Society

Saturday

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The towering Inferno

When you sit down next weekend (13 February) to watch the first competitors blast through the starting gate of the men’s downhill, the blue riband event of this year’s Winter Olympics in Whistler, I hope you will spare a moment to think back to a clear but windy day in Switzerland more than 80 years ago. It was in the early morning of 29 January 1928 that a group of passionate British skiers, 13 men and four women, and all members of the illustrious ski racing club, the Kandahar, set out from the village of Murren in the Bernese Oberland. Their target was the 10,000 foot summit of the Schilthorn,

Friday

Martin Bright

Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege

The MPs’ expenses scandal has taken another extraordinary turn. Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Elliott Morley were already humbled and now they face criminal charges. With political scandals there are rarely any smoking guns. Cash for Honours was the last police investigation to come close. But this time it doesn’t look good for the miserable threesome.  The search for the criminal smoking gun is a poor substitute for the exercise of moral judgement. The present crisis is a sign that the political class has simply forgotten that it is possible to act according to a personal ethical code without reference to whether something is legal or not.  One senior opposition

James Forsyth James Forsyth

John Terry and politics<br />

John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting about what is considered a sackable offence in today’s world and what is not. When the story was just about Terry allegedly cuckolding a team mate his position as captain seemed safe. As Danny Finkelstein argued on the Today Programme, modern society is reluctant to have people lose their jobs because of sexual indiscretions—politicians don’t have to resign as soon as they are caught having affairs these days. But as soon as there started to be stories alleging financial impropriety—the claim that an associate of his was hawking out the Wembley box that Terry was entitled to through his position

Peter Hoskin

The Tories need to push the fiscal case for public service reform

Andrew Haldenby’s article in the Telegraph this morning got me thinking: when was the last time the Tories really pushed the fiscal case for public service reform; that the government can indeed deliver better services while spending less money? By my count, you’d have to go back around six months to George Osborne’s speech on progressive politics at Demos. There, the shadow chancellor said this kind of thing: “Indeed, I would argue that our commitment to fiscal responsibility in the face of mounting national debt is not at odds with progressive politics, but fundamentally aligned to it – as politicians on the left from Bill Clinton to former Canadian Prime

Peter Hoskin

Practice – not pay – may be the key to public sector workforce savings

Great article from my former boss, Andrew Haldenby of Reform, in today’s Telegraph.  He makes the general case that spending less on public services needn’t mean worse public service – far from it, in fact – and is scathing about the political class’s inability to soak up this lesson.  But it’s this passage which jumped out at me: “Another path to reform is to get more out of the workforce. Simple changes have tremendous results. If public-sector workers took the same amount of sick leave as those in the private sector, that would save 3 per cent of their wage bill, which adds up to £6 billion per year. If

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Another blow for the climate change lobby: Prince Charles

This has been an appalling couple of months for the climate change lobby and now there’s been another, sickening, blow – which some of you, undecided in the debate, may well feel is the clincher. Prince Charles has waded into the issue, eviscerating climate change sceptics. “Please be in no doubt that the evidence of long term and potentially irreversible changes  to our world is utterly overwhelming,” he said. Hell, you could almost see them, at the IPCC and UEA, cringing, banging their heads against their computers upon which they were, at that very moment, making things up. Just what you need, the support of Prince Charles. It came on

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Old Lady is becoming more pessimistic

Faisal Islam, Channel 4’s economic correspondent,  is one of the journalists who best understands what the Bank of England’s institutional view is. So it is interesting to see him writing this today: “I’m convinced that at Threadneedle Street, they were shocked by the limpness of Britain’s exit from recession. They have been running their big computer model in the past weeks. When it reveals new economic forecasts next Wednesday, we are likely to see a marked downgrade to Britain’s economic prospects.” Politically this could have an impact as Labour’s, to put it charitably, extremely optimistic growth forecasts are what allow it to claim that it will cut the deficit in

Peter Hoskin

Mandelson’s video diary

We all know that Peter Mandelson enjoys the limelight, but this – from Kevin Maguire’s column in the New Statesman – is taking things to a whole new level: “Set your videos for Mandy: the Movie. I hear that the resurrected Prince of Darkness is to star in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Eager to share his transformation from Labour outcast to potential saviour, the shy and retiring Lord of All-He-Surveys is being followed everywhere by a camerawoman. Visitors to an eighth-floor lair in the Department for Biz are surprised to be co-opted as extras, while Mandy is permanently wearing a microphone. The great panjandrum maintains that no deal has been signed

The Spectator

In this week’s issue

The latest issue of the Spectator 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 have been made available, free, for all website users: Matt Ridley salutes the bloggers who changed the climate debate. James Forsyth warns that the Tories cannot continue to fight the election on a vague promise of “change”. Rod Liddle asks whether it’s racist to want an English-speaking cab driver. Deborah Ross reviews Clint Eastwood’s Mandela biopic, Invictus. And Jeremy Clarke relates a mysterious

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cricket & Tobacco: A Match Made on a True Pitch

I have many more enthusiasms than convictions (in any sense of the word) but I am certain about some things and enthusiastically so. Cricket and tobacco, for instance. They’re as natural a fit as ham and eggs. If the government really wants to clamp down upon smoking they should probably consider banning cricket – for in no other sport does Lady Nicotine provide such a useful, nay vital, service. There are the cigarettes you smoke when you’re waiting to bat and the wicket looks a little lively and the other mobs’ fast bowler has a vindictive look about him and you’re just hoping that he’ll have exhausted his allotted overs

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Vote for the Sheep!

It’s not the Coroner’s race in New Orleans, but this GOP ad in California is still pretty special. In the race for the GOP Senate nomination it seems that the problem is, as Jon Chait points out, that Tom Campbell isn’t a sheep. And that’s bad. Very baaaad. (Sorry.) Among his crimes? Thinking that California’s fiscal predicament might be alleviated, just a little, by increasing taxes on gasoline. The whole thing has a mesmerising quality that is quite splendid and well worth your time. We need this sort of political advertising in Britain…

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Number crunching cuts

The debate about cuts so far lacks any numbers, so I thought CoffeeHouses might like some. Contrary to what he claims Darling is planning cuts – but he just didn’t print the spending totals in his Pre-Budget Report (lack of space, one presumes). The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which produces its Green Budget tomorrow, has worked out what will be left for departments after debt interest, dole et. It amounts to a 10 percent cut. Here’s the table. Yet the Tories plan for DFID to be 0.7 percent of GDP by 2013 – ie, rising by 63 percent – and health will not be cut. Cameron has indicated that he

David Blackburn

Pope Benedict XVI is correct: the Equality Bill is fundamentally un-British

I doubt His Holiness and I would hit it off, but he is right that Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill would impose strictures upon religious communities that run contrary to their beliefs. The coalescence of British and EU anti-discrimination law is but an immodest garment for trenchant ideology. Harman’s bill strives to subjugate individual freedoms, such as that to religious expression, beneath state-imposed rights. This legislation is the progeny of faith in social engineering, not social mobility; it ignores that toleration and freedom in Britain were derived from the right to religious observance free from state proscriptions. If enacted, the bill will require organisations to employ without thought to suitability, and

Alex Massie Alex Massie

How to Survive a 35,000 Foot Fall…

Popular Mechanics offers some tips: You have a late night and an early flight. Not long after takeoff, you drift to sleep. Suddenly, you’re wide awake. There’s cold air rushing everywhere, and sound. Intense, horrible sound. Where am I?, you think. Where’s the plane? You’re 6 miles up. You’re alone. You’re falling. Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mandelson is spinning to his heart’s content

Peter Mandelson was doing his full Alan Rickman impression at Labour’s press conference this morning. His aim was to imply that every time Labour put the Tories under pressure they wobble. As so often since his return to British politics, Mandelson delivered lines that were so memorable that they were bound to make it into copy. He said that the Tories “would strangle the recovery at birth”, that David Cameron was “bobbing around like a cork in water”, and that George Osborne was the Tories’ “weakest link”. As I type, Mandleson’s sound bites are being replayed yet again on News 24. Now, these lines aren’t going to cut through to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Helping Haiti | 1 February 2010

How best to help Haiti? Plenty of people will tell you that writing off Haiti’s debt would be a good start. And, in truth, there’s an argument to be made for doing just that. But no-one should think that will really have much of an impact on Haiti’s ability to recover. What might make a difference, then? Letting Haitians leave Haiti, that’s what. Alex Tabarrok has a handy chart: The downside: What if all the best, most energetic people leave? Haiti may be a special, especially awful case but it bears saying that Haitians aren’t the only people who would benefit from greater international freedom of movement. Plenty of other

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 1 February  – 6 February

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Daniel Korski

Leaked MoD report says, well, nothing really

What is the difference between a sieve and the Ministry of Defence? If you think of good punch-line send it in; in the meantime, suffice it to say that department seems to be leaking any and every sensitive document in its possession. Ministry of Defence staff have apparently leaked secret information onto social-networking sites sixteen times in 18 months. Over the week-end, it happened again: Sky News obtained a paper, which will form the basis of the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review. I have not seen the paper, but judging from the Sky reports there is not much to get excited about. Everyone accepts that the nature of warfare is changing,

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories making contingency plans for a second election in 2010

With another poll showing the Tories ahead but not by enough to secure an overall majority, The News of the World reports that the party is making contingency plans for a second election: The idea would be to take action on immigration, householders’ rights and business taxes and then go to the country again seeking a stronger mandate. To boost the Tories’ prospects, the paper says that Cameron plans to hold a boundary review beforehand. I’d be surprised if it was possible to do that quickly enough for new seats to be in place for a second election this year. There’s also a risk that this effort to remove Labour’s

Saturday

Melissa Kite

From the horse’s mouth | 30 January 2010

There are many greetings one might grudgingly accept as adequate when one arrives at a hospital emergency department. But a sign saying ‘Helpdesk’ is not one of them. ‘Reception’, ‘Report here’ or even ‘Check-in’ would have been a tolerable overture from King’s College Hospital when I pitched up with my hand crushed and bleeding. But Helpdesk? Helpdesk is what you thrust in people’s faces when they are queuing for IT support. Helpdesk is what you tell people they are getting when they want to make backup files from their hard drive. Helpdesk is not what you offer people who are hoping for their broken limbs to be treated. I suppose