Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

Although Andrew Lansley’s “10 percent” gaffe may have worked out alright in the end, I can’t help but think he’s pushing his luck with his latest comments: Andrew Lansley has called on the Government to come clean about their spending plans after it was revealed that the NHS has been asked to plan for efficiency savings of £15-20 billion against its 2010-11 budget. The Department of Health has refused to confirm whether these savings will be available for reinvestment in the NHS – if they are not, it will equate to a real terms annual cut to the NHS budget of 2.3 per cent. Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, said,

Peter Hoskin

No change on the Coulson front

After the news that there won’t be a new police investigation last night, the second thing the Tories feared most hasn’t happened either: neither the Guardian nor any other outlet has anything to further implicate Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking scandal this morning.  Indeed, the Guardian’s main story concerns how a private investigator working for the NotW collected phone messages from Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer, among others.  That deepens the media controversy, but hardly fuels the political controversy which was trying to burst into flames yesterday. I should stress – as I did in a comment yesterday – that I think phone-hacking is a disgraceful practice.  But the

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ashes Hiatus

So, yes, little blogging. Blame a combination of Ashes cricket and an infestation of family… Hiatus will continue as I shall be at the cricket in Cardiff on Friday. Talk amongst yourselves and deliver your verdict on whether Kevin Pieterson is just a tube or merely something else… See you on Sunday* or Monday…. *We’re playing vile Gala on Sunday in a must-win reserve league fixture. So, no blogging Sunday either. It’s all cricket all the bloody time here, you know…

Peter Hoskin

There could be a pay freeze, after all

Over at the FT’s Westminster blog, Jim Pickard picks up on an important comment from Stephen Timms, the Treasury minister, speaking at a committee meeting this morning.  Timms suggests that Treasury hasn’t ruled out a public sector pay freeze, as recommended by the Audit Commission’s Steve Bundred.  Here are the minister’s words:   “It’s certain the case that our pay policy needs to reflect the wider economic circumstances … we will be deciding on pay policy over the next few weeks, the policy has got to be fair to people who work in the public sector just as we have to be fair to everybody else. The suggestion by Steve

Wednesday

Matthew Dancona

A poetic evening

From its founder Joseph Addison – a poet of some significance – to its present poetry editor, Hugo Williams, the Spectator has always had a rich association with the poetic art. Indeed, an editorial by J.D.Scott in 1954 was widely regarded as the founding text of the so-called “Movement” of that decade; Vita Sackville-West, Sassoon, Freya Stark, Larkin, Kingsley Amis and James Michie have all played their part in this glorious history. So it was in the spirit of renewing our finest traditions that we hosted a very special poetry event at 22 Old Queen Street this evening – a standing-room only sell-out – featuring Sir Andrew Motion, Clive James,

Andrew Lilico and Helen Thomas

Rules versus discretion

Today’s White Paper on financial regulation avoids introducing some unnecessary regulatory changes at the expense of failing to introduce some necessary ones.  In particular, it fails to recognise the abject failure of Gordon Brown’s “tripartite” framework, in which prudential supervision of the banks was taken from the Bank of England and given to the FSA. Prudential supervision is the proper task of the central bank, for only if it has oversight of banks can the central bank decide whether they should receive last resort lending when they need it.  Without prudential oversight, the Northern Rock debacle is the likely result, and the fact that we are still debating this the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Harman’s debt calculator is broken

I know Harriet Harman is not supposed to be taken seriously, so I’m prepared to believe that she just struggles with numbers and didn’t knowingly mislead MPs today. But it’s worth correcting the record on one crucial point. “We have paid down debt,” she says. Actually, if you take the last Budget into account – it ranges to 2013/14 – decisions taken by her government will have increased national debt by more than every government since the Norman Conquest. Put together. If this is her definition of paying down debt, I’d hate to see her overdraft. Don’t they teach them anything in St Paul’s?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The benefit of the Lords

I disagree with Helena Kennedy on a whole host of issues, but her speech last night in the Lords debate on assisted suicide was fantastic. Here’s the opening section of it: “Although I am a great believer in individual liberty and in the autonomy of the individual, I also believe strongly in the symbolic nature of law. The laws of a nation say a great deal about who we are and what we value. One of the ways in which cultural shifts take place in a society is by changing law. Many of us who have argued that changes in attitude follow changes in law did so particularly around issues

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The Hattie show

I’d be tempted to call it listless. But everyone was reading from lists. At today’s rather sleepy PMQs I counted six MPs who recorded their sympathy for those affected by the recent tragedies in Afghanistan and Camberwell. The Speaker needs to act or these sessions will turn into Prime Minister’s Condolences. Gordon Brown’s in Italy, saving the world, so Harriet Harman took his place and gave her much-loved impersonation of a rather tetchy duchess supervising the kitchen while Cook recovers from hives. William Hague, unsurprisingly, took her to task on the government’s investment plans and invited her to ‘translate into plain English’ the Prime Minister’s claim that spending in 2013

Daniel Korski

Obama’s bear-hug

Presidents Obama, and Medvedev (and Prime Minister Putin) seem to be having a good summit. Nuclear talks look like they have gone well, there has been mention of expanding NATO’s transit for its Afghan mission through Russia, and the mood – crucial at any summit – has been reasonably good. Nobody stared into any one else’s soul, but the leaders nonetheless agreed, as Bush and Putin did a few years ago, that the US and Russia can do business. But is a rapprochement between the US and Russia really possible? Dmitri Trenin, of Carnegie Russia, says the West and Russia share many threats. But he also says that anti-Westernism is

Peter Hoskin

When the cat’s away…

Hm.  Seems like Alan Johnson has chosen the day that Gordon’s away in Italy to write another comment piece on voting reform.  Like his article for the Times a few months ago, it pushes the AV+ version of proportional representation.  And, like his Times article, it goes out of its way to mention Brown (“I work for a leader who accepts the need for … renewal”), but it still comes across as an attempt to grab the leadership limelight.  After all, why should the Home Secretary be reiterating points he’s made before about voing reform?  Why isn’t he leaving this attention-grabbing stuff for his leader who “accepts the need for

Joanna Pitman

Yum, yum: love the mousse. But is it art?

Joanna Pitman talks to Ferran Adrià, widely hailed as the world’s greatest chef and named as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. He doesn’t think he is Picasso Can I interest you in some almond ice cream served on a swirl of garlic oil and balsamic vinegar? Are you game for a ‘chicken skin and orange blossom envelope’, fried tobacco balls, or a taste of rabbit brains with pistachio, green tea and demerara sugar? Although many of us would hesitate to put such things in our mouths, these startling dishes have all been created by Ferran Adrià, the 47-year-old Spaniard reputed to be the best chef

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book Imagine how wonderful the world would be if man-made global warming were just a figment of Al Gore’s imagination. No more ugly wind farms to darken our sunlit uplands. No more whopping electricity bills, artificially inflated by EU-imposed carbon taxes. No longer any need to treat each warm, sunny day as though it were some terrible harbinger of ecological doom. And definitely no need for the $7.4 trillion cap

John McEwen

The Oaks of Cheyithorne Barton

Michael Heathcoat Amory inherited Chevithorne Barton in Devon from his grandmother. She had experienced the unimaginable loss of her husband in the First War and their three sons in the Second, including the author’s father. Creating a garden at Chevithorne was a consoling distraction. Michael Heathcoat Amory has done her and his family proud, transforming Chevithorne over a mere 25 years into one of the world’s great arboretums. His passion is the oak. He now has 282 of the 500 extant species, of which 190 are catalogued in this handsome book. His model introduction is supplemented by three specialist essays. The photographic illustrations reveal that many oaks are unrecognisable as

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A welcome rejection of assisted suicide

I’m delighted that Lord Falconer has just failed in his attempt to legalise assisted suicide for people sending friends and relatives to Swiss death clinics. This is a topic which I suspect even CoffeeHousers will be evenly divided on, but to me the whole idea is just wrong – and it goes straight to the heart of how we, as a society, regard the disabled and the elderly. For those who haven’t been following the debate, Falconer used the Coroners and Justice Bill to propose a new law to make it legal to help one’s friends and relatives be killed in the Swiss death clinics. He proposed that any two

Michael Heath

In response to AA Gill

The restaurant-wrecker A.A. Gill has attacked the Spectator, accusing our cartoons (and those of the New Yorker) of failing to make him laugh. Well, you can go for me, A.A. – but when you go for my cartoonists, I’m bound to react (see above). Next time pick on someone your own size, beach bully!

Daniel Korski

Defence review: your say

So, a Defence Review has been set in motion even though the Government has for a long time said they would hold off from ordering such a study. But with the operational pressure growing, the financial situation dire, and clamour from the likes of George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown for a security rethink, the Government has been left with little choice. Kick-starting the review process also has the advantage of robbing Liam Fox, should he become Defence Secretary, of a “Bank of England moment” – i.e. a quick, early governmental decision that delivers some new momentum for Team Cameron. And Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth needed to do something to stem

Daniel Korski

NATO navel-gazing

Right now I’m sitting at an event in Brussels to launch NATO’s new Strategic Concept, featuring ex-US Secretary of State Madeleine Allbright, the current and future NATO Secretaries-General, the senior NATO military commander, Admiral Stavridis, and 400 of NATO’s Best Friends Forever. The Strategic Concept, what is that? It is the alliance’s main strategic document, meant to update NATO’s view on threats and challenges. The last one was agreed more than a decade ago. But implementing out the new strategy isn’t going to be easy. The alliance is divided into at least three. Those who fret about Russia’s agressive behaviour. Those who think expeditionary operations are key. And, finally, those

Peter Hoskin

To freeze or not to freeze?

The question of whether or not to freeze public sector pay has had a fair bit of airtime over the past few days.  In his interview at the weekend, Alistair Darling seemed to take a hard-line on the issue – and most outlets wrote it up as him not ruling out a freeze.  But, via today’s Times, “sources close to [Darling]” say that he won’t re-open wage deals to introduce a freeze.  While, for his part, David Cameron is also claiming that a Tory government wouldn’t order a freeze of public sector pay.  The politics of the situation is plain: neither side wants to seem especially tough on public sector