Society

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The ultimate financial disappearing trick: Lehman Bros wasn’t a real business at all

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business No sooner do I confess (6 March) to having dabbled in the dark art of off-balance-sheet finance, than along comes an official report into the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street firm led by the monstrous Dick Fuld, that reveals the mother of all financial disappearing tricks. This was a series of transactions codenamed ‘Repo 105’, under the advice of the eminent City law firm Linklaters and without demur from Lehman’s auditors Ernst & Young, designed to exploit a disparity between US and UK law that allowed $50 billion of Lehman liabilities to pretend they weren’t there. The unfolding Lehman saga, as

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 20 March 2010

In Competition No. 2638 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of insomnia. It is undoubtedly a challenge to find redeeming features in unwanted wakefulness. But you are a resourceful bunch, and came as close as it is possible to come to convincing me that an inability to sleep has its consolations. Next time sleeplessness strikes, then, I will embrace the opportunity to tap the riches of the World Service as I indulge in a spot of online shopping and gorge on brandy and pies unwatched by critical eyes. Or, as Barbara Smoker so eloquently puts it, ‘By minimising midnight mini-death,/ I’ll stretch life’s life until my final

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Allez Les Bleus

It’s a sad old story when the most enjoyable moments of last weekend’s Calcutta Cup battle at Murrayfield were the frequent TV cutaways to Scotland coach Andy Robinson giving an Oscar-winning performance as the world’s angriest man. In his playing days he was known as ‘Growler’ but there wasn’t much growling here: near demented hysteria, flailing arms, and lip-readable damnation of the referee and all his works. He was one step away from banging his head on his desk. And you couldn’t really have blamed him. The referee allowed England to get away with a whole heap of skulduggery at the breakdown, Dan Parks hit the post twice and a

Deborah Ross

Sting in the tail

The Scouting Book for Boys 15, Key Cities This week, I should probably have seen Old Dogs starring John Travolta and Robin Williams as ‘two best friends who have their lives turned upside down when they’re unexpectedly charged with the care of six-year-old twins’ but I saw the trailer on TV and couldn’t do it. I felt repelled. I felt repelled even though I knew it would be a bad film and bad films make for good, easy copy. Copy-wise, bad films are like stealing candy from a baby, which is as easy as everyone says it is. In fact, I’ve recently stolen so much candy from babies that I

Daniel Metcalfe

Thorns in Russia’s side

Once known for its honour-loving bandits and rugged scenery, the Caucasus is the narrow wedge of land between Russia and the Middle East. Rippling with wooded gorges, its ethnic and linguistic complexity — 40 languages in Dagestan alone — has long intrigued outsiders. These days the Caucasus is better known for separatism and scenes of bloody violence, which Oliver Bullough puts into vivid historical focus. More crucially, he sheds a telling light on contemporary Russian political thinking. Bullough, a companionable ex-Reuters journalist, bypasses independent Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan — which for some collectively define the region — and instead goes in search of three peoples in the North Caucasus: the

Friday

David Blackburn

Mr Blond goes to Washington

The Red Tory, Phillip Blond, is spreading the faith in the States. The New York Times’s David Brooks is impressed, very impressed. In fact, he is a proselytising convert. ‘Britain is always going to be more hospitable to communitarian politics than the more libertarian U.S. But people are social creatures here, too. American society has been atomized by the twin revolutions here, too. This country, too, needs a fresh political wind. America, too, is suffering a devastating crisis of authority. The only way to restore trust is from the local community on up.’ Blond’s premise is unanswerable – the twin revolutions of left (prescriptive rights) and right (free market liberalism)

Peter Hoskin

Strike-a-rama<br />

So there we have it: talks between the BA management and Unite have collapsed, and the strike is back on for midnight tonight.  Throw in the news that railway workers have also voted in favour of strikes, and it looks like there will be more transport trouble ahead. Politically-speaking, the government won’t enjoy operating against a backdrop of industrial unrest as the election approaches.  Sure, last year’s postal strikes had no discernible effect on the polls.  But, this time around, the Brown premiership has closer ties with the striking party – and those ties are already front-page news.  Involving Charlie Whelan in Labour’s election campaign is now looking like an

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When Hitler Played Cricket…

Until today I had not known that Adolf Hitler played cricket. Once. Apparently. This is, actually, reassuring since it seems that cricket found him out and, as it is wont to do, smoked out the essential elements of Hitler’s character. Ben Macintyre has the story: Adolf Hitler played cricket. He raised his own cricket team to play some British prisoners of war during the First World War, then declared the sport “unmanly” and tried to rewrite the laws of the game. The Führer’s First XI sounds like a Spike Milligan joke, but this small nugget of history is true. In all the millions of words written about Hitler, his telling

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Mephedrone Panic is an Argument for Ending Prohibition

Nikhil Arora at the ASI makes a good and necessary point in response to the mephedrone moral panic: Realising the danger that ‘legal highs’ pose to their core market of young night-clubbers, cocaine and ecstasy dealers mobilised every lawyer and lobbyist at their disposal to ensure that their rivals’ products are outlawed as quickly as possible. Quite. Nevertheless, the urge to ban currently legal drugs merely because they may be ill-used or have problematic, even terrible, side-effects will doubtless prevail. It’s sad when people die from reactions to the drugs they take (or from mistakes in the taking) but those deaths are not in themselves a compelling argument for yet

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Smokers are Patriots

These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it’s commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you’d do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Something similar may now be said about the levels of tax imposed upon alcohol and tobacco. More than 75% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Treasury. It’s hard to think of many other products punished so severely. And we all know, I think, that tobacco taxes are going to increase regardless

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Unholy Three Threaten America*

Of course, it’s important to remember that the United States has always been under threat and that there have been many un-American plots designed to yoke the populace to the government. Consider this flier produced in 1955 by the Keep America Committee: I’ll grant that insuring the uninsured – at doubtless considerable and as yet under-accounted for cost – must seem a tiny peril compared to the threat posed by fluoridated water, polio serum and, never forget, mental hygiene but I’d remind you that one can never be too careful. Needless to say the left are just as happy to hop aboard the moral panic bandwagon as the right. But

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Age doesn’t matter on Coffee House

I’ve just come back from the Guardian’s “changing media” conference, speaking about the future of our industry and The Spectator’s intrepid adventures into cyberspace. I had a few gags in my wee speech, but the biggest laugh was when I said that the average reader of Spectator.co.uk is pushing 50 years old. That took me aback – is it so funny? The average age of the magazine reader is higher still, I said – more laughter.     It seemed deeply unfashionable to the trendies who made up (part of) the audience – surely the future lies in twenty-somethings? I have never bought this, for many reasons. First, The Spectator’s

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