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Society

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Pre-Budget Report live blog | 9 December 2009

Stay tuned for live coverage of Alistair Darling’s statement from 1230. 1231, PH: PMQs is still going on.  Tune into David’s live blog of that here. 1233, PH: Here’s Darling.  One sentence in and he’s already refering to the global crisis and “unprecedented action”.  He adds: “The task today is to ensure the recovery and to promote growth.”  1234, PH: One minute in, and it’s already dividing line heavy.  “The choice is between going for growth or endangering the recovery … investment … cuts”.  Yada, yada, yada. 1235, PH: Darling is pointing to signs of global recovery – US housing market stabilising etc.  Shame we’re still in recession here. 1237,

Stephen Bayley

Happy Kitschmas everyone

London is the creative capital of the planet. The city’s abundant talent — in design and media, in commercials and special effects, food, leisure, architecture, publishing, retailing and telly — will drive the economy from today’s precipice of the dark abyss to tomorrow’s sunkissed higher ground of recovery. Birds will sing and soft zephyrs will blow. So long dismissed as the visually illiterate of Europe, we are now known for our point and style. We are smart. And my own office is in the sturdy left ventricle of this powerfully pumping urban heart. Immediately, I am surrounded by the designers who work with me. Some of the world’s best restaurants

Karl Ludvigsen

Not so sclerotic: the truth about General Motors

Karl Ludvigsen is irritated by ill-informed criticism of the troubled American auto giant — which was once a model of quick, responsive and decentralised decision-making Outraged is too mild a word for the way I felt after reading a piece in the 12 November edition of the New York Times about General Motors. Focusing on the faults of this once-great company, its author said the following: For all its financial troubles and shortcomings as an automaker, no aspect of GM has confounded its critics as much as its hidebound, command-and-control corporate culture. When GM collapsed last year and turned to the US government for an emergency bailout, itcentury-old way of

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Darling carves up the spending pie

It’s the eve of the Pre-Budget Report, and the lunacy has already begun. Tomorrow’s FT says that Darling will copy the Tories’ plans to protect the NHS budget – and throw police and schools in to the protected status as well. This is introduced as “the biggest squeeze in pubic spending for a generation,” with the headline figure of 14 percent cuts. How to make sense of that? My guide: 1. Any sentence that starts “A Labour government would…” can be ignored. Darling can promise to fund free beer for everyone after 2011 – he won’t be in office. These are decoys for the media: the wilder his claims, the

Peter Hoskin

Ringfence-a-rama

Just watching Newsnight, and the show’s economics editor, Paul Mason, has said we can expect several budgets to be ringfenced from spending cuts in tomorrow’s PBR – hospitals, schools and perhaps even the social security budget.  If so, it’s another sign of how political the document is set to be.  Ringfenced budgets are the other side of the soak-the-rich coin: sending out the twin message that Labour will batter the “City fat cats,” while also “investing” in public services “for the many”.  Just a shame that it’s all insufficient to the scale of the debt crisis.

Peter Hoskin

Clocking on

As publicity stunts go, the debt clock the Tories beamed onto Battersea Power Station this evening is quite a decent idea.  Their thinking’s pretty clear – get some coverage in tomorrow’s papers, and increase the likelihood that the horrendous state of the public finances becomes the story of the PBR – but it’s probably no less effective for it.  Anyway, here are some pictures so you can judge for yourself: P.S. Yes, I know it’s out of sync with the Coffee House debt counter. We’re going to update our numbers on the back of tomorrow’s PBR.

Andrew Haldenby

Tackling the deficit

Reform’s report, The Front Line, focused on the how of the public finance question – how to get the deficit down in practice.  We pointed out that since the public sector workforce accounts for around a third of the total government deficit, it should contribute a third of the reduction in the structural deficit.  That would mean reducing the costs of the public sector workforce by £30 billion, equivalent to a reduction of one million of the six million public sector jobs in the UK.  That would take public sector employment back to the levels of 1999 when the recent period of major spending increases began.  It means reducing the

Amander Baillieu

My week as a climate change denier

The Spectator’s Global Warming special is only in the shops for a couple more days.  If you’ve missed it – or if you still need convincing to buy it – here’s an extended version of the article by Amanda Baillieu from within its pages: When a work colleague sent a tweet to his 2000 followers comparing me to Nick Griffin I realised I was heading for my Jan Moir moment. A few days before, I had written an opinion piece with the rather attention seeking headline Is global warming hot air?  I’d wanted to see if my readers, who are mainly architects, agreed with the line now adopted by the

David Blackburn

How long until the plug is pulled?<br />

Moody’s AAA sovereign monitor was published today, and whilst the UK’s AAA status remains ‘resilient’ the situation is far from rosy. The report states: ‘The UK economy entered the crisis in a vulnerable position, owing to the (overly) large size of its banking sector and the high level of household indebtedness. Both continue to weigh on economic performance. Net bank lending to the UK business sector has continued to contract through Q3 2009, and repairs to household balance sheets (i.e. the rising savings ratio) may weigh on demand for some time to come. The depth of the crisis has been mirrored by the ongoing deterioration of public finances (with gross

David Blackburn

Luck shines on the brave

Nevermind the bankers, the UK Border Agency should have been awarded £295,000 in performance bonuses. Phil Woolas’s defence that “brave” border workers deserved remuneration beyond their basic salaries is imaginative, though unremittingly egregious. The agency is plainly maladroit. Keith Vaz’s Home Affairs Select Committee has found: ‘There is still a huge backlog of unresolved cases and UKBA simply must get through them faster than they have promised. What is really surprising and disappointing is the number of cases where the UKBA is basically saying “we don’t know” exactly what has happened to these applicants – over half the applications are concluded for some “other” reason than being granted or denied

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An efficient response 

Both parties want to be seen as the party of public sector efficiency. The Tories want to be able to show that they can do more with less and that cuts therefore need not mean worse services. While Labour wants to contrast their supposedly ‘smart cuts’ with the Tories’ ‘hatchet approach.’   So, this morning we had Gordon Brown delivering a speech outlining how the government would save £12 billion over the next three years; many of the policies he proposed were rather familiar to those of us who have been listening to the Tories on this subject.  The Tories then tried to trump Brown’s speech by announcing the formation

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 7 December – 13 December

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

The Tories musn’t let Labour define them on tax

Watching George Osborne and Alistair Darling on Marr this morning, one couldn’t help but be struck by how Labour is defining the Tories on tax. Darling kept stressing that it tells you everything you need to know about the Tories that the main tax cut they are offering at this time is to inheritance tax. Now, this, obviously, isn’t quite fair. As Osborne said, the Tories wouldn’t actually deal with inheritance tax until the public finances have been stabilised. But it is a problem for the Tories that the only tax pledge of theirs that has had cut through is the inheritance tax one. The Tories need to talk far

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Come on the Fort…………………

Fort William beat Strathspey Thistle 2-1 in the Highland League on Saturday and if I know the manager, Cal McLean, they’ll still be out celebrating now. All the goals came in the final ten minutes of play; Fort took the lead with a lob from their, uh, ginger wizard, Sean Ellis, before Thistle pulled level with three minutes remaining. Drew Ferguson scored the winner with virtually the last kick of the game. Fort William were down to ten men by then – but that’s a given, they almost always are. This is the side which finished last season having won just a solitary point, a record. They were bottom the

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Neighbours from hell

I try not to be a party pooper but the other night I came home to such a cacophony of revelling from a neighbour’s house that I concluded there had to be a gathering of international gangsters, drug barons and hookers in my street. The thumping hip hop, screaming and glass smashing was coming from a house whose back garden borders mine at the bottom; so I crept outside to see if I could catch a glimpse. I picked my way to the end of the garden in the dark, pulled myself up over the fence and braced myself to see hoards of Nike-swathed homeboys dripping in gold chains and spliffs.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 5 December 2009

Q. The other night I attended an enjoyable lecture on the Mitford sisters at the British Institute in Florence, the former townhouse of Harold and William Acton, who were lifelong friends of the sisters. The library where the lecture was delivered was packed to the rafters. My enjoyment was spoiled, however, by the ordinary, conversation-level chatter which was taking place between two ladies in front of me, one on each side of the aisle — and they were not even talking about the Mitfords! I am shortly to give a lecture myself, on a similar theme, and would find myself quite undermined were such an intercourse to start up while

Toby Young Toby Young

If I can keep my mouth shut long enough, we will build the Eton of the state sector

As readers of this column will know, I’ve spent the last year leading the efforts of a 250-strong group of local parents to start a new state secondary school in west London. One of the toughest things about this crusade is constantly having to bite my tongue. As a journalist, I used to delight in being able to say whatever I pleased and to hell with the consequences. Now I have to be more circumspect. One ill-judged phrase and the whole enterprise could be derailed. I’m often asked what sort of school we’re trying to set up and the answer I want to give — but am reluctant to because

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 5 December 2009

For once, my husband has backed me up, if on dubious grounds. A friend, of previously good character, astonished us both by insisting that the ‘correct’ form of Welsh rabbit was Welsh rarebit. ‘No, it’s not,’ said my husband. ‘I had one at my club only last week.’ It is difficult to see why rarebit should be accorded stronger explanatory force than rabbit. The lamented Robert Burchfield noted in his edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage: ‘This dish of cheese on toast emerged, with rabbit so spelt, in 1725.’ It is also rabbit in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, By a Lady. Here is her recipe: ‘Toast the Bread

The Spectator

Letters | 5 December 2009

Shooting, moi? Sir: We act for Cherie Blair. We are instructed with regard to an article… The Spectator’s Notes by Charles Moore (28 November). It alleged that our client attended a shooting party at Lord Rothschild’s house in Buckinghamshire with ‘Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan dictator, and the man who escorted the Lockerbie bomber, Al Megrahi, home to a hero’s welcome in Libya in August.’ Plainly, this article is highly defamatory of our client as, in suggesting our client was at this shooting party with Saif Al-Islam Gaddaffi [sic], you have alleged that our client was, socialising or ‘rubbing shoulders with’ an individual who, in your words, is

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 5 December 2009

Monday Oh dear. Maybe Mr Maude was right. Maybe we are heading for… no, I won’t say it. I refuse to say the HP words. A few rogue polls, that’s all it is. Dave says this would never have happened if we had got his No Complacency message out properly. We are now under orders to brief that ‘we take nothing for granted’ to at least 50 journalists a day. If we do not fulfil our anti-complacency briefing quotas, we face having our pay docked. Still, there’s some good news. The first official portrait of Dave has been unveiled to universal acclaim, making worthwhile all those hours we put into