Society

Wednesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Let’s start a mass campaign of disobedience

Try to take your child to a public playground in Watford and you will be denied entry on the grounds that you may well be a kiddie-fiddler. I don’t know why you’d want to take your child to a playground in Watford, even if you live there – but that’s another issue, I suppose. Parents aren’t allowed to supervise their children in Watford playgrounds unless they have been CRB checked; instead a bunch of “play rangers” supervise the kids. Play rangers? Who’d want a job as a play ranger? They might have been checked by the police but I still suspect they’re wrong ‘uns, underneath. It’s time to take militant

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Governator Strikes Back

It’s been a while since we last checked in on Arnold Schwarzenegger and last time we looked California remained a basket-case (making it an awkward poster child for the Tories “let’s all be Californian” motif. But hey, that was in happier, more lucrative times. So fret not.) Still, it’s good to see that the Governator still enjoys excellent relations with the state legislature. Consider this letter: As a practical matter, veto first ask questions later is a perfectly sound modus operandi. But it’s good to see Arnold send a rather pointed message too: Over to you, Stephen Pollard…

Peter Hoskin

Iain Duncan Smith’s overlooked “affordable policy solutions”

After his superb work with the Centre for Social Justice, it’s encouraging that Iain Duncan Smith is being tasked by the Tory leadership to come up with “affordable policy solutions” to spring the traps which keep people stuck in worklessness.  It’s thought that David Cameron rated the proposals of the CSJ’s recent report on this issue – as, too, did Coffee House – but was put off by the £3 billion upfront cost of the reforms. But there’s an important aspect of that report which hardly got any attention at the time: it already includes more affordable options.  The £3 billion was for a universal benefits system which would see

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Learning to let go of the police

Today’s Mac cartoon in the Daily Mail is, for me, a cut out and keep. It epitomises everything that has gone wrong with policing in Britain – a copper running past thieves to nick an old lady who has wrongly parked. And it touches on a wider theme: this is why regard for the police has fallen in the last dozen years. Their priorities seem to have switched from those of the public to those of the bureaucratic elite. This impression is, of course, deeply damaging and will be tough for the Tories to reverse. The plan for directly elected police chiefs, and Nick Herbert’s seminal work on the subject,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

One More Trip on the Immigration Merry-Go-Round

This post on immigration prompted a pair of fine, Chestertonian (in the sense of we the quiet people of England stuff) responses to which I think it’s only proper that I reply. First, Carroll Barry-Walsh writes: Of course, it’s the type of people we let in because there is a difference between letting in people who share our values, who want to – and take positive steps to – become British and discard those elements of their culture which are inconsistent with or hostile to our culture. And then there are those who simply come from the Third World and continue to live here as if they were still there

Allister Heath

Why is Osborne obsessed with bonuses?

It is hard to work out what the bankers did to George Osborne. Perhaps he was refused an overdraft at a formative age. Whatever it was, he is taking his revenge, saying that the large British banks should only be allowed to pay trivial cash bonuses. The plan has its political attractions — focus groups tell him no punishment is too harsh for the City of London — but also three significant economic drawbacks. It is vindictive, ineffective and it fails to address the true reason for the crash. Let us first examine this on a practical level. Cash bonuses would be outlawed, but banks would still be able to

Caroline Moore

RC v CofE

Charles Moore I wish the Pope’s new offer to Anglicans had been available when I became a Catholic 15 years ago. It would have helped avoid many misunderstandings. In modern times, most Anglicans converting to Roman Catholicism are not trying to repudiate their existing beliefs. Instead, they are recognising that the logic of those beliefs leads them to become Catholics. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for those close to them to see this. They can feel rejected. Conversion, a word now frowned on by the authorities, sounds sudden and absolute, when in fact the process is neither. The old phrase about ‘the parting of friends’ has a baleful ring. Parents,

Christina Lamb

More troops will just mean more targets

It was Bonfire Night last year in the Officers’ Mess of 2 Rifle and I was jokily explaining how fighting is such a national sport among Afghans that they fight with birds, kites and even boiled eggs, when I suddenly realised my heart had gone out of it. As one of the few journalists to have been reporting from Afghanistan since the days of the Soviet occupation, I had often been asked to visit regiments before they deploy and had always enjoyed talking to young soldiers about a land I love and hearing their expectations. But that grey November evening in Abercorn barracks in the Northern Irish town of Ballykinler

Elliot Wilson

Keep on digging: Boris’s route to recovery

Elliot Wilson says all the razzmatazz for the start of work on Crossrail highlights the construction industry’s urgent desire to soak up public funds before Tory cuts set in No major city anywhere has achieved as much as London has with such poor public transport at its disposal. Trams that break down; bendy buses that burst into flames; an underground rail network that overheats in the summer and taxes the patience and the wallets of millions of commuters all year round. The experience has been likened by London’s own mayor, Boris Johnson, to ‘sardine-tin travel’ — doing little for its citizens’ quality of life, or its reputation as the world’s

Anthony Daniels

Don’t believe in miracles

Irrationality, without which life cannot be lived, is profoundly irritating, especially in others. It is at its worst when those who are guilty of it try to sue those who, like Simon Singh, try to expose it. Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association after he wrote a book debunking several alternative ‘therapies’. A few weeks ago, thankfully, he was given leave to appeal but the affair nearly spelled victory for irrationality. Irrationality is also very bad when displayed by someone close to you. My late mother suddenly suffered from a non-life-threatening but disfiguring skin condition of her scalp that naturally enough caused her great distress. Old ladies in their eighties,

James Hannam

Did Al Farabi really invent sociology?

There is a subtle campaign on Wikipedia to overstate the contribution of Islamic sages to scientific scholarship. James Hannam says that the facts should be sacred As an author who craves all the publicity he can get for his work, I’m usually cock-a-hoop to receive invitations to pontificate on film. Even the lowliest producer can expect to have me eating out of her hand. But last week, when I received an email from a filmmaker who wanted to interview me for a programme about ‘the scientific evidence in the religious text of the Koran’, I thought I’d give it a miss. The sort of apologetics which attempt to prove the inspiration of the scriptures

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

It wouldn’t matter if all the bees died

But don’t worry, says Rod Liddle, they’re not going to. The bee holocaust myth is just another example of our strange yearning for catastrophe The world is going to end in 2012, apparently — hopefully just before the start of the Olympic Games. Armageddon may come about as a consequence of those monkeys firing up the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where they have al-Qa’eda operatives attempting to create black holes which will swallow the earth whole, or reduce it to the size of an extremely dense tennis ball. Imagine seven billion of us trying to stand on a tennis ball. You just hope personal hygiene standards won’t be sacrificed. Or

Michael Tanner

Great Britten

The Turn of the Screw English National Opera L’heure espagnole; Gianni Schicchi Royal Opera House Each time I see Britten’s The Turn of the Screw I am more impressed by the brilliance of the music, and more irritated by the unprofitable ambiguities of the drama. The first revival at the Coliseum of David McVicar’s stunningly brilliant 2008 production of the piece intensified both these feelings. The overwhelming source of satisfaction was the staggering conducting of Sir Charles Mackerras. It is inconceivable that there should be a more complete realisation of the score, superbly played by 13 members of the ENO orchestra. It sounded more beautiful than it has ever done,

Jonathan Keates

Bach’s life examined

Music all too easily disarms our critical faculties. Composers need protection from those grovelling adorers who refuse to distinguish good from bad in their idol’s oeuvre or even to acknowledge his occasional lapses into doodling and bombast. The fawning which began during Wagner’s lifetime for example, scarcely discouraged by the cult object himself, has since become a veritable psychosis, divorced from any worthwhile musical or aesthetic criteria. Schubert has likewise suffered from the dim religious light cast over his achievement by drooling worshippers, too ready to ignore the inconsistencies of his wayward talent or its periodic lapses into twaddling prolixity. The most eminent casualty of this unhealthy obsession with turning

Tuesday

The Spectator

Nominate a young entrepreneur

Spectator Business, the sister magazine of The Spectator, is on the lookout for talent again.  We’re tracking down Britain’s best young entrepreneurs of 2009. Last year, we profiled ten young people who had made their mark in industries ranging from media and entertainment to food production and social networking. They included Marc Burton, a partner in exclusive London nightspot Whisky Mist, and Victoria Lennox, who was then president of Oxford Entrepreneurs and has since gone on to head up the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs. This year, we are inviting readers and contributors to nominate entrepreneurs under the ago of 30 who have impressed you with their vision and determination.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

My beef with Stern

I must admit that I despaired this morning when I heard that Nick Stern was arguing that meat eating should become socially unacceptable because of climate change. Those of us who think that climate change is happening and that human activity is a part of it have a big enough case to make without people thinking that they won’t be able to have a Sunday roast or a reviving steak if the green lobby gets its way. People are, understandably, not going to accept being told that they can’t fly, eat meat or have the heating on. The solutions to the problems posed by climate-change have to be technologically led.

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An untrumpeted change

John Rentoul rightly flags up the story in this morning’s FT that about 100,000 NHS patients have gone private and had the state pick up the tab, the private hospitals have had to agree to do the work at the NHS price. For those of us who would like to see the NHS move towards a model where the state pays for healthcare but it is provided by a whole panoply of providers, this is an encouraging step. This kind of consumer-focused reform is hard to reverse. The story, as John notes, hasn’t got as much coverage as it should. John blames this on the press’s lack of interest in

Daniel Korski

Karadzic may be in the dock, but his legacy lives on

After 14 years on the run, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, is finally being brought to justice. Today, prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Karadzic with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, Karadzic was one of the authors of a plan to “permanently remove” Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory. It details allegations of two counts of genocide, including for the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. But the charge also details a hellish litany of crimes, including allegations of persecution, extermination, murder, rape, and deportation

Dennis Sewell

The quangocracy laid bare

At last the full facts about our burgeoning quango state are laid bare. The conclusion of a report published today by the TaxPayers’ Alliance is that it’s “big, bloated and more expensive than ever before.” The TPA document provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date listing available of all 1,152 ‘semi-autonomous public bodies’ operating in the UK, along with details of how many staff each employs and how much they spend. More than £90 billion of taxpayers’ money was spent on or channelled through quangos/SAPBs in 2007-8 (up £13 billion on the year before). That’s equivalent to £3,640 for every household in the land. The report’s authors say these facts have

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 26 October – 1 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