Society

Saturday

Claire Berlinski

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Dealing with the aftershocks

By chance, my father and I were together when we heard the news. We had both just flown to Washington DC – he from Paris, I from Istanbul – to care for my grandmother, who¹d had a heart attack. Before the words “major earthquake in Haiti” came over the car radio, we were already under the impression that we were living through a serious family emergency.  But after those words filtered through, the family emergency became far, far more serious. My brother Mischa and his wife Cristina have been living in Haiti for nearly three years. Cristina, an Italian lawyer, has been working for the Justice Section of MINUSTAH, the United

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Would a terrorist really post a warning on Twitter?

This following is definitely in bad taste, isn’t it? I don’t always have a working moral compass when it comes to black humour, but I think this is just the wrong side of the line. Although I’m not sure. A disc jockey from Revolution Radio, in Manchester, played the song ‘Jump’, by Van Halen, as police attempted to coax a suicidal woman down from a nearby motorway bridge. The DJ, Steve Penk, had been inundated by complaints from motorists held up on the road while the police went about their delicate counselling work. Penk did not mention the woman when introducing the song. Somehow the case is not helped by

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 23 January 2010

If shrinks don’t have a term like disproportionate response — you know, getting jailed for clearing the snow off your path or some such madness — then they certainly should have. We need it to do justice to the lunatic levels of hoo-ha, from players, commentators and fans, over Graeme Smith’s referral and phantom snick in the third Test at Johannesburg. As Michael Vaughan, bless, had to point out, it was only a cricket match; nobody had died. It’s pointless bitching that Smith should have walked: I mean, does he look the kind of guy who walks? Mark you, some might think Hashim Amla doesn’t look like the kind of guy who

Patrick Allitt

America the Miserable

Patrick Allitt says that the infuriating but reassuring can-do spirit that once defined the United States is finally dying out. But what will we all do when it’s gone? The first time I went to America, in 1977, I couldn’t believe how cheerful, peppy and purposeful everyone was. The late seventies were bad years by American standards, the Jimmy Carter era of stagflation and malaise, but to someone coming out of Jim Callaghan’s Britain the place seemed almost insanely upbeat. Strangers would greet you enthusiastically, with a ‘How ya doin?’ in New York and a ‘Have you taken Jesus as your personal saviour?’ in small Oklahoma towns, but always with

Richard Villar

Haiti: a week after the earthquake

On Tuesday morning I looked down at the elderly woman lying in the corner of a hotel car park and suspected that my efforts would be futile. She was in a serious condition and obvious pain: intestinal paralysis caused by a broken pelvis and shoulder, the result of being trapped under tons of rubble. Her treatment should have been simple: not surgery necessarily, just careful nursing. But in Port-au-Prince, the hospitals are barely functioning. Wards and operating theatres are cracked and falling down. Most hospital staff are missing, dead, or too grief-stricken to function. My patient had nowhere to go. I could see her abdomen visibly distend. It was so

Stephen Pollard

Why do we kowtow to the MCB?

Last week, the Department for Communities and Local Government announced that it was lifting its ban on Whitehall contact with the Muslim Council of Britain, the self-proclaimed umbrella group of British Muslims. Quite apart from the tactical mistake of such a move — far from being an ally in the fight against extremism, the MCB is part of the problem — the group’s return to the Whitehall fold is a story of breathtaking cynicism and mind-boggling incompetence. In March 2009, the then communities secretary, Hazel Blears, suspended relations with the MCB. The previous month, the body’s deputy secretary-general, Daud Abdullah, had signed the ‘Istanbul Declaration’, a statement by Muslim clerics

Jacob Heilbrunn

Meet the fantastic Mr Fox

Only a year ago the American right was in a state of cataleptic shock as the Democrats won the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency. Conservatism looked as though it was headed for the skids, while the left celebrated its startling comeback. No longer. A populist right-wing revolt against big-government liberalism has sent Obama’s poll ratings plummeting and left the Democrats fearing a battering in the midterm 2010 elections. The Republican Scott Brown’s surprise victory in the race for the late Ted Kennedy’s seat is just the latest blow for poor Obama. How did this all happen so quickly? Look no further than Roger Ailes, the chairman and

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Three tips on how to survive an apocalypse

Looting. I mean, you just would, wouldn’t you? I’d start with a supermarket and a gun shop. Come to think of it, I should probably know where my local gun shop is. Let’s see. Archway? Really? Who knew? Obviously I’m not expecting an earthquake in north London. But who says it has to be an earthquake? Any one of the five modern horsemen of the apocalypse staples would do it, which is to say, nuclear war, natural disaster, disease, zombies and aliens. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the literature — and by the literature I mean Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, any number of films and that curious

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 23 January 2010

In Competition No. 2630 you were invited to imagine that a literary giant of the pre-television age is guest TV critic on The Spectator, and submit an extract from his or her review. As Emma Woodhouse says, ‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.’ So what would the literary greats of the past have thought of 21st-century viewing habits; what, I wonder, would Miss Austen herself have made of a dripping Colin Firth emerging from the lake at Pemberley in a telly adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? In a small but impressive entry, the poets were in fine voice. Here’s a snippet from Frank McDonald

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Publishing the serious case review in the Edlington case is the best way to prevent more awful mistakes

The Edlington case is shocking and depressing to think about. But I would urge you to watch Gavin Esler’s interview of Ed Balls on Newsnight where he challenged Balls over his reasons for not publishing the full case review. Newsnight, who were leaked a copy of the full case review in the Edlington case, pressed Balls on why the full report was not being published when the summary was misleading and did not highlight some of the biggest problems. Balls, as the government does whenever it is challenged on this point, invoked the support of the NSPC, Lord Laming (whose record, as Iain Martin points out, isn’t that great) and

Mark Bathgate

Why Osborne is getting it right on banking

Oh dear. After Massachussetts, it seems like the usual sneering about “populist” politicians, and about voters who aren’t happy with the bankers, is back.  So here are a few facts of life for those knocking people who think the banking sector could still do with a lot of fixing: 1) The financial performance of the financial services industry over the past decade, in aggregate, has been shocking. Someone who had invested in the US or UK stock market would have seen their investment in real terms (net of inflation) fall by over a third. Shareholders have been brutalized for the best part of a generation now. 2) The last ten

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The World’s First Suicide-Bomber Comedy

I think Chris Morris’s new film Four Lions is probably the (English-speaking) world’s first suicide-bomber comedy. So it’s all but guaranteed to offend just about everyone. Splendid. Doubtless it’s a sign of terrible, even craven decadence to admit to looking forward to seeing it… Here’s a clip, anyway:

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Obama’s Culture War

All American Presidents are elected on a platform of hope and change. Each arrives in Washington promising to be, in the words of George W Bush, “a uniter not a divider”. But few took possession of the White House quite as heavily weighed down by the burden of expectation as Barack Hussein Obama. The hopes that accompanied Obama’s election were so extravagant that it became all but inevitable that the 44th President would prove a disappointment once the campaign ended and the torturous business of government began. Even by that standard, however, Obama’s first year in office could be considered under-whelming. His approval rating, once comfortable, has hovered around the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Two child-related incidents

There are two big chunks of child-related outrage in our newspapers today (and tomorrow, I’d guess). The first is the story of a woman with learning difficulties who fled the country with her baby daughter because the local social services department argued that, effectively, she was too thick to bring the kid up. She has now been tracked down and the child taken away. There was outrage, on her behalf, when she fled and there is even more now she has been caught. How can they do this, the inhuman politically correct monkeys in the social services? It’s her human right to have a kid, etc etc. The other chunk

David Blackburn

Dirty tricks are off and running

The Tories are bracing themselves for an election campaign of smears and dirty tricks. Today the sniping begins. Attack dog Liam Byrne has criticised Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ speech in the following terms: “I think when people read what Mr Cameron is saying today they will see that it is quite an unpleasant speech…Mr Cameron is seizing upon one appalling crime and almost tarring the people of Doncaster and the people of Britain.” Cameron is not tarring anyone; he is clear that Doncaster was one of a number of extreme incidents (Baby P being another) that exist alongside a groundswell of anti-social behaviour. The terms ‘Broken Britain’ and ‘moral recession’ are

Thursday

David Blackburn

Poor communication is damaging the Afghan mission

He may be a chateau-bottled shyster, but there is no better communicator of policy than Alastair Campbell. He has penned an article in the FT arguing that the lesson that should have been learned from the Iraq war was how to communicate strategic ideas and objectives. The lack of clarity that came to define Iraq now afflicts Afghanistan: ‘It was hard to discern that approach in the run-up to the Afghan surge being announced, or after it. The surge should have been followed by co-ordinated communications across the alliance. That job is not being done with the vigour and consistency that it should, and the systems of co-ordination have weakened

The Spectator

In this week’s Spectator | 21 January 2010

The latest issue of the Specatator 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 from the latest issue is available for free online to all website users: Labour’s Green Paper on families makes it clear that the party is opposed to promoting marriage. Ferdinand Mount says it’s crucial that the Tories don’t waver, but stick to their promise of a financial incentive. It is not often that David Cameron lavishes praise on a Labour achievement. But that’s

Peter Hoskin

Shining a light into government

I wouldn’t normally start the day by linking to a public sector website – but this one is actually worth your time.  It’s the launch version of data.gov.uk, created with the help of Tim Berners-Lee among others, which aims to present statistics about government performance in a straightforward, easy-to-access way.  You’ll get a sense of what’s there by rummaging around this page: there’s stuff on benefits, deaths, immigration, traffic, and so on. Ok, so it’s not perfect.  You’d hardly call the current crop of data exhaustive, and you could complain that much of it was available previously if you knew where to look for it.  But this is the earliest

Wednesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: Enemy Of The People

There’s a few Early Day Motions in the House of Commons, one of which demands that I should not be made editor of the Independent newspaper, based upon a Guardian story that I was about to be. There are two signatories – the self-publicising, hypocritical pantomime dame Diane Abbott, with whom I have crossed swords before, and the Labour MP for Newport, Paul Flynn. Now, there aren’t very many MPs for whom I have enormous respect, but Flynn is one of them – free thinking, leftish, not afraid to say the unpopular thing, fundamentally decent. So I rang him to moan about the EDM and he said that he’d signed

The Spectator

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