Society

Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update II

The national newspapers may not be terribly interested in the Paul Clarke case but, happily, legal blogger Jack of Kent is. He’s produced a detailed account of the case, and the law, that I highly recommend. Mr Clarke may not be the ideal poster boy for liberty but it’s equally clear that this is of little to no import. What we have here, as Jack of Kent makes clear, is a case that makes a nonsense of a) strict liability offences, b) manadatory minimums, c) the police and d) the CPS. It’s possible that e) the judiciary and f) the jury could also be added to this list. Mr Clarke

The problem with Brown’s latest Big Idea

There’s some very readable stuff in this week’s Economist (including a leader which outlines what Brown’s government should – but almost certainly won’t – do with its “last months in power”).  But if you read only one article from it, make sure it’s the Bagehot column and its dissection of Brown’s latest Big Idea: public service guarantees.   These are the pledges-turned-legal entitlements which popped up throughout the Queen’s Speech – such as the “guarantee” that patients will have hospital treatment within 18 weeks of being referred by a GP.  As Bagehot points out, it’s a problematic approach: ‘To be worth the manifesto paper they will be printed on, public-service

James Forsyth

The EU plumps for obscure and even more obscure as its first president and foreign minister 

You can say this for the European Union, it never misses a chance to disappoint. The first EU president is a Belgium Prime Minister who is obscure even by Belgium standards and its first foreign minister is a Brit who would be treated as a joke if they had been made Foreign Secretary.    From a British political point of view, Brown will be able to take credit for getting the foreign minister post for a Brit. But the price he has had to pay for this is accepting a federalist who believes in EU wide taxes as president.    Thinking from a Tory perspective, Van Rompuy is both an

Alex Massie

La Main du Match

Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images If there were a World Cup for Being Sanctimonious, Ireland would qualify every time. So, mind you, might Scotland. The aftermath of last night’s match in Paris has been predictably entertaining. One refereeing blunder (though it’s quite pssible the referee was unsighted and so did not, in fact, “bottle” the decision) has provided ample opportunity for cant and humbug. Thus, the Irish demand that the match be replayed. Good idea! Let’s have another go at the 1966 World Cup Final while we’re at it! FAI President John Delaney complains: “There’s a team that should be in the World Cup today and that’s us. We should be

Rod Liddle

Somali savages update

Here’s a story from today’s Daily Mail, with a cut-out-keep picture, of Somali Muslim savages stoning to a twenty year old woman for the crime of adultery. Last year they killed a thirteen year old girl in a similar fashion; seven Muslim states stone women to death for adultery, and they will even provide the stones for you, which is thoughtful. Eleven will chop your head off if you renounce the Muslim faith. The overwhelming majority of Islamic states will either kill you, send you to work in a labour camp, put you in prison or fine you if you are gay. Bugger someone adulterously in Somalia while calling a

In this week’s Spectator | 19 November 2009

The latest issue of the Spectator is released 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 now. Five articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users: Con Coughlin believes that Barack Obama’s increasing disregard for Britain’s views is no way to treat an ally whose troops have fought side by side with America since September 11. Obama has become our absent ally; he is practising a very special form of disrespect. It did not strike Matthew Parris, as he set out for a couple

Rod Liddle

Background has nothing to do with being funny 

There’s a piece by my friend Dominic Lawson in the Independent yesterday, eulogizing the comedian Michael MacIntyre. At last, Dominic suggests, here is a comic who is not afraid to be middle class and nor is he coarse or cruel. Perhaps; but he is not terribly funny, either, whatever class he belongs to. You sometimes smile in recognition of his observations – as Dominic puts it – “of the everyday domestic engagements of bourgeois life.” But you are rarely arrested by what he has to say; pulled up short, gasping with incredulity at the sharpness of the observation, of what it uncovers and what it says about us. And still

Nothing to see here

Blink and you missed it.  After seven minutes, the Queen had rattled through the Government’s legislative agenda for the next few months.  It was all pretty much as expected – although it’s worth noting the “council of financial stability,” made up of the Treasury, the Bank of England and FSA, chaired by the Chancellor, and which was first mooted back in July.  The question is whether any of this will connect with the public.  I rather doubt it. We’ll put footage on Coffee House as soon as it’s available.

Queen’s Speech Live Blog

Stay tuned for live coverage from 14:30. Here we go. 14:40: Rather a self-deprecating and witty loyal address by self-confessed “dinosaur still living”, Frank Dobson. He gives a wonderful potted political history of his constituency, Holborn and St. Pancras, with particular reference to John Bellingham, who assassinated Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, whose descendant is a Tory MP. Dobson ends by celebrating the House of Commons and parliamentary democracy, though urging its urgent reform and that MPs listen to constituents; and he defends multi-cultural society, pointing towards his own constituency’s solidarity in the face of the 7/7 outrage. 15:00: David Cameron is on his feet, prasing the proposer and seconder of

England’s botched bid to stage the 2018 World Cup

To understand how World Cup bids are won, let me take you to the third-floor suite of Dolder Grand hotel overlooking Lake Zurich. The date is May 2004 and the cast as high-powered as you would expect in any political summit. There was Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, his predecessor. They had come to meet Jack Warner, the Trinidadian vice-president of FIFA — the organisation which controls world football. Warner had been sympathetic to South Africa’s bid for the 2010 World Cup, but had suddenly turned cold — refusing to return any calls to Cape Town. So the South Africans had come to see him.

Riddle of the sands

Justin Marozzi explains why new archaeological finds from Egypt’s Western Desert show that Herodotus deserves his reputation as the Father of History I couldn’t help it. I whooped uncontrollably into my Jordans Country Crisp with strawberries when I heard the news last week, startling my wife and spilling milk and crispy clusters onto a bemused but grateful dog. An Italian team of archaeologists had made what looked like a hugely important discovery in Egypt’s Western Desert, apparently unearthing remains of the lost army of Cambyses which, according to Herodotus, was swallowed up by a ferocious sandstorm 2,500 years ago. Had they laid to rest one of the world’s greatest archaeological

Martin Vander Weyer

The time is ripe to launch Spectator Bank

Bankers are often accused of having such short memories that they are condemned to repeat the errors of their immediate predecessors, only more so. They would certainly need elephantine memories to remember a time when new banks, each with a distinctive mission and marketplace, were coming to life and flourishing everywhere. Indeed it was, in a corporate sense, Britain’s oldest banker — Alexander Hoare, 11th-generation head of C. Hoare & Co of Fleet Street, though himself still only in his forties — who pointed this out to me long before the credit crunch started knocking over high-street lenders like wonky dominoes. ‘It’s a sign of market failure that so many

Surprising literary ventures | 18 November 2009

The Benefit of Farting was published in pamphlet form in 1722, ostensibly by one Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast at the University of Crackow (a ‘crack’ being 18th-century slang for a fart). The Benefit of Farting was published in pamphlet form in 1722, ostensibly by one Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast at the University of Crackow (a ‘crack’ being 18th-century slang for a fart). Its real author, however, was Jonathan Swift, though you will search in vain through biographies to find any reference to the fact. That The Benefit of Farting was a real emanation of the Dean of St Patrick’s is hardly to be doubted, since it

James Forsyth

Why doesn’t Brown go the whole hog?

Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that: “As a prelude to next week’s announcement Mr Brown will today set out his plans for “a smarter, more efficient and more responsive government.” Among the plans Mr Brown wants 2,000 sets of data up and running and available to the public from January. It would include areas like the road traffic counts from last eight years; all legislation on a database for the first time; property prices listed with stamp duty yield; all motoring offences with the type of offence and the numbers, by county, for the top six offences. Farm survey data would also be available. The Prime Minister will point to the

Alex Massie

Health Care Reform is a Zombie Policy

Peter Suderman notes that the Democrats’ health care plans have to play a finesse: on the one hand they promise that everything will get better; on the other they reassure you that most things will stay just the same. Tricky! Worse, much worse, for those of us who hope that Congress passes or kills health care reform – either, don’t care which, just do it sharpish! – is the terrifying prospect that health care reform is the zombie monster of all policy zombie monsters: On a note that’s scary in a different way, the piece quotes Harvard health policy professor Robert Blendon as saying that even if the bill passes,

The gathering storm

The UK inflation rate again “surprised” to the upside today, registering at 1.5%. As the above chart shows, the UK now has by some margin the highest inflation rate in G7. Were it not for the temporary VAT cut – which takes about 1% off the current CPI rate – the rate would be moving quickly above the Bank of England’s target of 2%. It would seem that the deflation threat, used as justification for the Bank of England deciding to finance the Government’s deficit this year through printing money, has not transpired. A severe recession and rise in unemployment has hit the economy, but this seems to be one

Alex Massie

Paul Clarke Update

Remember the outcry after the discovery that Paul Clarke could face five years in prison for the “crime” of finding a sawn-off shotgun in his garden and handing it in to his local police station? No, me neither. Well, blog-land has not been happy about this but, as a reader points out, our friends at newspapers and the BBC have completely ignored it: This story is getting zero coverage. I’ve seen more coverage from American websites than I have from UK sources. I’ve done a search at the Times, the Guardian and the BBC News website and – unless I’m doing something very wrong – none of them seem to