Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Super Bill Sunday

So this is it. The long international nightmare (for anyone who follows American politics and wishes the conversation could move on to something, anything, other than health care) is finally coming to an end. It looks as though there will be a vote in the House on health care reform on Sunday. The process has been exhausting and damaged the President and Congress but, thanks be to god, it’s nearly over. One way or the other. Since Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts there’s been much talk (on both sides of the Atlantic – see this Simon Heffer column for instance) that the Obama presidency is all but over. Already. This

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Highlights from the latest Spectator | 18 March 2010

The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top five features: Might Cameron face a general strike? Pick up today’s papers, and you read more and more unions planning to strike to protest against utterly necessary and inevitable cuts. Dennis Sewell points out that Greek trade unionists have started to tour Britain, encouraging protests along the lines that the rich caused the mess so they, not the public sector workforce, should pay the price. Underlying this is the belief by the Unions that the Tories lack resolve, and will buckle – as Heath did. The odds are that the unions will get together to test

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mike Tyson and the Fancy

I don’t, alas, believe for a second that this magazine cover is real but, my, how I really, really wish it were. Anyway, it seems that Mike Tyson is going to be appearing in a new reality TV show about, yup, pigeon racing. Really, right now, I’m pushed to come up with a better TV proposal than that. Needless to say the folks at PETA are not amused. But according to the New York Post Tyson’s been part of the fancy since he was a kid. This will be the first time he’s trained doos for actual racing, however. The Post reports: Tyson began with pigeons, he says, at age

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When did America Cease to be America?

Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have some fun with Charles Krauthammer’s argument that resistance to Obama’s health care plans is rooted in a certain concept of American exceptionalism. Here’s Dr K: This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America. It’s the essence of America. And it’s what distinguishes Americans who are essentially refugees of the old society in Europe. That’s why it’s always been harder to make Americans break to the yoke of government, as happened in Europe. Look, once you get accustomed to the kind of entitlements you have in Sweden, England, France, elsewhere, it doesn’t

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Young black males “over-feminized”

I hate to say this, but there is a very good article in The G***d**n, which you can see online here. It’s by Dr Tony Sewell, a sociologist who runs charities for young black kids, and who is almost always a fount of plain speaking and common sense. He suggests that the educational under-achievement of black males is less a consequence of racism than because an astonishing proportion of them emanate from one parent families and all too rarely have a male role model at home. As a result they become “over-feminized”. Almost 60 per cent of black kids live in single parent households (almost always with mum, not dad),

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron kicks off his campaign

David Cameron held, what he called, his ‘first election rally’ this evening. In a trendy venue in Shoreditch—lots of exposed brick and video screens, Cameron—tieless and noteless—debuted his stump speech. It is a speech that strikes the right balance between attacking Labour’s record and promoting the Conservatives’ own policies. The economic message still needs to be related more to peoples’ lives, though. It is too much at the national level at the moment. However, I have never heard Cameron talk as well or as passionately about his education policy as he did today. He gave a real sense of what the Tory plans to let parents, teachers and other group

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Case for Scrapping the Joint Strike Fighter?

Photo: Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images Cato’s Tad DeHaven and Think Defence each have good posts on the future of the increasingly troubled Joint Strike Fighter. Costs have risen by 50% since 2001 and the plane is already looking like it will be delivered years late. Since the main justification for the JSF was that it was going to control costs this is a problem. The Americans will stick with it, but does that mean we have to? At present we seem to be heading for the worst of all possible worlds. As Think Defence puts it: It does not take a genius to work out that volumes will be reduced and

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 15 March – 21 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

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

For Brown, it’s never his fault

There was a classic Brown interview exchange in his face the voters session on the Politics Show today: Q: Would you accept the criticism that came from your home secretary on this issue, that maybe you’ve been a little kind of, eye taken off the ball?  I think we have cruised a bit on this because we were tackling issues like counter-terrorism.  We let the focus slip. BROWN: He said that some time ago I think and I think it’s quite – Q: October 2009. BROWN: Yes. Q: So six months ago. BROWN: We’ve taken, we’ve taken action to improve neighbourhood policing over these last few months, to introduce a victims’ commissioner,

Daniel Korski

A welcome return of defence diplomacy

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox has given an interview to the Sunday Express, where he talks about overcoming a sense of “colonial guilt” bestowed by revisionist historians and the need for a new government to forge defence links with commonwealth nations, such as Australia and New Zealand, but he also cited India and Saudi Arabia. They have a “strong appetite” for closer defence links with the UK, he argues.   Looking at variable defence relationships with countries like India, and non-NATO partners like Australia makes good sense. Nicolas Sarkozy has done the same – and even invited Indian troops to march down the Champs-Élysées last year on Bastille Day. A

Daniel Korski

Down with declinism | 14 March 2010

Everywhere you turn, it is hard to escape the sirens of decline. Their song echoes through Coffee House: “Buy supplies”, they sing, “take the kids out of schools, close down the hatches – for Britain is going under, broken beyond repair, stuck in a rot from which it cannot escape, while the weaklings of yesteryear (like China and Brazil) roam free on the land that our forbears toiled.” Next month, they will take the stage at a Spectator Debate.   I have even succumbed to their sentiment. It is easy to do. The vicissitudes of Britain’s military operations, the failure of the nation’s elite, the short-sighted over-reliance on the City

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s Lords reform plan is about framing the election campaign not the constitution

Labour knows that its class attacks on David Cameron only work when they tie them to a specific issue. So it was almost inevitable that House of Lords reform was going to be wheeled out at some point. There was excitement in Labour circles earlier this year when the Tories voted against removing the voting rights of the remaining hereditary peers. Gordon Brown used the issue as an attack line at Prime Minister Questions and Labour see the vote as something they can use to paint the Tories as the party of inherited privilege. Patrick Hennesssy now has the scoop that Labour will have a manifesto commitment to having a

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Against Manicheanism

My old mate Andrew Gilligan lacerates the BBC in this week’s magazine, for having allowed a member of the Islamic Forum of Europe onto Radio Four’s usually genteel “Any Questions”, and indeed having allowed the East London Mosque (which is run by the “extremist” IFE) to host the programme. At first sight, it is a little odd, especially if you fish around for comparisons. You can imagine the fuss, for example, if Any Questions decided to interview Nick Griffin of the BNP. But it is perhaps beyond imagining if Any Questions were to broadcast from the BNP’s headquarters, with the audience staffed full of BNP supporters and the chairman of

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Back to square one

Switching energy suppliers is very much like switching boyfriends. As soon as you do it, the one you just left immediately drops their prices while the one you’ve switched to starts changing their terms and edging their prices back up again. It’s a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ conspiracy. Three years ago, for example, I was stuck in a dead-end relationship when another guy came along and gave me a sales pitch that made my eyes pop out on stalks. He said all the buzz words: marriage; children; Nissan Qashqai (it’s a family car). So I switched. Three years later I have only now been told about

Jeremy Clarke

An absolute shocker

When the relationship ended a week before the Christmas before last, she’d already bought my Christmas presents. Instead of posting or burning them, she stored them under the desk in her office, resting her exquisite feet on them during working hours, until three weeks ago, when we finally met again over a tapas in a Spanish restaurant off the Edgware Road, and she managed to hand over, after some 14 months, the carrier bag containing her parting gifts.  One was a hardback copy of Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis. I read it straight off when I got home and loved it. It’s a boozer’s manual, informative and funny. The chapter

Taki

Downhill all the way

Gstaad A lovely liquid lunch in a mountain hut with my friend Nicola Anouilh after two hard runs. Blue skies, gentle winds, a few puffs of white cloud and the sound of bells from the nearby cowshed. If there’s a better way of communing with nature, I haven’t come across it yet. The natural beauty of the Alps is unspoilt and majestically alluring. White wine helps one dream and feel at peace with the world, until, that is, we’re back on skis and losing altitude fast. The bumps come up fast and in a blur, and turning uphill in order to avoid them one feels one’s about to ski off

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 13 March 2010

Q. Florentine society is notoriously difficult to penetrate, so a girl with whom I briefly shared a flat was delighted when I invited her to dinner and she met lots of my friends at the private art school I attend there. I also invited her to attend one of the brilliant lectures given every Thursday night by the principal of our school. The lectures are open to all but only a handful of non-students attend. The last two Thursdays this girl was waiting for me with an eager smile when I walked in, but Thursday nights are the only time I am with my fellow students when we are not

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 13 March 2010

London’s biggest open space, I learn, is the Lee Valley Park, stretching 26 miles from Ware in Hertfordshire, past Stansted, down to the Thames at East India Dock Basin. London’s biggest open space, I learn, is the Lee Valley Park, stretching 26 miles from Ware in Hertfordshire, past Stansted, down to the Thames at East India Dock Basin. It is to contain most of the Olympic Games in 2012. I propose it should be twinned with Lyon in France. At the moment I do not think the Lee Valley is twinned with anywhere, but Lyon is twinned with Birmingham — to what advantage the cities are no doubt aware. But

Toby Young Toby Young

Build-a-Bear Workshops are like crack dens for five-year-olds

My son Ludo will be celebrating his fifth birthday this weekend with a party at the Build-a-Bear workshop in Westfield. Those of you who don’t have a small child will be blissfully ignorant of this new fad. Build-a-Bear Workshop is a toyshop-cum-factory in which children can construct their very own teddy bears from scratch. The stand-alone stuffed animal isn’t too expensive — they start at £9 — but add accessories and the price ratchets up. For instance, a Pink Beararmoire® Fashion Case is £24 — and Ludo is very keen on fashion. Caroline and I used to pride ourselves on not letting our children become too attached to their stuffed

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 13 March 2010

Monday Massive double red alert!!! Lily Allen dedicated her song ‘F*** You!’ to Dave last night at the O2 arena!! How could she?? We offered her a peerage and a front-bench job as a Treasury minister in the Lords for goodness sake. Tom says it’s cos we took a principled stand against her foul-mouthed Broken Society lyrics. Now she’s directing her BS lyrics at us!! Oh dear, what will happen when Dave finds out??? He’s going to be cross and get red cheeks and then we’ll go down in the marginals even more. Can’t think about it now. Have to take Mr Vaizey his medication. Tom’s done a brilliant job