Society

Monday

Mark Bathgate

Three steps to cleaning up our toxic banks

Fraser outlined the problem with the British banks in his earlier post, but I’d like to suggest a three-step solution.   1. To deal with the problem, you have to admit to the problem. This is the First Step for Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step plan but holds true for politics. Say it out loud: the banking system is still broken. It needs fixed, and the process won’t be pretty. There will always be a political temptation to turn a blind eye, as there was in Japan during its ‘lost decade’. 2. Use an objective and credible third party to analyse the ability of banks to withstand losses, and to go

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Essence of Palinism

Commenting on Sarah Palin here, regular correspondent Snowman does us all a favour by distilling Palinism to its essence: Tell me, if you will, what is it that irks you that much? If she is that of a comedian, why does she make you madder than the dogs, ha? You reckon the great unwashed of America have to told by the likes of you what to think of her? Why? Do you possess the capacity to tell us how to rate politicians, how to think, how to live our lives? Isn’t ‘hopeandchange’ equally glib? Glibness happens to be the trademark of any political rhetoric, it’s the art of talking a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Clausewitz on Cricket III

An occasional series in which the great theorist’s ideas are considered in terms of how they may be applied to cricket. Today: defence. Granted, Clausewitz takes the view that the defensive side in war generally finds itself in a stronger position than is customarily the case on the cricket field. Nonetheless, his observations on Types of Resistance are germane: Defence is thus composed of two distinct parts, waiting and acting. By linking the former to a definite object that precedes action, we have been able to merge the two into one whole. But a defensive action – especially a large-scale one such as a campaign or war – will not

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Price fixing

Is it any wonder people get depressed in January? Something really sinister happens at this time of year. It begins, of course, with the boiler breaking down. This is only to be expected in heavy snow because boilers are not machines. They are sentient beings with malicious personal agendas. They wait patiently until it gets really cold then start dripping and spluttering and making pathetic choking noises that sound ever so slightly like ‘help! I’m dying!’ until you are forced to call out Tony the plumber. There are many baffling things about plumbers but by far the most baffling thing about mine is that he always charges exactly the same

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 16 January 2010

Q. I was invited to a very informal kitchen supper by a friendly neighbour and his wife. It would be just the three of us, and I strolled round there in anticipation of an enjoyable few hours of exchanging indiscretions. My problem is that when I walked into the kitchen I saw an open laptop at one end of the table laid for three — in the fourth place as it were. The screen showed a man I had not met before waving, apparently at me, and raising a glass of wine in my direction. My host boasted that he had just got Skype which would enable us to ‘have

Toby Young Toby Young

What happened when I tried to join the internet’s ‘beautiful people’

As a columnist, I’m often asked whether I deliberately place myself in embarrassing situations for the purpose of furnishing myself with comic material. The answer, regrettably, is no. My life is humiliating enough without me having to court embarrassment. However, when I read that a dating site called beautifulpeople.com had expelled over 5,000 members for letting themselves go over the festive period I felt compelled to submit a membership application. This involves uploading a photograph of yourself and then waiting for existing members to decide whether you’re attractive enough to join their exclusive ranks. They have a choice of four responses: ‘Yes, definitely’, ‘Hmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmm no, not really’

The Spectator

Letters | 16 January 2010

Gangster paradise Sir: Owen Matthews’s article (‘Something rotten in the state of Russia’, 9 January) brilliantly encapsulates and explains the condition of Russia today. But he omits to mention that the subversion of the judicial system and pervasive corruption have been in evidence for a long time, which does raise the question of whether Hermitage capital should have been in this European country at all. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and the refusal of the Russians to extradite the chief suspect constituted — unless you are wilfully blind — a good reason to suspect that Russia is run by crooks. The 2005 mock trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody | 16 January 2010

Monday V exciting! Now that we’ve decided to do married tax breaks for couples with children under five we’ll need an acronym. So we’re having a competition! I’ve come up with… the Married Couples With Children Under Five Allowance, or McWicufa. Pretty snappy huh! Everyone joining in the fun except for IDS who’s in a stinky mood and says if we’re going to limit his great innovation to couples with children we had better stipulate how many. He says only those with at least five children all aged under five should qualify. Something to do with God’s will and every sperm being sacred. Wasn’t that a song? I don’t know.

Dylan Jones

Diary – 16 January 2010

A side effect of last week’s failed putsch is Peter Mandelson resuming his position at the front end of Gordon Brown’s election pantomime horse — pushing Harriet Harman into the rear. This is not good news for the Tories, as Harman would undoubtedly have alienated even more floating voters. I sat between her and Boris Johnson at a lunch recently, and what hard work it was. The Mayor was the guest speaker, but (naturally) arrived late and completely unprepared. He spent 20 minutes frantically scribbling on a piece of paper, talking to no one. I had no choice but to speak to the person on my left, the aforementioned Deputy Leader

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 16 January 2010

A failed attempt by Mr Geoff Hoon and Miss Patricia Hewitt to provoke a ballot on the Labour leadership was not mentioned at the next meeting of the Cabinet meeting, Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister said. Instead he had urged ministers to apply a ‘laser focus’ on Britain’s problems, such as the weather. A week earlier, Mr Brown had said that Labour had a ‘laser focus on school standards’. He told the News of the World that he had been inspired, like Nelson Mandela, by W.E. Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’ (though he did not mention that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, had been inspired by it too). Mr Alan Johnson,

The Spectator

Our real supreme court

It is tempting to cheer the European Court of Human Rights’s ruling in the case of Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton. They have been awarded £30,000 in compensation on the grounds that the powers used by the police to detain them at a protest outside an arms fair in Docklands six years ago were illiberal. It is a depressing little tale of how legislation passed by Parliament to fight terrorism has been hijacked by the police for everyday policing. But also a depressing reminder of where legal sovereignty in Britain now lies. We have, in Parliament Square, a new building entitled the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. A lawyer

The Spectator

Cold hearts

Perhaps the least fashionable cause in Britain is the welfare of our elderly. At least 35,000 old men and women will die from the cold this winter: a staggering, scandalous figure. We are a rich country, there are many ingenious and inexpensive ways to heat a house, yet every August, when the number of ‘excess winter deaths’ are disclosed, the extent of our national incompetence or indifference becomes clear. No one asks why so many more pensioners die each winter in Britain than in Norway. The winter cull of our elderly has become accepted as part of national life. Had 35,000 died from the heat, there would have been an

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 16 January 2010

The failed Hoon–Hewitt coup against the Prime Minister offers a clear Roman lesson — if you strike, you strike early and you strike hard. The failed Hoon–Hewitt coup against the Prime Minister offers a clear Roman lesson — if you strike, you strike early and you strike hard. When, for example, the despotic madman Caligula was cut down, the idea was that the republic would be restored. But as the senate endlessly debated the matter, the army moved in. Claudius (nephew of the previous emperor Tiberius) was hauled out from behind a curtain where he had hidden himself — a soldier spotted his feet — and taken to the barracks

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Osborne looks to Sweden, but let’s not turn Japanese

The Tories have said plenty to dismay me in the last few weeks, so I was delighted to pick up the FT today to see George Osborne talking sense – and boldness. Given that we have to increase taxes, it’s an obvious one to raise. The “too big to fail” principle means that the state now provides de facto insurance to banks – so it’s reasonable that they pay for that insurance. The whole tone of Osborne’s interview is reassuring, especially as he indictates he is studing the aggressive Swedish reponse to the fiscal crisis. He indicates Tories are looking at plugging the deficit with 80 percent cuts and 20percent

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Has Mandelson won a lasting victory on strategy?

Today was a day which demonstrated just how much Peter Mandelson has won back the turf he lost before Christmas in recent weeks. First, there was his interview in the Telegraph where he comes out for the 50p top rate of tax going down when the fiscal situation allows. Then, there was Gordon Brown’s speech to the Fabians brimful of talk about aspiration. Finally, there were Mandelson’s own brief remarks at that event which emphasised that ‘government alone cannot create jobs’ and the need to create a pro-business environment. The question is whether Brown has now decided to stick by Mandelson’s suggested strategy all the way to the election, or

Paul Wood

Yemen is a lesson in the limits of Western power

It is 3 a.m. in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the Horse Shoe nightclub is a tableau to inflame the Jihadi heart with rage. To thumping music, Yemeni prostitutes cavort with fat, thuggish-looking local men. The tables are dotted with bottles of single malt costing $500 each (almost a year’s wages for the average Yemeni). The hotel which houses the Horse Shoe, the Mövenpick, is assumed to be one of al-Qa’eda’s main targets, after the British and US embassies just across the road.Visiting journalists usually ask for rooms at the back, just in case a truck bomb makes it past the Yemeni army machine-gun emplacements at the entrance. Still, no

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Has Dave abandoned the self-made man?

Cameron’s inclinations are to help the rich and the ‘romantic’ poor and do little for those who’ve bettered themselves, says Ross Clark. But can he rely on the middle-class vote? There may be no big idea but there is an important concept lurking on the back page of the Conservatives’ draft manifesto on health. And if party strategists want to get through the election campaign without offending a large sector of its core vote, they had better make sure it stays there. The idea is worded thus: ‘we will weight public health funding so that extra resources go to the poorest areas with the worst health outcomes through a new

Paul Johnson

When dons were still happy to be egregious

Before the advent of Political Correctness — the system of censorship which has settled over the English-speaking world like a dense cloud of phosgene gas — clever people were unashamed of being eccentric. This applied particularly to dons. I am reminded of this by browsing through a gigantic book, Magdalen College, Oxford: A History, edited by L.W.B. Brockliss. How lucky I was to go to that magical place when the people who ran it were still totally self-confident, and not afraid, as Belloc put it, ‘to shout the absolute across the hall’. This magnificent book, probably the finest college history ever put together, is a threnody for the weird personalities

Matthew Lynn

Let Greece go bust

The Greeks lied and cheated their way into the eurozone, says Matthew Lynn — and letting them get away with it through a bailout threatens the euro with collapse When Greece officially replaced the drachma with the euro on 1 January 2001, nobody was in the mood to mourn the world’s oldest currency. A public holiday was declared for 2 January, ushering in a week of celebrations as the country joined the club of rich European countries. Whatever regrets people might have had about losing a currency with which Alexander the Great was familiar were drowned out by the promise of future prosperity. Backed by low interest rates set in

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Be thankful for Cheshire salt: at least we don’t have to buy the stuff from Russia

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business The winter is arctic and the economy is a long way from spring, but commodities are hot again. Gold, the doomsters’ favourite, has a charmed life of its own, though its recent ascent has run out of oomph. Copper, the metal of choice for professionals betting on global recovery, perked up at the beginning of 2009 and has climbed steadily most of the way back to its 2008 peak. Nickel, zinc and aluminium bounced last spring in anticipation of a surge of industrial demand and continue to zigzag upwards, offering good returns for those who get their timing right. But the natural resource du