Society

Saturday

13 Mar 2010

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

The Spectator

Letters | 13 March 2010

Not cricket Sir: Many a cricket follower (‘Cricket’s foreign legion’, 6 March) would join Peter Oborne in denouncing the growth of South African mercenaries entering our domestic game. As a county cricket spectator, I have always enjoyed scouting for new talent for our national team. It gave me great pleasure to watch an emerging Michael Vaughan score a double century at Scarborough in the early days of his career, and see Graeme Swann spin-bowling for Northamptonshire: both of them with obvious England potential. Somehow it is not quite the same these days, as we survey the array of journeyman players. John Walker Abingdon By the book Sir: Professor Ekirch (Letters,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 13 March 2010

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, appeared before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war and denied that as Chancellor of the Exchequer he had harmfully squeezed defence budgets. ‘At any point, commanders were able to ask for equipment that they needed and I know of no occasion when they were turned down,’ he said. ‘That is simply disingenuous,’ said Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, Chief of the Defence Staff from 1997 to 2001. ‘He’s being disingenuous,’ said Lord Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff from 2001 to 2003. Mr Brown then flew off to see British troops in Afghanistan. The death of a British soldier in Helmand brought the

The Spectator

C’est fini

The most distressing news of the week may be the suggestion that the world’s most entertaining love affair — between Nicolas Sarkozy and his First Lady, Carla Bruni — is drawing to a close. The most distressing news of the week may be the suggestion that the world’s most entertaining love affair — between Nicolas Sarkozy and his First Lady, Carla Bruni — is drawing to a close. The rumours began on Twitter, where they could be easily ignored, but now Le Journal du Dimanche has confirmed what it calls the story of the year. The presidential marriage is ‘breathing its last breaths’, it says. Perhaps it was optimistic to

The Spectator

The scandal of Scotland

A politician, a cocaine dealer, blackmail, links to organised crime and the mysterious death of a teenage boy: it is hard to think of more potent ingredients for a political scandal. Had it happened in Paris, the story would be all over the English press. But this scandal took place in Glasgow — so the London papers are not interested. After devolution, Scotland is fast becoming a foreign land about which the English know little and care less. The downfall of Steven Purcell, leader of Glasgow City Council, is not just a tale of one man’s collapse, but a grim allegory for the tragedy of devolution. Purcell was, until last

James Forsyth

If the Lib Dems could hold the balance of power in the next parliament, then they should be subject to the same level of scrutiny as the two major parties

With another poll showing the Tories short of the lead they need to be sure of a majority—ICM for the Sunday Telegraph has the Tories on 38, Labour on 31 and the Lib Dems on 21—we are going to hear even more about a hung parliament and the role of the Lib Dems; I can’t remember any Lib Dem leader getting as much media attention as Nick Clegg has had these past four days. But if the Lib Dems are a potential party of government, then they should be a subject to a whole another level of scrutiny. For example, in the Newsnight education debate, David Laws implied that the

James Forsyth

Cameron’s Osborne comments are far from helpful to the Tory cause

I must admit I am baffled as to why David Cameron has chosen now as the moment to reopen the question of under what circumstances he would move George Osborne from his job as shadow Chancellor. The Times reports that Cameron says in his interview with Sir Trevor McDonald that he has talked to Osborne “a number of times” about moving him. This isn’t the first time that Cameron hasdiscussed publicly the possibility of having to sack his good friend. But the timing is particularly unhelpful considering that the Labour party and its allies are targeting Osborne as the weak link in the Tory campaign at the moment. Cameron’s language

Allister Heath

Day one: getting us back in business

Dear Treasury Permanent Secretary, Good news: the nightmare is over. We both know that Gordon Brown is one of the greatest economic vandals ever to have resided in Downing Street. And to make Britain competitive again will require hard work. We can start immediately, and without the need for legislation. I’d like the following to be in place by the end of our first 100 days. 1) Please draw up plans for a two-year public sector pay freeze, and for a few billion pounds worth of immediate cuts. Rather than trimming spending across all departments, I’d like to axe entire programmes. These will include Sure Start, which would save £1.4

Interconnect

How to start saving Britain in ten minutes

The work begins Subject: No time to lose Date: Friday, 7 May 2010 14:28 From: David Cameron To: Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary Dear Gus, The Queen has just invited me to form a government. I’m sending this on by BlackBerry in the car, because there is a degree of urgency. Our country has been badly broken by 13 years of bad government. There is, literally, not a moment to lose in fixing it. The Queen has asked me to govern for up to five years, and mentioned to me that her father saw our country win a world war in six years. Her point: that five years is plenty

Ed Howker

Community spirit

If you really want to know how obtuse, how jaded, how downright bizarre Britain’s planning system is, you need only consult the findings of Lord Walker, the Supreme Court Judge who last week answered the question: should you show deference to local golfers? An odd question for sure, but one upon which rested the £55 million development of 300 homes on the Teeside coastline in a place called Coatham Common. The five residents who brought the case fought a six-year battle to preserve their local green space which, by the time it reached Lord Walker, had spent longer in court than Perry Mason. His ruling stated that simply because local

Charlie Elphicke

A manifesto for the 2010 Tory intake

If the Conservatives win the next election, a majority of the Tory benches will be made up of members of the 2010 intake. We will be, in terms of numbers, the most significant intake for 60 years and will have huge influence on the party in years to come. So, what do I and my colleagues believe? We all share a commitment to people power and we see the potential for a new social covenant establishing that government belongs to the people and is the servant of the people. We want a government that is more transparent and accountable and we want to roll back the ‘surveillance state’. We subscribe

Ross Clark

Time for the dynamic state

A visitor returning to Britain after 30 years could easily be fooled — by the sight of privatised buses and by the replacement of heavy nationalised industries by hi-tech business parks — into thinking that Britain has been transformed from a sub-socialist society into a dynamic free enterprise economy. In some ways that may be true, yet paradoxically the public sector is actually larger relative to the rest of the economy than it was in the dying days of the last Labour government. In 1979 the government accounted for 45 pence in every pound spent in the UK economy. This financial year it will be 47.5 pence. What are public

Rupert Darwall

Tear up Britain’s ‘Renewables Obligation’

Unaffordable and unsustainable, Rupert Darwall explains why Labour’s worst stealth tax must be abolished The bubble has burst; there are no proceeds of growth to share and Britain’s budget deficit is, in the words of one central banker, truly frightening. Can Mr Cameron give voters a break, one which will leave them tangibly better off and is unambiguously good for the economy? Yes he can. The Renewables Obligation can claim to be Labour’s worst stealth tax. Unlike VAT, it is bundled into people’s electricity and gas bills without them knowing how much it costs. The money it raises is then spent with minimal accountability or regard for value for money.

Stephen Brien

Make work pay – for all

Stephen Brien explains how Britain’s welfare system must change Welfare dependency is one of the most pernicious problems facing modern Britain and its deprived communities. When William Beveridge was planning the welfare state, he spoke about the giant evil of idleness: not just a waste of economic potential, but of human potential too. The tragedy is that his welfare system has gone on to incubate the very problem it was designed to eradicate. It was intended to support those who were unable to work, or for whom there were no jobs. But the benefits system now actively discourages people from taking a job, or working more hours. For millions, welfare

Douglas Carswell

Time to lift the House of Commons off its knees

What if we win office, but nothing changes? What if, instead of running a new government, triumphant Tory ministers discover that the machinery of government runs them? Making sure that does not happen requires a strategy. Opposition may be a time for tactics, but how we fare in office will hinge on having a robust, coherent plan. We must have a strategy to make government properly accountable to parliament, and parliament to the people. The MPs’ expenses scandal has turned many people against democracy. ‘If this is how those scoundrels behave,’ runs the argument, ‘MPs can’t be trusted with anything.’ It is almost as if being elected to public office

Matthew Sinclair

The unelected bodies that just won’t die

Unruly, bizarre and hungry for your money, Britain’s quangos must be stopped, says Matthew Sinclair They are our longest-running political horror story. And, under Labour, they have been ever more unruly, increasingly dangerous and always ready to suck the blood of taxpayer’s wealth. For several decades politicians have been discussing cutting the number of Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations (quangos). Back in 1991, even Gordon Brown was talking about it. But it seems Britain’s vampire quangos cannot be killed. The most recent TaxPayers’ Alliance survey found that there are now 1,148 national quangos and other arm’s-length bodies in the UK, spending over £90 billion of taxpayers’ money and delivering huge areas of

Julian Glover

And in the event of a hung parliament…

David Cameron may have to rely on Nick Clegg to form a majority. But Julian Glover says that a deal should be simple – if they focus on areas where they already agree In late 2007 two fresh-faced, privately educated party leaders gave speeches setting out their philosophies. ‘We’ve always been motivated by a strong and instinctive scepticism about the capacity of bureaucratic systems to deliver progress,’ said one. I want ‘a politics of people, not systems, of communities, not bureaucracies; of individual innovation, not administrative intervention,’ said the other. ‘The days of big government solutions – of “the man in Whitehall knows best” – are now coming to an

Samuel Brittan

Don’t panic — a hung parliament might be good

Although I have been a reader of The Spectator almost since I have been in short trousers I have rarely been as irritated by an article as I was by last week’s cover story, ‘Britain must be saved from the financial abyss’. Its author, Allister Heath, is by no means a lone voice: he speaks for a considerable number of vocal, if unrepresentative people in the City who believe a hung parliament would mean weak government and fiscal peril. This view is profoundly mistaken. The implication of this argument is that, even to Conservative voters, a Labour victory would be preferable to a House of Commons where neither of the

Harry Mount

‘I went into the war as a student and came out as an artist’

Ronald Searle, who turned 90 this month, talks to Harry Mount about being captured by the Japanese, chronicling the 1950s and inventing both St Trinian’s and Molesworth High in the mountains of Provence, in a low-ceilinged studio at the top of his teetering tower house, Ronald Searle is showing me the simple child’s pen he uses. As he draws the pen down the page, the ink thickens and swerves; a few sideways strokes, a little cross-hatching, and suddenly the famous Searle line comes to life: part Gothic, part anarchic, part comic. The girls of St Trinian’s, Nigel Molesworth, Adolf Eichmann, thousands of Punch caricatures, the Goya-like pictures of dying prisoners