Society

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The Cameroons are fleshing out the agenda which may come to define them

If you were going to craft The Most Exciting Speech Ever, then there’s a good chance it wouldn’t contain the phrase “Post-Bureaucratic Age,” and wouldn’t be delivered at the Technology-Entertainment-Design conference.  But – as James Crabtree points out in an great post over at Prospect – there are quite a few reasons to take David Cameron’s speech on post-bureacracy to the, erm, Technology-Entertainment-Design conference, last night, very seriously indeed.  Not least of which is this announcement: “A Conservative government will publish all government contracts worth over £25,000 for goods and services in full, including all performance indicators, break clauses and penalty measures. This will enable the public to root out

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mandelson: Public sector will face cuts this year

Peter Mandelson gave the Dearing memorial lecture last night and in a section responding to the criticisms of the budget cuts for higher education said:   “Much of the rest of the public sector will receive similar constraints in the course of this year or soon after.” Mandleson has implied this before, most notably on Newsnight the day of the Hoon Hewitt plot. But it is a very different from the message Brown is putting out. We in the press should demand details from Mandelson about what these cuts in financial year 2010-11 might be with the same intensity that we did when the Tories said they would make in

The Spectator

In this week’s Spectator | 11 February 2010

The latest issue of the Spectator is published today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online here, or purchase a single issue here. A selection of articles has been made available, free, for all website users: Francis Fukuyama asks if the age of democracy is over. James Forsyth believes that the war over Joanne Cash tells us a lot about Cameron’s Conservatives. Matthew Parris says that the Australian bush breaks your heart. Rod Liddle is adamant that we are all victims of institutional anti-racism. And Victoria Lane interviews Ruth Rendell.

Daniel Korski

The End of Charlie Wilson’s War

Rarely are obituaries so full of parties, history-changing events and personal contradictions as those of ex-Congressman and rebel-armer Charlie Wilson, who died last night aged 76. War will mix with cocaine. Burqa-clad women will mingle with strippers. “Good Time” Charlie’s life was genuinely remarkable. Described as “one the most distinctive” congressmen, he spent most of his time partying until he found the cause of a lifetime: ejecting the Soviets from Afghanistan. As detailed in the book and film “Charlie Wilson’s War”, the Texan politician used his contacts and seat on a powerful Congress committee to arm the Afghan rebels. And he did it in style – all buttoned-down, white-collared shirts,

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Binyam Mohamed & the Missing Seven Paragraphs

So, the government has lost its case and the FCO has now published the famous missing seven paragraphs: v)  It was reported that at some stage during that further interview process by the United States authorities, BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation.  The effects of the sleep deprivation were carefully observed.  vi) It was reported that combined with the sleep deprivation, threats and inducements were made to him.  His fears of being removed from United States custody and “disappearing” were played upon. vii) It was reported that the stress brought about by these deliberate tactics was increased by him being shackled in his interviews  viii) It was

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Bang Up the Pope

When the Pope arrives here for his state visit, should he not be arrested for his views about buggery? Or at the least be interviewed by the old bill? The Pope has called homosexuality a “moral evil” and that saving mankind from sodomy is as important as saving the rainforests. Further, homosexuality could lead to the “destruction” of the human race. In January 2006, the then boss of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, was interviewed by police following much milder comments about homosexuality which he, perhaps unwisely, gave vent to on the BBC PM programme. The filth were alerted under the terms of the 1986 Public Order

David Blackburn

Kraft’s betrayal is Mandelson’s failure

I don’t usually agree with the sage of Twickenham but he is right that Mandelson’s promise on Cadbury “melted away”. Kraft is a notoriously feckless corporation, loathed the world over. Reneging on promises is its modus operandi and the remaining 4,000 Cadbury workers are understandably concerned that the closure of Somerdale is just the trailer. Of course, government should not manage private enterprise in circumstances other than the extraordinary, but neither should it be submissive when jobs are at stake. Mandelson’s reputation as a demagogic strategist is deserved, when it comes to smooth tongued fixers he is unsurpassed. But that is his tragedy: his achievements are contained within partisan precincts.

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New Front in the Tobacco Wars: Killer Third-Hand Smoke

It’s more than a year since I first scoffed at the notion that “third-hand smoke” was going to kill us all. And now I see that this nonsense is back. Over to you, Chris Snowdon: The respondents were not told that the idea of “tobacco toxins” being harmful at ultra-low levels was no more than a “possibility” (in the words of the final study), nor that the researchers themselves referred to thirdhand smoke only as a “concept”. If they had been told that the researchers believed that smokers spread disease “through contaminated dust and surfaces, including the frame of an infant’s bed and a smoker’s finger” it is fair to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Ox vs Roy the Rat

Granted, it’s not quite as memorable as the unsurpassable Demon Sheep, but this ad for John Oxendine, who’s running to be the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, has a certain zany-yet-quaint charm to it. Gotta love the gratuitous, thrown-in-for-fun Frog-bashing too. And the line that the Ox is “strong enough to oppose the special interest, graceful enough to care for the people.” Take that Disney! Go on, watch it, you won’t regret doing so. More like this, please.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Naked Economist

As a mild econo-sceptic, I enjoyed James Buchanan’s short essay,  Economists Have No Clothes: Economists do not really understand what they are doing as they seem forced to make efforts to control aggregate variables that are not controllable in any direct sense. For example, the rate of employment (or unemployment) cannot readily be shifted by governmental mandate. At best, small and peripheral changes may be made while the emergent aggregate generated by the working of the large and complex economy remains stubbornly immune, or worse, to wrongly conceived reform efforts. And: How do markets work? Standing alone, this is an inappropriate and unanswerable question. It must be replaced by the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Palin 2012?

From Sunday’s interview on Fox: WALLACE: Why wouldn’t you run for president? PALIN: I would. I would if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. Certainly, I would do so. WALLACE: And how do you make that decision over the next three years? PALIN: It’s going to be thankfully a lot of time to be able to make such a decision.  Right now, I’m looking at, as I say, other potential candidates out there who are strong. They’re in a position of having the luxury of having more information at their fingertips right now. So that the current events

Monday

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 8 February – 14 February

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

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why give money to charity when they shaft what they purport to defend?

I’m not an enormous fan of “giving money to charity”; I prefer to spend my spare cash on holidays, consumer durables and alcohol. But somehow, for the last five years, I’ve been paying a monthly stipend to Amnesty International. I really don’t know how that can have happened. Obviously, it should now stop, seeing that they have suspended the head of the organisation’s gender section, Gita Saghal, for having the temerity to suggest Amnesty was being “damaged” by being nice about the Taliban all the time. My friend Martin Bright has blogged about this, and you can sign up to one of those ludicrous and self-important Facebook campaigns to have

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The tradecraft of Brown’s Morgan interview is bizarre

If an event is going to have dramatic impact we can’t know it is coming. So the emotional moments in Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan have lost much of their potency through being pre-briefed to today’s papers. It also strikes me as rather bad tradecraft to have let it be known that Alastair Campbell was prepping Brown for this appearance; a detail that was bound to lead to cynicism about whether or not the public is being spun. The write-up of the interview in the papers also left me wondering how the electorate will react to Brown saying there was a deal between him and Blair to hand the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The cuts consensus

John Rentoul today puts Trevor Kavanagh and myself in the dock for demanding “massive spending cuts” and concludes that if we “had any power” we would be “about as helpful to Cameron as Sarah Palin was to John McCain” but believes Cameron “will hold to his strategic course”. I mean: massive cuts. How crazy is that? Surely only swivel-eyed maniacs would be planning cuts – real, hard-core ideologues – would plan that when the deficit is a mere 13 percent of GDP. Surely? It struck me, reading this, that John is unaware of the massive cuts which Labour is planning (understandable, as they were in the small print and have still not

Martin Bright

Amnesty International, Moazzam Begg and the Bravery of Gita Sahgal

It is not often that my cynical jaw drops open at a story in the papers. But the piece on page 13 of the Sunday Times provoked just such a reaction. Congratulations to Richard Kerbaj for blowing the lid on Amnesty International’s relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners, who act as apologists for Islamist totalitarianism. Gita Sahgal, the head of the gender unit at Amnesty International’s international secretariat has been campaigning on women’s issues for decades. She is rightly sick of the lazy alliance between some in the human rights world and radical Islamists. She has therefore blown the whistle on the disgraceful arrangement

David Blackburn

Beyond doubt

For a moment, Andrew Marr had Alastair Campbell by the short and curlies. Marr attacked (that verb is not an exaggeration) Campbell over his clarification to the Chilcot Inquiry, the phrase ‘beyond doubt’ and the possibility that Blair knowingly misled parliament over the strength of WMD intelligence.   Marr was at his incisive and dramatic best. It was the first time I’ve seen Campbell under pressure and he wobbled, his lower lip did so markedly. Perhaps I do him a disservice, but I didn’t buy Campbell’s blubbing act; it was just theatre. His defence of Blair and himself rested on the tried and tested refrain that Tony’s a pretty straight

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Until 3pm Sunday, Hope Lives!

This is optimism’s optimum moment. Twelve hours from now everything will change. That’s when, alas, France will most probably begin to take control of this afternoon’s encounter with Scotland at Murrayfield. And yet, stubbornly and despite logic that dictates Chris Cusiter’s boys have just a one in four chance of prevailing, hope still flowers. That’s partly because no-one looked very good today. Beat France and all sorts of things suddenly seem possible. Unlikely? For sure, but this is the time for dreaming. Italy were an affront to rugby and a sad one too; Ireland were pretty poor on Saturday and I still think that David Wallace’s best days are behind

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Raping Haiti!

Connoiseurs of the Guardian will not be surprised by this masterpiece from Mike Gonzalez. The only thing that could improve it is if his piece also found a way to blame the Israelis: News reports still insist on the question of security, as if the pressing problem were the need to maintain public order. This argument has been used to justify placing Haitian society under the direct control of the US military – whose contingent is about to double to 20,000 – very few of whom have skills in distributing aid and assistance. The assumption of control over the airport and the naval blockade around the island’s coasts are, by

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Getting my goat

A perplexing email has arrived from one John Roskam at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Australia. In the subject field it says: ‘Hey! What did I miss? Xxx’. I have racked my brains but am reasonably sure I have never met Mr Roskam. What’s more, I’m comfortably of the opinion that I have never solicited kisses from him. As I read on, he informs me that the Australian government has just passed a new law stipulating how much insecticide you’re allowed to have in goat fat. What I’m supposed to do about all this — the goat fat, the kisses, the things Mr Roskam might have been missing