Society

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Will Chilcot be any different?

The Chilcot inquiry’s precedents don’t auger well. It’s unfair to describe the Hutton and Butler inquiries as ‘whitewashes’, but their colour was certainly off-white. That said, the condemnatory characterisation of Sir John and his panel as ‘establishment figures’ is redolent of a lower-sixth common room circa 1968. Who else could conduct this inquiry? Mohammed al-Fayed? Pete Doherty? The Bishop of Bath and Wells? The Iraq controversy has not abated and a panel of angels would not be pure enough for some. But it’s absurd to suggest that anyone besides officials and foreign policy experts, with an intricate knowledge of the practices and issues concerned, should or can decide such matters.

David Blackburn

Carry on Karzai

The New York Times reports that 15 Afghan ministers, past and present, are under investigation on suspicion of corruption. Obama’s and Brown’s unequivocal stance on the Mk.3 Karzai government leaves the president with no choice but to sacrifice a few lambs. However, if ever there’s a bolthole Karzai will scamper through it. Corruption is Afghanistan’s chief political currency and Karzai’s authority, such as it is, rests on backhanders. Oligarchic Afghan law decrees that ministers must be prosecuted by a specially convened court, and guess who controls judicial patronage? It’s an ingenious constitutional contrivance for seeming to do something but actually doing nothing. The recent history of Afghan special courts is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What about Climategate?

A reader writes to complain that I haven’t written anything about “Climategate” (please, can we stop the use of the suffix “gate”?). Well, the main reason I haven’t is that climate change is even more crushingly tedious than health policy, the European Union or, for that matter, just about anything else. Worse, the bad faith of the participants, on both sides, and their certainty on matters about which we cannot possibly or plausibly be certain is dispiriting. That being the case, Megan McArdle writes my reaction to this “scandal” for me: Scientists are human beings.  They react to pressure to “clean up” their graphs and data for publication, and they

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s recycling giveaway is actually an Age of Austerity measure

I don’t want to be a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to an idea which is actually quite promising, but it’s worth pointing out that George Osborne’s plan to pay people to recycle – featured in quite a few of today’s papers – was first mooted by him back in July 2008.   The difference between then and now?  That this particular nudge was worth up to £360 a year for families who took advantage of it – whereas now the figure has come down to £130 a year.  In which case, it’s probably better to regard at least this part of Osborne’s announcement today as an Age of Austerity-inspired cutback,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New Police Mission: DNA-Farming

Can this really be true? Apparently and alas unsuprisingly the answer seems to be yes: Police are routinely arresting people simply to record their DNA profiles on the national database, according to a report published today… The revelations will fuel the debate about the DNA database, the world’s largest. They are included in a report by the Human Genetics Commission, an independent government advisory body. It criticises the piecemeal development of the database and questions how effective it is in helping the police to investigate and solve crimes. […]Professor Montgomery said there was some evidence that people were arrested to retain the DNA information even though they might not have

Monday

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 23 November – 29 November

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

David Blackburn

Mumsnet versus Ofsted – a prelude to the post-bureaucratic age

Ofsted is bracing itself for the public lynching it roundly deserves. The Guardian reports that the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, local authority service heads and head teachers are united in condemnation of the ‘wasteful’ bureaucratic giant in the wake of its annus horribilis. What is Ofsted doing wrong? The highly respected former Chief Inspector of Ofsted, Sir Mike Tomlinson, is clear – the scope of its remit and working practices are to blame. He tells the Guardian: ‘The question needs to be asked and answered as to whether Ofsted has the appropriate skills and experience to carry out its agenda. Inspection systems that rely too heavily on data

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not his best performance, but Cameron’s emphasis on growth is welcome

David Cameron was not at his best on the Andrew Marr show. On a morning when there are two bad news stories for him in the papers, the narrowing of the Tory lead to six points in one poll and him and Brown having to apologise to Westminster Abbey for their conduct on Remembrance day, Cameron’s performance was well below his usual standards. What struck me about the content of Cameron’s performance was the emphasis that he put on growth when talking about how the Conservatives would get the country out of the fiscal hole it is in. As I reported at the time of Tory conference, the Tories actually

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Sky at night

I will always remember what I was doing the night I tried to downgrade my Sky package. Scorched into my memory with pain it is, just like the day Elvis died. It started ominously. I had turned on the television. I only turn on the television once every six months. Every time I do so I feel like a battered wife going back for more abuse. I thought I could make it work this time. But, really, what was I expecting from a series of channels called ‘DMax’ and ‘Dave Ja Vu’ and ‘Movies4Men’? On this occasion I was amazed to find an astonishing amount of excruciating idiocy including Monster

Jeremy Clarke

Bed hopping

I came up to London last week for a four-day jolly: two football matches, two parties. I can’t afford London hotel prices, so I booked myself into a youth hostel behind Portland Place. A smiling Uruguayan beauty checked me in to an eight-berth dormitory on the second floor. I laid claim to one of the top bunks by leaving my self-help paperback, Solitude, on the pillow. Then I stowed my wheelie bag in one of the lockers, set my shiny new four-number combination padlock to the year of the Peterloo Massacre, then went to Plaistow for a few shants before the first of the football matches. A liquid evening ended

Taki

Remember the Alamo

It’s good to be in Texas. To a European like me, Texas is why we came to America. It’s a huge state, but more importantly it’s a state of mind. It is a fount of freedom and imagination. For most of the inhabitants of America’s two coasts, Texas is worse than flyover country. Texas represents everything they hate about America. Texas is big, loud, white, Republican, Christian, produces fossil fuel. Its citizens drive big cars that use up a lot of fuel, they eat a lot — starchy, fatty foods — they carry guns. The so-called élites in the Bagel, inside the Beltway and in El Lay turn Orlando Furioso

Robin Oakley

Betting blow

It was one of those moments when a clunking great pile-driver comes up and thuds straight into your duodenum. I can weave through the form for a 24-runner handicap at the sputtering fag end of the season. I can summon the maths to cope with a series of cross doubles at, say, 13–8, 11–4 and, please the Lord, 33–1. But faced with columns of car specifications and model numbers on the internet when buying from a garage three hours’ drive away, I am rather less use than the village idiot. Hence the moment last week when the replacement for our 13-year-old BMW arrived and I had to telephone the saintly

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 21 November 2009

Q. I have a son at day school in London. Every couple of weeks or so, one or other of his friends will invite him to their 18th birthday party. Because we have met many of the parents over the years, my husband and I are often invited too. While we are more than happy to drop our son off and stay for an hour at one of these parties for a bit of bonding in his milieu, we always make it clear that we cannot stay for longer. The problem is that the host parents — who are, of course, desperate for adult company — often put great pressure

Toby Young Toby Young

At last they will believe me: I was never Belle de Jour

The decision of Britain’s most notorious anonymous sex blogger to reveal her identify came as a great relief. It finally puts paid to the suspicion that Belle de Jour c’est moi. The first time my name was linked with the site was in a Mail on Sunday article in 2004 entitled: ‘Who does Belle the Blogger think she’s kidding?’ My wife didn’t read the article, but heard about it from a friend and immediately got the wrong end of the stick. ‘I gather some prostitute with an anonymous blog has outed you as one of her clients in the Mail on Sunday,’ she said. ‘No, no, they think I’m the

The Spectator

Letters | 21 November 2009

Eliot’s anti-Semitism Sir: I yield to none in my love of T.S. Eliot’s work, and have even managed to defend to myself the iffy passages about Jews in his poetry. But the letters that Craig Raine quotes in his review (Books, 14 November) are so blatantly, even honestly, anti-Semitic that they leave no room for doubt; except, it seems, at Faber & Faber. Mr Raine’s attempts to argue the anti-Semitism away present a hilarious and painful spectacle. For example, Eliot writes that Jews are inclined to Bolshevism — a classic Nazi belief. Mr Raine asserts, desperately, that this is a tribute to Jewish iconoclasm. It isn’t; it’s racism. The question

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 21 November 2009

Monday Exciting trip to Norfolk for the ‘de-selection’. After a gruelling train journey east, Poppy and I tucked into a delicious spread in a heavenly tea shop with the biggest scones ever. Everything was so cheap! We bought two of everything in all the shops, and got some great deals on Haggarts Tweed. We then had to meet Sir Jeremy Bagge, Turnip Taleban commander, who demanded to know why ‘Central Office’ — I think he means CCHQ — had sent a couple of giggly schoolgirls to sort out the biggest challenge to Dave’s authority. What a cheek! We informed him that this was not the biggest challenge to Dave’s authority.

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 21 November 2009

The man who brought us The Meaning of Tingo is at it again, closer to home. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s previous excursion among unlikely foreign words turned at times into a wild Boojum chase because the meanings claimed for some words softly and silently vanished away once confronted. That was the case with tingo itself, the supposed definition of which was more like a short essay on circumstances in which it might be used. His latest amuse-bouche, The Wonder of Whiffling (Particular Books, £12.99), is a sort of reverse Call My Bluff, which groups the true meaning of English words according to themes. Imaginative appeal still sometimes trumps sense. A

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 November 2009

On Monday I attended a party at the Carlton Club for a new book about the Conservative Research Department, now 80 years old. Traditionally, this would have been a dusty occasion: the Research Department has almost prided itself on its separation from the vulgar worlds of media and power. But it was all rather glamorous. The fact is that, for the first time ever, its alumni have taken control of the Tory high command. George Osborne and Oliver Letwin began political life there; so did Cameron’s closest assistants, Steve Hilton, Ed Llewellyn and Kate Fall; and so did David Cameron himself. As Andrew Gimson discusses on page 19, Mr Cameron

Alistair Darling

Diary – 21 November 2009

Not a bad way to start the political week, picking up the Threadneedle/Spectator Award for parliamentary survivor of the year. I don’t win many awards, of any variety. The last one I recall was six years ago when I was transport secretary. Some motoring magazine named me ‘Most Boring Politician in Britain’. (Two years in a row.) There was no prize, unlike at the Spectator awards where at least I picked up a rather beautiful etched black fruit bowl to console me. It is sure to remind me in my dotage of the turbulent and trying, but always rewarding, times at the Treasury. My wife pretends to be impressed. i

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 21 November 2009

Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Brown also decided that next year would be a good time to apologise for the deportation in past decades