Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

England are Third Best Football Team in the World, Boffins Say!

Sure Barack Obama won the Presidential election last year. But he wasn’t the only big winner. Nate Silver, the number-cruncher behind FiveThirtyEight.com was another victor, having predicted the result with uncanny accuracy. Silver is a sabermetrician, which is to say that he began his public life as an analyst for the brilliant Baseball Prospectus years before he brought his statistical nous to politics. Using regression analyses, among other tools, to predict political outcomes is one thing; trying to create a predictive rankings system for international football is quite another. By “quite another” I mean vastly more difficult. Nonetheless, Silver has attempted this. So, as a rival to FIFA’s rankings (which

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An impossible position

The moment that stuck out for me from today’s PMQs came right towards the end, the exchanges between the leaders were not particularly enlightening. Gerald Howarth, a member of the Tory defence team, rose from the backbenches to tell the House of an email he had received from a friend of one of those men killed in Afghanistan in recent days saying that the coalition is winning there. Howarth asked the PM to help spread this positive message — prompting Labour cries of ‘tell The Sun.’ But in his reply, Brown conspicuously did not say that we were winning. Instead, he concentrated on paying tribute to the bravery of the

Daniel Korski

Helicopter reality

There is something oddly comforting about discussing NATO’s Afghan mission in terms of kit, helicopters and troop numbers – or the lack thereof. These are tangible categories. You either have the right amount or you don’t. And if you don’t, then it is because somebody made the wrong decision or failed to make a timely one. Even Mrs Janes, grief-stricken after the killing of her son, seems to take some comfort in the question of equipment while Liam Fox has made much political capital of the Government’s failures. There are just two problems with this kind of approach to warfare. First, the stories in the press about helicopters take precedence

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Shocker! Public Back Brown!

But only on the absurd row over his letters to the mothers and wives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Heck of a job, Sun. A Politics Home poll reports: And: And: In a way these results are quite comforting. Voters are rather more sophisticated and decent than the papers they read. Thank Christ for that.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Insipid little townships

Just returned from Cambourne, in Cambridgeshire – a town you may have heard of on account of its extraordinary (if you believe the press) birthrate, which is 100 times the national average, or something. It’s a new town, part of the government’s strategy to pave over all of western Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and those remaining bits of Essex which aren’t paved over already. There is the air of David Lynch about Cambourne, or even John Wyndham; pristine, desolate and soulless. Almost no local shops, just a giant Morrisons and a petrol station, one or two blank-faced pubs. Almost everybody in it is roughly the same age and enjoys roughly the

Matthew Lynn

Santander: the bank that escaped the credit crunch

Matthew Lynn investigates the rise and rise of the family-run Spanish bank that now has 24 million British customers — and wonders whether its story is too good to be true If ever a banking deal came with the curse of the black spot, it was the takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro at the height of the last boom in 2007. Three European banks teamed up to launch a hostile £49 billion raid, the largest financial takeover in European history. Two of them went to a horrible fate: our own Royal Bank of Scotland, which dreamed up the deal, had to be rescued by Gordon Brown, while the Belgium-Dutch

Sarah Standing

The ‘bovver birds’ are back

Sarah Standing’s daughter was attacked by a girl gang — but it wasn’t an isolated incident. Female thugs, of the sort who ran riot in the 1970s, are roaming the streets again It was a beautiful balmy evening when my youngest daughter finished school last summer. The A-level results had just arrived, and she was happily ambling home from supper with two girlfriends. They were in no rush. They’re 18 and were about to spread their wings, leave London for the first time and head off towards various universities. They were finally ‘grown up’ — with parental curfew lifted, able to judge risks for themselves. And walking along the King’s

David Frum

Listen up, Dave: to care is not to do

David Frum on the lessons the Tories can learn from the original conservative moderniser: George W. Bush, whose progressive policies often just didn’t add up Political parties typically undergo a four-stage cycle after a major defeat. It goes something like this: 1. We didn’t really lose. (The other guys just happened to luck into an appealing candidate — but the people still really prefer us.) 2. OK, we lost — but only because the voters are idiots. 3. OK, we lost and maybe the voters are not idiots — but there is nothing we can do without betraying our sacred principles. 4. Hey, maybe there is something we can do. The British Conservative

Pavel Stroilov

Kinnock and the Kremlin

In the second part of our investigation into Labour’s dealings with the USSR, Pavel Stroilov reveals the secret Soviet diplomacy behind one leader’s most famous victory Labour leaders, past and present, will be wishing this week that Anatoly Chernyaev had not been such an assiduous diarist. Along with thousands of documents left in the archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the diplomat’s personal writings had lain forgotten for more than 20 years. Last week, extracts in The Spectator cast light on Labour’s ‘special relationship’ with the Kremlin and the various officials who begged for its help to fight the Conservatives. This week, we reveal more documents from Soviet

Tuesday

David Blackburn

A chance for parliament to re-assert itself

This afternoon, I had the great privilege of hearing Geoffrey Robertson QC and Sir Ken MacDonald QC argue why English libel law must be reformed. Up to this point I had, along with most of the audience I suspect, assumed that reform would only benefit journalists. I suppose that illustrates just how narcissistic the profession is because now I see that libel reform is essential for the preservation free speech and the sanctity of English law. As Geoffrey Robertson put it, “We do not have free speech in this country, we have expensive speech.” English libel actions cost several million pounds to fight – 140 times more than the European

Mark Bathgate

Two elementary mistakes

The warnings from around the world about the scale of the UK’s government debt crisis keep flowing in. Following last week’s warnings from the IMF and European Commission about the scale of the UK debt crisis, credit rating agency Fitch has described the UK as the AAA country most vulnerable to a downgrade. The table at the bottom of the page shows the European Commission’s forecasts for Government deficits as a share of GDP for next year. The UK beats IMF bailout case, Latvia, to head the league table with a deficit level almost double the EU average. The Commission estimates that the UK’s total debt will have almost doubled

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

To you Celtic Football Club, I say: Never!

Celtic supporters sung Irish “rebel” songs during the one minute’s Remembrance Day silence before the kick off of their game at Falkirk. Even more Celtic fans waited outside the turnstiles so that they would not have to take part in the commemoration. What an unspeakably foul club it is, bigoted and filled with sectarian hatred. And yet the only Glasgow club which ever gets punished for fuelling sectarian hatred is its rival, Rangers. It is not so long ago that FIFA decided that Rangers supporters were racist bigots for singing their fatuous, hate-filled tales about the Battle of the Boyne etc, while Celtic’s supporters were merely reveling in a noble

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown on the rack

Watching Gordon Brown’s press conference you realise how on the ropes he is. The opening questions are all about the letter and Brown’s misspellings. Brown doesn’t have an answer that can shut this damaging story down and it is noticeable how he lacks the easy, public empathy of a Blair or a Cameron. Then the focus turns to Afghanistan and Brown lacks a compelling rationale for the presence of British troops there. All the while, everyone is forgetting the announcements on the NHS which Brown was trying to showcase this morning. When you consider that even with Brown acting as a drag on Labour’s electoral fortunes, some polls only suggest

David Blackburn

One Nation

David Cameron received a standing ovation after he proclaimed “Don’t dare lecture us about poverty”,  illustrating that compassionate conservatism is a central issue to the Conservative party. Today, David Cameron will set out his blueprint to eradicate poverty, which, together with education reform and the promotion of the family, form the compassionate case. Cameron is expected to say: “Our alternative to big government is not no government. Our alternative to big government is the big society, but we understand that the big society is not just going to spring to life on its own: we need strong and concerted government action to make it happen. We need to use the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The pressure’s on Osborne

The Times tempted fate today with its splash boasting about the confidence and the strong pound. Fitch Ratings has today said that Britain’s AAA debt rating is more at risk than that of any other major nation because it needs “the largest budget adjustment” – ie, the most cuts – because Britain has the largest fiscal mess, and by some margin. (Sterling is off today on the news). But then Fitch says, more or less, that it’s banking on George Osborne’s first budget to sort the mess out. “Our stable rating outlook reflected our expectation that the U.K. government will articulate a stronger fiscal consolidation program next year.” The Conservatives

David Blackburn

Keeping the lights on

It may have come ten years late, but Ed Miliband’s decision to bypass planning processes for nuclear plants is welcome. Britain faces unprecedented energy insecurity, with widespread power cuts predicted from 2017. Rather than trust Vladimir Putin not to turn the top-off whenever he’s feeling piqued, or to rely on the totally unreliable Colonel Gadaffi, or import energy, the government will increase nuclear output to 25 percent of national production. To achieve this, government will act with almost dictatorial reach to circumvent local communities and their right to determine the scale and scope of local construction. Expense has long been an argument against nuclear power and each of the ten

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The March of the Surveillance State

Good grief: All telecoms companies and internet service providers will be required by law to keep a record of every customer’s personal communications, showing who they are contacting, when, where and which websites they are visiting. Despite widespread opposition over Britain’s growing surveillance society, 653 public bodies will be given access to the confidential information, including police, local councils, the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service, fire authorities and even prison governors. They will not require the permission of a judge or a magistrate to access the information, but simply the authorisation of a senior police officer or the equivalent of a deputy head of department at a local authority.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Without War We Are Nothing. Apparently.

Happily my Outrage Outage didn’t last long. Thanks, Robert Kaplan! Your Atlantic column on the fall of the Berlin Wall proved a most adequate tonic. You conclude your piece: What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence. Thus, with their patriotism dissipated, European governments can no longer ask for sacrifices from their populations when it comes to questions of peace and war. Ironically, we may have gained victory in the Cold War, but lost Europe in the process. Well! It’s almost as though Kaplan thinks more wars are a good thing!

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Blog Fail

Apologies for the light blogging. I’ve failed to be outraged by anything today. Lamentably, this even includes not being outraged by the outrage over whatever it is that’s the outrage of the day. Will try and do better tomorrow.

David Blackburn

Raving lunatic hails Major Hasan a ‘hero’

It’s worth noting this find that Harry’s Place has made. Anwar al Awlaki describes Major Hasan’s atrocity as ‘the right thing to do’. Al Awlaki is the former Imam of Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, where Hasan was a congregant. I maintain that it is too early to assert whether Hasan is or is not a ‘jihadist’ in the strict sense, but that his rapid freefall into homicidal madness would suggest that that he is a lunatic who happens to be a ‘devout’ Muslim; although in no way does that make him a victim.  Al Awlaki’s spiel highlights the absence of any moral objectivity to archaic, intolerant and