Society

Portait of the Week

Among austerity measures outlined by Mr George Osborne, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, at the Conservative party conference in Manchester was that the pensionable age for men should rise to 66 no earlier than 2016, instead of by 2026. He also promised a one-year pay freeze for public-sector workers, apart from the million who earn less than £18,000. On the eve of his speech, Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, came up with the wheeze of suddenly announcing that pay for people in the public sector such as GPs and judges would be frozen. The Conservatives also showed their seriousness in responding to the public deficit by banning overt consumption

The Father of Scottish Tourism

‘How do we make Scott more popular?’ The question ran round the table and none of us had an answer. ‘How do we make Scott more popular?’ The question ran round the table and none of us had an answer. It was a meeting of the Abbotsford Trust. I am not myself a trustee, but was there as a member of an advisory committee. The Trust itself was set up after the death of Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott, Sir Walter’s great-great-great-granddaughter who, with her late sister, Patricia, had owned Abbotsford for many years and had made it the happiest and most welcoming of houses. Scott bought it in 1812. It was

Easy romp

Zombieland 15, Nationwide Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee 15, Key Cities I can’t say I care much for zombies — that is, film zombies; I’ve never met a real one — but the horror-comedy Zombieland is quite fun and does feature such a delicious cameo from Bill Murray it almost makes up for all the overlong scenes in which the zombies groan and stagger and spew black bile and haemorrhage blood and generally do what zombies do. I don’t think I even get zombies. OK, they’re the living dead, but what do they have against the living living? What have the living living ever done to them? Why do they always

This week’s issue of the Spectator<br />

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. Three articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users: James Forsyth reveals the Tory plans that George Osborne didn’t mention in his speech. Samir Shah argues that racism that is no longer an issue in the UK And Rod Liddle says that the electorate prefers its toffs to act with chutzpah Additionally, all of last week’s issue has now been uploaded to the website. Here is a

The people will make it happen

Cameron’s speech might have lacked flair, but it was a brilliant rhetorical exercise. He cast himself into the distant future and reflected on his premiership. He saw a society that had paid its way back from the brink of collapse by rationing excess and embracing austerity. He saw a society that was flourishing, where the poorest attended the best schools, where people were empowered to work hard and were rewarded for doing so. Returning to the sombre present he said: “It will be a steep climb. But the view from the summit will be worth it.” But this rhetorical tour de force was inspired by a substantial philosophical argument. Cameron’s

Alex Massie

Tories Pledge Painless Defence Cuts?

So, the headlines from Liam Fox’s speech today concentrate on his pledge to reduce MoD costs by 25% without, of course, there being any impact on “front-line troops”. Our old chum Mr Efficiency Savings is being asked to report for yet another tour of duty. Doubtless there are indeed parts of the defence civil service that can be pruned and reformed. But, as this post from Think Defence suggests, this isn’t going to be easy. Indeed, there are probably areas of the MoD civilian service that need an increase in staff, not a cut. But, again, I still don’t understand Tory priorities. Health spending and, just as weirdly, international development

Alex Massie

Organ Markets: Still Needed

This is why we need an organ market: The number of people agreeing to donate their organs after death is growing, but at a slower rate than the number of patients who need them, a report warns. The first year of a concerted effort to boost UK donation rates did see the number of transplants rise as more co-ordinated services were implemented. But the Organ Donation Taskforce notes the waiting list continues to grow… One of the key factors behind this increase is the increasing incidence of kidney failure in the UK – particularly in the over-50s and black and ethnic minority communities. Of those on the list 1,000 will

Alex Massie

Story of the Day

I think this is probably the best intro you’re likely to read all day week: A gay man tried to poison his lesbian neighbours by putting slug pellets into their curry after he was accused of kidnapping their three-legged cat. Fair play to the Daily Mail. This is tabloid, er, catnip. As always, the story itself is a little sadder than the lede, but that’s the kind of sentence you don’t get to write very often. Hats off to Jaya Narain, the hack responsible for this gem. [Hat-tip: Mark Steyn who alerts you to another great story,]

Defensive moves

So, General Dannatt is to be a Tory Peer. This worries me greatly. On balance, General Dannatt did a good job as Army chief. Not a great job, but a good one. His interventions boosted the morale of frontline troops and his concern for the care of soldiers, especially the wounded, was important. Conversely, many defense analysts thought he was too cautious on military reform, blocking the Army’s transformation into an effective counter-insurgency force and opposing stop gap procurement in case it compromised future acquisition projects. But the real concerns over General Dannatt’s ennoblement are different. General Dannatt should have given his sucecssor a clear run at the job. He should

Alex Massie

Modern Mysteries: Some People Take Newt Gingrich Seriously.

One of the great oddities of the moment is the apparent belief, held in some circles, that Newt Gingrich is some kind of political soothsayer. Granted, this notion is mainly fostered by Newt himself but it remains perplexing that so many people seem prepared to grant him the guru status he craves with such unbecoming, grasping immodesty. Now, you may say, Newt is merely a superior entertainer and not someone to be taken too seriously. But some people, not least Newt himself, do take him terribly seriously. That being the case, let’s have a look at the interview he’s just given National Review. Newt is promoting a new documentary on

Oh dear | 7 October 2009

Chris Grayling hopes that General Sir Richard Dannatt’s prospective ministerial appointment is not a “political gimmick” designed to boost Gordon Brown’s profile. He said: “I’m always suspicous of government’s motives when it does things like this.” The poor man hasn’t grasped that it’s David Cameron who is wooing General Dannatt as a potential minister. Grayling has since laughed off the gaffe, but really. The fact that Emily Maitliss started the interview with: “General Dannatt is lined up to be a junior Defence Minister in a future CONSERVATIVE government,” ought to have alerted Grayling that this was not attack-dog territory. Quite how Maitliss didn’t collapse with laughter defeats me. PS. Will

James Forsyth

The Tories provide the only route away from educational inequality

The level of educational inequality in this country is appalling. I have heard the numbers that Michael Gove listed off in his speech several times before but they never fail to shock. One wonders what future there can be for the half of the children who left comprehensives last year without five good GCSEs. The worst schools in the country are in the poorest areas. The Tory plan, to put parents in charge of the £5,000 per year that the state spends on a child’s education, with pupils from deprived backgrounds receiving additional funding, would end the monopoly on state education provision that has failed the poorest. In its place

Alex Massie

David Cameron & the Special Relationship

The FT’s Philip Stephens gave the traditional fretting over the future of the Special Relationship a novel twist yesterday: Tory hostility to the EU threatens the transatlantic relationship too. Actually, there’s something to this. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Foreign Policy’s David Rothkopf summarises how the London-Washington axis may look if Cameron is elected next May: U.S.-U.K. history and cultures are such that the relationship will always be different from that we have other countries. But it seems quite possible that with an unsentimental post-modern president in the White House who seems destined to have a chilly partnership with the odds-on favorite to be the next Prime Minister

Last orders for the British pub

Dominic Midgley says a great institution of national life is under threat from the credit crunch, the smoking ban and cheap supermarket booze — but there are signs of hope The sounds of merry-making could be heard from the street as 300 journalists, suppliers and associated hangers-on gathered at The Northcote pub in Clapham last month to toast the opening of Geronimo Inns’ latest outlet. Geronimo’s founder Rupert Clevely, the amiable former marketing director of Veuve Clicquot champagne, was on hand to dole out wine and press the flesh as he celebrated his sixth opening of the year. All in all, it was like a scene from a film set

In the boardroom

ITV shareholders did not wait for Sir Crispin Davis to be appointed chairman before saying publicly they didn’t like him. No wonder people are thinking twice before putting themselves forward to head our major companies. Even salaries of £500,000 plus share options have left supply well short of demand in the ‘C-suite’. A large number of companies have been searching for a chairman this summer but the pool of candidates seems noticeably small: the same names are touted for each job and the rejects join the next shortlist as soon as one vacancy is filled. Davis, former chief executive of publishers Reed Elsevier, was mooted as chairman of J Sainsbury

Whatever happened to Hillary?

What’s become of Hillary Clinton? At times of international crisis — and boy, do we have a few — it is customary for the American Secretary of State to take centre stage and work the phones until the early hours sorting out the latest threat to global security. Remember the legwork that James Baker put in to build a multinational coalition to boot out Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990? Or the air miles Madame Secretary Albright clocked up in her attempts to bring the tiresome Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic to heel during the Bosnian civil war? Even Condoleezza Rice managed to maintain a high-profile international presence during President George

Race is not an issue in the UK anymore

For the past decade Samir Shah has been chair of the Runnymede Trust, devoted to studying ethnicity. Now, he says, the real problem in Britain isn’t so much racism, but “cultural cloning”. I first arrived in this country from Bombay in January 1960. Harold Macmillan had yet to make his Winds of Change blowing through Africa speech. Coronation Street hadn’t appeared on our television screens. As an eight-year-old child, I recall looking up at a huge advertising hoarding in Notting Hill Gate showing an attractive blonde offering very smart chocolates. I loved chocolates and they looked fantastic, but I was depressed. Why? Because I genuinely believed that those chocolates were

James Forsyth

The next step for pensions

George Osborne’s decision to bring forward raising the retirement age strikes me as thoroughly sensible. Indeed, both his proposal on the retirement age and the one year public sector pay freeze have the merit of being such reasonable measures given the severity of the crisis that it is quite hard to oppose them without appearing to not grasp how bad a state the public finances are in. I suspect that if the Public and Commercial Services Union did carry out its threat to strike over the pay freeze for those earning more than 18,000 it would have little public sympathy. But one further idea the Tories should consider in government

Dannatt may be overstating his case, but the government is being disingenuous

General Sir Richard Dannatt issues a vociferous condemnation of the government’s commitment to British efforts in Afghanistan in the print edition of today’s Sun. Dannatt asserts that Gordon Brown vetoed increasing the British deployment by 2,000 troops, against the advice of military chiefs. He told the paper: “The military advice has been for an uplift since the beginning of 2009. If the military says we need more troops and we can supply them, then frankly they should take that advice and deploy up to the level we recommend. “If it means finding more resources and putting more energy in, let’s do it. If you’re going to conduct an operation, you’re