George Osborne may be warning of austere times ahead, but the situation is much graver on the other side of the Irish sea. Yesterday’s Irish Times revealed the startling details of a new plan to resuce Hibernia. Even the cute hoors are cheap hoors now. [Hat-tip: BadJournalism via Twitter. My Twitter feed is here.]
Struggles with the conference internet connection prevented me from posting on it at the time, but it’s still worth flagging up Andrew Lansley’s big speech on the NHS today. Why so? Well, because it exemplifies how the Tory message on health undermines their general rhetoric on public spending. At the heart of the speech was a pledge that I’m sure many CoffeeHousers would cheer: to slash the money spent on NHS bureacrats by a third, from £4.5 billion to £3 billion. Good stuff, you might think. That’s what governments should be doing in there difficult times. And you’d be right. But the rest of Lansley’s speech was at odds with
Sweet. This had to happen: A Ministry of Defence document giving advice on how to stop documents leaking onto the internet has been leaked onto the internet. …The 2,400-page restricted document has found its way on to Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymous leaks of sensitive information from organisations including governments, corporations and religions. Known in the services as Joint Services Protocol 440 (JSP 440), it was published in 2001. As Wikileaks notes, it is the document that is used as justification for the monitoring of certain websites, including Wikileaks itself. Also: The document is particularly keen to avoid the attentions of journalists, noting them as “threats” alongside foreign intelligence
The Tories new welfare plan is, it seems, their old welfare plan – with a more ambitious timeline. It’s to be welcomed, but this is not the step change that you’d expect. In Jan08 Chris Grayling broke new ground when he proposed diagnosing all 2.7m on incapacity benefit for what work they could do (as opposed to the ‘ill’ or ‘sick’ binary distinction). Today, they express an ambition to get this done in three years. Set aside questions as to whetehr you can find enough doctors to do 2,500 “capabilty asssessments” every day – all this means is going a little faster on the original Freud proposal. There is a
Like other sensible people I’m encouraged by the Tories plans for education in England. The Swedish system of Free Schools has a lot to be said for it. Still, I wonder why the Tories have chosen Sweden as their role model rather than, say, the Netherlands or New Zealand both of which also have extensive school choice programmes. As you can see, both those countries score very well on the PISA* scale (generally seen, I think, as the best international comparison) and do markedly better than the UK. Of course, Michael Gove’s writ runs out at the Tweed. Which is a shame, since education policy in Scotland remains wholly in
The white smoke lasted all of a few seconds: from the moment I became editor I knew who I wanted to succeed me as political editor. In what few discussions I had about it, the same name was clearly ahead. And reading the comment threads, you guys knew it too. But today it’s official: James Forsyth, whose political analysis you have been following for so long, will be the new political editor of The Spectator. Coffee House is one place where he really does need no introduction. James has done more than anyone else to establish this blog’s reputation for political analysis: writers, like me, follow the template he set.
George Osborne has just announced a tax cut. Any new business started in the first two years of a Tory government will pay no employers’ national insurance contributions on the first ten people it hires. This means these first ten employees will cost new businesses 12 percent less. This is a move that makes sense in both economic and political terms. Economically reducing the tax on jobs is a good move, getting more people into work will eventually result in more money coming into the Exchequer. Politically it is smart as it gives the Tories something they can point to on the doorstep to show they really are serious about
At the end of Fraser’s interview with Cameron in this week’s magazine, Dave confided that he would most like to be painted by the Maid of Margate, Tracey Emin. Cameron has been courting celebrity and popular culture, exactly as New Labour tried to align itself with ‘Cool Britannia’. Usually, the pursuit of photo-ops with celebs counts for nothing beyond the memory of the photograph, but yesterday Emin entered a contentious political debate. She said: “I’m very seriously considering leaving Britain; I’m simply not willing to pat tax at 50%.” For three months, the Spectator has been lodging Freedom of Information requests to view the working for the estimate that the
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
I’m on my way to the home city of the best football club in the world (and one of the worst) shortly. In the meantime, it’s worth flagging up this morning’s reports on Tory welfare policy, which we’ll be hearing more about later today. Basically, the Tories are going to re-emphasise that they’d put incapacity benefit claimants through medical tests, to check their ability to work, and that the more effective private-sector wing of the welfare service would be massively expanded. While this is, in essence, an extension of existing government welfare policy, it’s certainly to be welcomed. There will be over 6 million out-of-work benefit claimants when the next
Scouring the Sunday newspapers for any vestige of sentience, I find none whatsoever – but instead chance upon this whining, chippy, neo-Socialist drivel from Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times blaming the bankers for the economic mess from which, it’s said, we are emerging. (Incidentally, linking to oneself in a blog is narcissism on an inter-planetary scale, isn’t it? Even if you make a joke about it. It’s like masturbating to a signed of photo of oneself. While the wife is out down the shops, obviously.) The central point – that nothing seems to have been learned – holds true, though I reckon. Much as it does about that other scandal
OK, some Sunday fun and games. A wee while back Patrick Kidd had a nice item in which Henry Blofeld listed his all-time cricket XI drawn from PG Wodehouse characters. This is the sort of throoughly entertaining, pointless exercise Wodehouse would have relished himself. And, for that matter, the sort of un-made challenge that cannot be resisted. I have, therefore, selected an XI of my own to battle Blowers’ team. A Gold Bat should be awarded to the winning side, methinks. First, the Blofeld XI, with Henry’s annotations: 1. Bertie Wooster. A bit of a flasher with the bat, I think. 2. Roderick Spode. Also known as Lord Sidcup, the
I used to take abuse in print and dish it out, but now I’ve become more squeamish A few weeks ago I appeared on the Today programme opposite David Denby, the veteran American film critic. He is the author of a book called Snark in which he takes issue with the nasty, personal tone that characterises a lot of contemporary political discourse, and I had been wheeled out to defend the hacks and bloggers who trade in this tittle-tattle. I cannot complain about being cast in this role, not least because I wrote a very snarky review of Denby’s book for the Wall Street Journal, but I am beginning to
I played Big Brownie in the Bournemouth scouts’ Gang Show at the Pavilion Theatre when I was 12 years old. That was the first time I had a dressing room. I must have spent a vast amount of time in dressing rooms from Greenland to New South Wales since then, countless hours and not so much as a moment’s anxiety about performing. But I’ve never dressed so carefully as I did on Thursday. I was terrified. I am quite at ease in my own comfort zone — playing loud and fast and hard — but orchestras are different. They are like stately homes, relics from a nobler age that nobody
After three days walking alone on the high moor, and two nights at a remote youth hostel, above which the silence and the immensity and brilliance of the universe were unnerving, I jumped in the car and drove down to the nearest centre of commerce and civilisation to reacquaint myself with humanity and get some more cash. The small market town was built on a reassuringly human scale and busy with shoppers. It had narrow streets with narrow pavements, and a one-way system and parking restrictions were in operation. The Marquis of Granby was open. So was the Spar and the post office and the charity shop. And, crucially from
New York Cement barriers, stanchions, cop cars, motorcycles, black SUVs, flashing lights, bullhorn warnings to move to the side or else, mean-looking dudes in dark suits, dark glasses and talking into their cufflinks, a hobbit named Sarkozy jogging in Central Park to the exclusion of the rest of us, African dictator kleptocrats emptying jewellery shops on Fifth Avenue, Netanyahu walking down Park after the residents of that street had been removed — that was the Big Bagel last week when the zoo that’s the UN Security Council came to town. The hate fest rolls on, fuelled by the arrogance of our supposed leaders and the reluctance by the hacks to
Q. A close, though fairly new, friend of mine is an influential art critic. I suppose it is only natural that other friends should now be always asking me for his home address or to bring him along to their exhibition or to the exhibitions of their children. The problem is that they then send invitations which inevitably arrive with a mention of my name and so, even when the work is clearly bad, my friend feels he must attend the shows as a favour to me. I do not want to have all my own favours, as it were, used up on other people. Nor do I want to
It was a poetic coincidence that the week the Labour party made its defiant last stand in Brighton, the newspapers reported a story that sums up precisely why this country so urgently needs another government. The case of the two policewomen who have been ordered by Ofsted to stop their sensible, reciprocal babysitting arrangement, under the terms of the 2006 Childcare Act, shows just how damaging Labour’s addiction to risk-averse legislation can be. In this case, it has turned neighbours into vindictive sneaks — the WPCs’ babysitting deal was said to have been reported by an anonymous local with a personal grudge; and it has dissuaded two diligent mothers not just
A week to enjoy the autumn sunshine by the sea. Gluttony is no longer fashionable but what better way to celebrate my birthday on Monday than to spend a few hours at the Royal Native Oyster restaurant in Whitstable? Sitting by the Kent beach, I confess to consuming 24 oysters, a crab, a lobster, two bottles of Pouilly Fumé, a plum crumble and Irish coffee. Thankfully my wife was more modest. All her entreaties for restraint were answered by my description of Samuel Pepys’s vastly superior daily consumption as described in Claire Tomalin’s wonderful biography. Inevitably, I later collapsed on the shingle rereading that day’s lead entry in the Times’s
So exciting! Where better for The Party of The North to hold its last conference before taking power than Manchester? This is a vibrant city with many shops, restaurants and nightclubs. The cultural scene is diverse, the tap water is drinkable, and local people are friendly and welcoming. That said, please dress casually (no club or old school ties) and observe local customs wherever possible, especially when outside the secure zone. In terms of theme — think great, sweeping ideas! Wonky Tom is moaning that all our super new policy proposals won’t stand up to scrutiny. He just doesn’t get it. They sound absolutely lovely and as for detail, well,