Society

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The costs that come before savings

It’s a simple fact of politics that many measures which would save money in the medium-to-long term incur costs in the short term.  Normally, this point is brought up in relation to public service reform – e.g. Gove’s Swedish Schools agenda.  But today’s FT highlights a similar effect in relation to public sector redundancies. The important fact is that “civil servants aged under 50 can receive up to three years’ pay if made compulsorily redundant, and those who joined before 1987 more than six years’ pay”.  This means that there are actually massive upfront cash costs to cutting jobs across the public sector, whatever the potential savings further down the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Whatever happened to duty, responsibility, thrift and local solidarity?

I’ve been so tied up with my financial advisers, getting my bid together for the Dartford river crossing (my plan is to prevent people from Essex visiting Kent, because I don’t like them), that I missed this letter from one of the country’s more thoughtful and free thinking Labour MPs, Denis MacShane. It’s been causing a minor stir in blogsville, not least at Aaronovitchwatch. I know that many of you resent Mr MacShane because of his wish for us all to speak German and live in a fascistic European super state led by Tony Blair, but let’s leave that to one side for a moment. His letter, to the Grauniad,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Repairing the broken society

One line from the Sunday papers is still haunting me today. In the Mail on Sunday, Phillip Blond wrote that, “one million children have alcohol-addicted parents”. Think about that for a minute. What hope can these children have growing up in these kind of households? How can we as a society ensure that these children have a decent chance in life despite such a challenging start? There are no easy answers to these questions. Considering the state’s appalling record with children in care, taking these children away from their parents is not the answer. But then what is? It seems that the only answer is to deal with the problem

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 12th October – 18th October

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

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why are the Pakistani Taliban being given another opening?

There is a depressingly predictable story in The New York Times today about reconstruction in the Swat Valley. Here’s the key section: “the real test of Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban in Swat will take place here, in the impoverished villages where the militant movement began. But more than two months after the end of active combat, with winter fast approaching, reconstruction has yet to begin, and little has been accomplished on the ground to win back people’s trust, villagers and local officials say. The lag, they argue, is risky: It was a sense of near-total abandonment by the government that opened people to the Taliban to begin with, they

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Welcome to the era of British Olympic domination

It is wonderful news that both golf and rugby sevens have been accepted as Olympic sports. It gives us the chance of winning many more medals than if the games were simply a test of brute strength, speed, agility or skill. Now the authorities have accepted that the games should also reward GDP, raw levels of disposable income per head of population and the ability to wear pastel-shaded wool and acrylic leisure-wear without appearing unduly embarrassed. Golf in the Olympics! That should sort out the bloody Africans. Mauritania and Chad aren’t going to be in the running for any of those medals, are they?  All those Kenyans who train by

Peter Hoskin

Johnson: Brown will fight the next election

It’s worth highlighting Alan Johnson’s comments on Marr this morning: “Mr Johnson said there was ‘no possibility whatsoever’ of Gordon Brown standing down as Labour leader due to problems with his eyesight. ‘He’ll fight the election,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘He is fit and well and able and determined’.” You imagine this message of support will be better-received on Downing St than Johnson’s recent claim that he is “not willing to rule [himself] out” of any future leadership battle.

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Real Life | 10 October 2009

Hotels frighten me. I can only approach them armed with industrial-strength earplugs, a box of teabags, a jar of Marmite, an orthopaedic pillow, a towelling robe and slippers that fit, a large bag of apples, some bottles of mineral water, a scented candle and a DVD boxset of Columbo. ‘What the hell have you got in this case?’ asked a colleague as he helped me out of the taxi at the hotel where we were staying for the Tory conference in Manchester. ‘Too many outfits,’ I said. Because I really didn’t want to list the sad collection of home comforts I had packed in a bid to get myself through

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 10 October 2009

As I was getting changed, a naked figure emerged from the clouds of steam in the showers. The upper half was the Incredible Hulk, the lower half Charles Haughtry. I recognised the face. It was a lad I always used to see working out in the other gym. Usually, we’d be the only ones in there: him red-faced and grunting, lifting big weights in front of the mirror; me on the warm-up mats, bending myself into shapes. At first I didn’t speak or even acknowledge his existence. But I saw him there so often that eventually it would have been rude to continue ignoring him, so I used to give

Taki

High Life | 10 October 2009

New York They founded this place 400 years ago this year among the Indians in the marshes, and no one’s looked back since. Some of the Dutch descendants are still around but you wouldn’t know it by reading the gossip columns or celebrity blogs. This is immigrant paradise, and the less European one looks and sounds the better. It’s the nominally post-racial New York, no longer the Noo Yawk of my youth, with its mournfully tender streets of kind-hearted Irish cops, Italian small-time hoods, black hipsters and Jewish merchants. Manhattan was George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, the heartache, fear, ambition and joy of the city pulsating in its rhythmic and

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 10 October 2009

For followers of every sport there are trigger words, often in pairs, which immediately bring great moments to life. ‘The Thriller in Manila’, Muhammad Ali’s third fight against Joe Frazier, probably does it for boxing. Any bracketing of ‘Coe and Ovett’ brings back famous finishes for athletics fans. No true cricket supporter can hear mention of ‘Lock and Laker’ without recalling the Old Trafford Test when the last-named spinner took 19 wickets — and went home to his Australian-born wife to meet the puzzled inquiry: ‘Jim, did you do something good today?’ The yellow and russet leaves still on the trees beside the A11 to Newmarket last Saturday reminded me

Ferdinand Mount

Diary – 10 October 2009

Alan Clark will always have a special place in my heart. He remains the only person ever to sue me for libel. I still occasionally have a nightmare in which he is personally cross-examining me in the witness box and the court is erupting in laughter at his sneering sallies and my flustered answers. What happened was that, in the course of a rather turgid article in the TLS about the Tories’ prospects (it was 1996 and they were dismal), I remarked that Mr Alan Clark was ‘colourful certainly, endearing possibly but not exactly a man of bottom’. Alan erupted, claiming that I had accused him of financial dishonesty and

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 10 October 2009

In the early Cameronian period, which now feels prehistoric, the only news was good news. It shows how the recession has turned everything topsy-turvy that this week the Tories have actually been aiming for ‘bad’ headlines. They have succeeded: cut invalidity benefit (weekend press), make people retire later (Tuesday), the ‘new age of austerity’ (Wednesday). This inversion also means that a boring speech is considered a good one. On Tuesday, George Osborne came on to the platform here. ‘Platform’ was the right word, because the set, a photograph of suburban houses from first-storey level, made it look as if George was waving goodbye to his family from an elevated railway

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 October 2009

SUNDAY What a triumph! Sam launches conference with an Erdem Moralioglu jacket which is far more Modern and Compassionate than Sarah Brown’s Moralioglu dress. At just £500 off the peg, this truly is affordable fashion for the Age of Austerity and an example to all Britons of how to look good on a budget. Dave had a teensy problem with Europe on Marr but once the press realise Sam’s wearing shoes from Zara no one’s going to think that’s important. Lord A’s people have rung all the candidates and read them The Three Commandments: Thou shalt not speak to Lobbyists; Thou shalt not commune with Hacks in Bars; Thou shalt

The Spectator

Letters | 10 October 2009

Invest in the state Sir: David Cameron will never be a revolutionary if he follows your advice and concentrates only on government spending (‘Is Cameron a revolutionary?’, 3 October). He needs to completely rethink taxation, too. You say that taxes must rise. But putting up taxes now, as conventional wisdom suggests, will increase the government deficit, not reduce it. Cameron should make massive cuts in taxes on personal incomes, savings and capital. Suppose he reduces taxes and at the same time allows individuals wishing to set up new schools to issue ‘education convertible bonds’ underwritten for the first ten years by the government? As long as these are made attractive

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 10 October 2009

I’ve been reading a most interesting book. I’ve been reading a most interesting book. It’s all about the books Gladstone read, the way he read them and what he did with the 30,000 books he collected in his long life. Most of the book is written engagingly enough. ‘Until the late 19th century, most books were published without an index, obliging the assiduous reader [like Gladstone] to complete their own.’ That is a clear sentence, even if its use of the plural pronoun their as a gender-neutral singular might annoy some. But the introduction uses an entirely different kind of language, a baffling thicket of unsignalled conjunctions and disjunctions, of

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 10 October 2009

Don’t be misled by their Bullingdon days: Boris and Dave are masters of re-invention Last night, More4 broadcast a 90-minute drama-doc called When Boris Met Dave that I helped to make. It documents their Eton and Oxford years and I hope they saw it — or, at least, recorded it on Sky Plus — because the impression given in the press is that it was a spiteful hatchet job designed to cause them maximum discomfort. In fact, it was nothing of the kind. On the contrary, when we handed the film in to Channel 4 I was worried they’d think it was a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Conservative party.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 10 October 2009

Q. We are in the habit of entertaining guests from overseas, including a countess, at a bush camp in one of the excellent KwaZulu Natal game reserves. Usually we go, in a group of up to eight, on game walks, which bring us up close to animals including rhinos. From time to time, when a rhino coughs or stomps or advances in our direction we have to scramble up into the branches of nearby (if we are lucky) trees. This is predictably wild and disorganised and less agile guests tend to clog up access to the branches. As a host I would like some advice on protocols please, Mary. Would

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown has two minor retinal tears

That Downing Street felt obliged to disclose that Gordon Brown has visited Moorfields eye hospital and has two minor tears in his right retina is revealing of the current demands for transparency from politicians. I suspect we are moving towards a situation in which British Prime Ministers, like US Presidents, will open up their medical records to inspection and make public the details of their medicals while on the job. But my first reaction on hearing the news about Brown was to be reminded of how impressive it is that he has reached the very top of politics despite such problems with his eyes. Whatever one thinks of Brown’s performance

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown and the voters

Gordon Brown’s interview with the Telegraph contains this revealing exchange: Is he still missing an emotional link to voters? “Look I’ve talked about the treatment the health service gave me and my family (he means the operations to save his sight and the care of his daughter, Jennifer, who died in infancy). I’ve talked about how I was brought up, in a pretty ordinary town. “People know what happened to me. I don’t try to make any secret of it, but I’m trying to get on with the job.” The answer is almost an admission that he doesn’t have that emotional link despite having talked about his life in personal