor. These walks, advertised in the Dartmoor Visitor, are ideal for a lazy person like me who enjoys tramping across the high moor from time to time but prefers someone else to do the map-reading and the worrying about not getting lost. Each walk listed in the Visitor is given a title, such as ‘Peaks and Pixies’ or ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, and an Ordinance Survey map reference. The map reference tells you where to meet and usually refers to a car park. Whenever I go on one of these walks, I often get off on the

Taki

Swiss confidence

Gstaad When I spoke to the mayor of Gstaad, as well as some other local stalwarts, they all assured me that they are ready for any invasion by the Libyans, and are confident that they will kick them back into the Mediterranean where they came from. For any of you who might have missed it because of Gordon Brown’s bullying shenanigans, or John Terry’s, or even news that David Cameron is close to blowing it, here is the latest: Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the great leader of Libya, has called for a jihad against Switzerland over the Swiss minaret ban. This may have caused tremors among the hookers in Geneva and

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 6 March 2010

Q. A friend rings every day to talk for hours about her life. While I do not mind acting as a sounding board or counsellor, I feel the whole thing is a bit one-sided, since she almost never asks how my life is going or only in the most perfunctory way. I feel it would be better for both of us if I were able to have some equity in this relationship. How should I gently point out that it would be only polite, to say nothing of humane, for her to show some reciprocal interest in my life? Name and address withheld A. Withhold from her all dramatic developments

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 6 March 2010

I thought my husband was reading a bulb catalogue, and since we have no garden in London I was puzzled when he called out: ‘I’m sending off for this one for you.’ I thought my husband was reading a bulb catalogue, and since we have no garden in London I was puzzled when he called out: ‘I’m sending off for this one for you.’ It turned out that he was reading a catalogue from Seton’s (‘Solutions for a safe, secure workplace’), and he wanted to get a sign for the kitchen door: ‘Danger: Explosive atmosphere’. Very droll. What struck me was the obscurity of the image on the yellow triangle

Toby Young Toby Young

Parents are offered their first choice among second-rate schools

It’s become an annual tradition, like the first cuckoo of spring. At the beginning of March, when state secondary schools send out acceptance or rejection letters to anxious parents, a New Labour stooge pops up to point out that the majority of parents managed to get their child into their first choice of school. This is proof, apparently, that most parents are happy with the schools their children end up in. A moment’s reflection reveals how spurious this argument is. The fact that a majority of parents manage to secure a place for their child at their first-choice school doesn’t mean they would not have chosen another school had a

The Spectator

Letters | 6 March 2010

The story behind Kidnapped Sir: Not withstanding my gratitude for Andro Linklater’s kind words in his recent review of my book Birthright: The True Story That Inspired ‘Kidnapped’ (Books, 27 February), I must correct his description of the subtitle as ‘simply wrong’. It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious reader of legal history, was unfamiliar with the saga of James Annesley, which by the time of Kidnapped’s publication in 1886 had already influenced four other 19th-century novels, most famously Sir Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815) and Charles Reade’s The Wandering Heir (1873). As I note in Birthright, a review of Kidnapped in the Athenaeum (London) of 14 August 1886 pointedly

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 6 March 2010

Monday This is typical! I go away for some winter sun in the Canaries with Mummy and come back to find Labour on course to form the next government! One week I was out of the office — one week! — and it’s all gone pear-shaped, or tits up, as Jed is saying. It’s obviously Poppy’s fault, and Mr Grayling’s, double obviously. You can’t blame Dave. I would never have allowed that drowned-rat jogging picture ahead of his speech in Brighton. The British people will stand for many things, but a leader with rain dripping off his nose is not one of them. Ah well, it’s too late now. Better

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 6 March 2010

The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David Cameron made their flesh creep in a speech at a conference at Brighton concluding: ‘I want you to think of the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown.’ The Conservatives made their election slogan ‘Vote for change’, and Mr David Cameron made their flesh creep in a speech at a conference at Brighton concluding: ‘I want you to think of the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown.’ A YouGov poll published in the Sunday Times on 28 February put support for the Tories at 37 per cent with Labour at 35