Society

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There is more shopping in three streets in London than in Birmingham and Manchester combined

Prospect magazine’s In Fact column always contains some thought provoking numbers. This month, I was particularly struck by this statistic: “The annual retail spend of Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street is £5.5bn—more than Manchester and Birmingham.” On one level, this is testament to the importance of clusters. But it is also a sign of just how dominant in the UK London is; something that is not particularly healthy for the country as a whole.   

David Blackburn

There are moral absolutes: aspects of Sharia are barbaric

Credit where credit’s due, Peter Tatchell wrote an article for the Guardian describing Sharia law as being “especially oppressive”. He says: ‘Its interpretations stipulate the execution of Muslims who commit adultery, renounce their faith (apostates) or have same-sex relationships. Sharia methods of execution, such as stoning, are particularly brutal and cruel – witness the stoning to death this week in Somalia of a 20-year-old woman divorcee who was accused of adultery. This is the fourth stoning of an adulterer in Somalia in the last year. Somalia is an extreme example of the Sharia oppression that exists in large parts of the Muslim world. As ever, Muslim women are often the

The Spectator

The week that was | 20 November 2009

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson congratulates Michael Heath, and introduces Britain’s AWOL ally. James Forsyth praises Chris Grayling’s commitment to elected police commissioners, and finds an example of corruption that is shocking even by the standards of the Karzai government. Peter Hoskin says that Brown has misjudged the Afghan waiting game, and sees Ed Balls dump Gordon Brown into another lose lose situation. David Blackburn argues that Gordon Brown has been hoist by his own petard, and challenges the liberal centre to engage with the BNP. Mark Bathgate explains just quite how inexperienced this government is at economic management. Lloyd

Alex Massie 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

Peter Hoskin

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

Thursday

James Forsyth 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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Letting his opinions be known

Today’s Evening Standard features an interview with Bernice McCabe, co-director of the Prince’s Teaching Institute. McCabe tells the paper that: “He [the Prince of Wales] is very passionate about the fact that children need a good grasp of literature and that all children need to understand the history of our country,” she said. “He is passionate that these subjects should remain there in the curriculum.” I happen to agree with the Prince of Wales on this point, but it is completely unacceptable that someone is speaking for him on what is a political issue. The monarchy survives in this country on the basis that it doesn’t express political opinions in

Alex Massie 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 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

The Spectator

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

Wednesday

Rod Liddle 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

Peter Hoskin

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.

David Blackburn

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

Mihir Bose

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.

Tim Shipman

Will MI6 finally come in from the cold?

Sir John Sawers is not the Downing Street stooge some of the old guard say he is, writes Tim Shipman. And the new head of MI6 may focus the spooks’ gaze on the real enemy 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

Justin Marozzi

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 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

Gary Dexter

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth 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