Society

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Another bubble set to burst

Today’s FT cover-story probably wins the prize for Most Worrying News Item of the Day: “Lenders in Europe are bracing themselves for a rising wave of consumer debt defaults as the credit card crisis that has caused billions of dollars in losses among US banks spreads across the Atlantic. The International Monetary Fund estimates that of US consumer debt totalling $1,914bn, about 14 per cent will turn sour. It expects that 7 per cent of the $2,467bn of consumer debt in Europe will be lost, with much of that falling in the UK, the continents biggest nation of credit card borrowers. National Debtline of the UK said that the number

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How can the Tory leadership solve its DD problem?

As Tim Montgomerie points out, David Davis’s article in The Times today, which Pete flagged up earlier, is just the latest in a string of public disagreements Davis has had with the Tory leadership. A couple of these disagreements seem to have been designed specifically to rock the boat; I’m thinking of the comments on grammar schools and today’s attack on a caricature of Tory policy on health records. The most telling thing about Davis’s article is the tone it is couched in. It is hard to see it as a constructive contribution to the policy debate when in his opening paragraph he calls the idea “so naïve” and “dangerous

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 27 July – 2 August

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

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Increased scrutiny means the Tories will not enjoy a long honeymoon

The next Conservative government will face an unprecedented level of scrutiny. The rise of the internet means that every statement made by David Cameron and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet is on-line; any back-sliding can be easily and instantly highlighted. By contrast, you can only find Tony Blair’s 1996 conference speech via subscription-only cutting services. Second, the internet has vastly reduced the barriers to entry for those groups that want to hold the government to account. This month’s Propsect reports that Will Straw intends to set up a blog called Left Foot Forward, modelled on the aggressively pro-Democrat Think Progress blog.  The idea would be to keep constant pressure

Peter Hoskin

Davis’s data protection tract

David Davis contra Google and, perhaps, the Conservative leadership too.  That’s what we get this morning in a Times comment piece by the former shadow Home Secretary.  He’s taking issue with Tory plans to employ a free-to-use system like Google Health to store and manage all our health data.  Here’s the gist of his argument: “Google is the last company I would trust with data belonging to me. In the words of human rights watchdog Privacy International, Google has ‘a history of ignoring privacy concerns. Every corporate announcement has some new practice involving surveillance’. It gave Google the lowest possible assessment rating: ‘hostile to privacy’. It was the only company

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s agenda

In private, many Tories have whispered that the debt crisis is an opportunity to get the size of the state—which has grown faster here than in any other OECD country in recent years—back under control. Today on the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron endorsed this analysis: “I think you know we mustn’t see this effort at getting public spending down and getting the budget balance, we mustn’t see it as some dreadful catastrophe. We’ve got to see it as a big opportunity to deliver public services in a different and a better way, and to totally reform our government and put people back in control. In a way those two

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The extremists are losing but the modernisers aren’t yet winning

Tom Friedman’s analysis of where the war on terror stands in the New York Times today is well worth reading. Here’s the crux of his argument: “it is obvious that everywhere they have won or seized power, the Islamists — in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon or Gaza — have overplayed their hands, dragged their societies into useless wars or engaged in nihilistic violence that today is producing a broad backlash from mainstream Muslims. … The only way to really dry up their support, though, is for the Arab and Muslim modernists to actually implement better ideas by producing less corrupt and more consensual governance, with better schools, more

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s referendum gambit won’t work with Brown in charge

Toby Helm reports in The Observer that Downing Street is considering the idea of holding a referendum on a move from first past the post to alternative vote on the same day as the general election. (Alan Johnson proposed a referendum on PR on the same day as the election a few months back). Downing Street’s thinking is that because Cameron would oppose the move, Labour could then portray him as a defender of the discredited political status quo, someone who doesn’t grasp the need for change. Leaving aside the propriety of introducing huge constitutional change just to discomfort the opposition, it strikes me that this strategy can only work

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 25 July 2009

Wagner wallows Sir: Michael Henderson states (Arts, 18 July) that Wagner’s music reveals the aspects of the human personality that we try hardest to suppress. Certainly many deep ideas and emotions are revealed. But instead of purging the emotions with pity and fear, and achieving a catharsis, Wagner wallows in them, exalting primitive values, ignoring or despising detachment and reason. A genius of the first rank, but highly undesirable. David Damant London WC2 Long echoes Sir: My old friend Peter Phillips (Arts, 18 July) observes that ‘St Paul’s Cathedral in London has such a long echo that a composer might want to build in extra rests for the sound to

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 25 July 2009

The eccentric Sir George Sitwell, the father of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, had a valet called Henry Moat, who would also have been called eccentric had he not been a plain-speaking Yorkshireman. One evening after lugging a heavy trunk up the stairs of an Italian hotel he opened the door with his elbow and threw the heavy object on to the bed in the darkened room. It was unfortunate that the novelist Hall Caine was attempting to restore his frayed nerves in that very bed.      Hall Caine, the first man in England to sell a million copies of a novel, is also the first recorded man to use a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 25 July 2009

Q. My husband has started working from home. The invasion of my privacy and the disruption of my peace is driving me almost mad. Now he has developed a habit of standing at the bottom of a staircase to the room where I myself work and yelling questions up it. He says he is too busy to come up the stairs and talk to me in a more civilised manner. I have tried to train him by not answering unless he comes upstairs, but then I can miss out if he assumes I am not in and he is calling to, for example, tell me something I really want to

Alex James

Slow Life | 25 July 2009

First day of the holidays and I’d promised the kids I’d take them to Oxford. As I reflect on this fatherly gesture of kindness, I realise it was for my benefit more than theirs. Specifically, they wanted to go to the toyshop on the ring road. That was all they wanted to do. Centuries of history and the aura of the gentle dignity of learning can’t compete with a pop-up shed full of brightly coloured plastic things when you’re five. I wanted to go to Oxford itself, to feel Oxford, to be a part of that silently whirring occult machinery. There are many things I always feel I should be

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 25 July 2009

‘Busy in here tonight,’ I observed. ‘Hello, stranger!’ she said. ‘We’ve got a band on later. Didn’t you know?’ I didn’t. Eight pints of Foster’s, ten Silk Cut, and a game of pool had been the upper limit of my ambition for the evening when I looked in the mirror before coming out. I told Candice to make hers a large one. ‘And have you heard?’ she said over her shoulder as she pressed the glass up against the optic. ‘I’ve got a fella.’ ‘No!’ I said. Candice hadn’t had a bloke to call her own for ages and she couldn’t quite believe it herself. More good news. We both

Taki

High Life | 25 July 2009

On board S/Y Bushido While the eastern islands of Greece are being whipped daily by the meltemi, the hot, strong winds that can turn sailors into zombies, the western side, or the Ionian, remains soft, green and as feminine as ever. The sea off Cephalonia is smooth and mirror-like, but this year I have yet to make contact with mama and baby porpoise. Assos is the tiny village that clings to a small isthmus between the island and a huge forested pine hill crowned by a ruined 15th-century fort. One year ago the road up to the fort was a dirt one. EU moolah, provided mostly by British and German

Kate Chisholm

Programming the Proms

Critics of this year’s festival have missed the point, Roger Wright tells Kate Chisholm Where’s the meat, the main course, the epic single masterwork? asked some of the music critics after the First Night of the Proms. They’ve missed the point, says Roger Wright, director of the Proms since 2008, in defence of his evening of Stravinsky, Chabrier, Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, Elgar, Brahms and Bruckner. The critics complained that a concert of seven works, with two intervals interrupting the flow, was not what they expected of arguably the world’s greatest classical music festival. They wanted a roof-raising performance of Verdi’s Requiem or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. But actually the musical taster devised

The Spectator

Onwards and upwards | 25 July 2009

Having your prospects in life determined at birth is the most pernicious and fundamental form of inequality. So the present political focus on improving social mobility is to be welcomed on principle. To think that all the advantages and disadvantages of background can be ironed out is delusional; short of a Spartan-style nationalisation of child-rearing, how could such a level playing field even be attempted? But this country could — and should — go a lot further towards broadening equality of opportunity: a 2005 report funded by the Sutton Trust found that Britain came joint last with the United States in this respect in a survey of 11 developed economies.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 25 July 2009

No one seems to have noticed, but next week the House of Lords will be abolished. I don’t mean the entire chamber, but the highest court of appeal in the land. Until now, this body has been a committee of the House of Lords, and has met in committee rooms of the House. When it resumes its work in the autumn, it will be known as the Supreme Court, and will have moved to new premises in the old Middlesex Guildhall across Parliament Square. We are always told by people like Mr New Speaker Bercow how marvellously unstuffy our institutions are these days, but in fact they are characterised by

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 25 July 2009

Monday Clearly we can’t have people saying it’s one rule for bed-blockers and another for Notting Hillers. We can’t be accused of penalising backbenchers we don’t like while turning a blind eye to expense abuses by Dave’s inner circle. We need one deeply principled rule for everybody. So, after much reflection, we’ve decided to let everybody off! Hurrah!! Obviously we can’t give anyone their seat back, and for those poor old dears who have already had to stand down there is, unfortunately, little we can do now, no matter how much we would like to. However, we can send out a message that we intend to make good use of

Hardeep Singh-Kohli

Diary – 25 July 2009

Last thursday evening saw me embraced by the ample bosom that is Yorkshire. I had an evening engagement in Sheffield, the oft-overlooked, Judas Priest-inspired steel town of the North. Every village, city and county has its rivalries. Dublin is divided by a river creating a historic division between the northsiders and southsiders; the west coast of Scotland labours under some delusional air of self-importance over the east-coast castle-keepers; and the dichotomy between the red and white roses of Yorkshire and Lancashire couldn’t be more documented in the annals of history. Over dinner I was offered various definitive definitions of a Yorkshireman (bear in mind, there seems no great interest in