Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Localism Is Barred From Your Local

One of the things that’s happened as a consequence of devolution is that sometimes Westminster finds itself following Holyrood. It’s almost as if the latter has actually become a mini-laboratory of democracy. That’s as it should be. Alas, the reality is that it’s more of a laboratory for managerialism. Perhaps, one bright day, this will produce some good ideas that Westminster will feel like copying. At the moment? Not so much. So it’s no surprise that David Cameron seems to be moving towards copying some of the SNP’s ideas on “combatting” the problem of cheap booze and hooliganism. Minimum prices for alcohol would seem to be one idea Cameron is

Peter Hoskin

The loser from the Kevan Jones storm is Gordon Brown

Guido went there, and the newspapers decided to follow.  After the political blogosphere’s favourite son outed Kevan Jones as the minister behind the attempted smear campaign against Richard Dannatt, the defence minister gets namechecked in all of this morning’s publications. Jones is, naturally, distancing himself from the accusations – but there are intriguing hints that Dannatt himself knows who the culprit is, and may act against him.  This in today’s Sun: “The General knows the identity of the man behind the bid, The Sun can reveal. He has considered forcing his resignation.” If Jones – or any other member of the government – can be tied to the smear plot,

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why high pay restrictions are a bad idea

I’m not sure how I missed Hamish McRae’s latest column in my morning dash through the papers but, now I’ve seen it, I’d recommend it to all CoffeeHousers.  Why?  Well, it’s the bottom line on the debate about limiting high pay that has been rumbling on for the past few days; a cogent reminder of how futile and destructive such a move would be.  I was particularly struck by McRae’s description of how his former employer, the Guardian, got around restrictive pay policy in the 70s:   “Because an employer could not increase people’s pay they had to find other ways of retaining them when another company tried to bid

Edward Mancey

Obama’s internet support comes back to bite him

The internet generation who made Obama’s campaign possible through a mass of micro-transactions have struck again. During the past 24hours over $100,000 has been raised by over 1,500 donors keen to ensure that the President doesn’t back down on his plans for a health care reform, after his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Sunday that a public option was “not essential”. What’s so interesting about this story is that, having paid to get him where he is, the internet donors now feel they have a stake in Obama. We kept our end of the deal by electing you, they’re saying, so now you better deliver the

Peter Hoskin

Why Cormack’s proposal makes the case for greater public involvement

So, Sir Patrick Cormack has proposed a solution to the expenses row: doubling MPs’ pay to around £130,000 and then banning all allowances, save those which pay for staff and the maintenance of a constituency office.  The general response has been dismissive – a “Tory grandee” sparking “outrage” – and both Labour and the Lib Dems have quotes on the wire attacking this “out of touch” idea. But, to my mind, this is one of those cases where both sides of the argument can be understood and – paradoxically – perhaps even agreed with.  Doubling MPs’ pay, while removing allowances, would streamline the system, make it much more transparent and

Anna Fazackerley

A beacon of hope?

Let’s be frank. If you get AAB in your A-level results tomorrow and your university offer is for three As – or worse, if you haven’t secured a place at all yet – things do not look good. Leading research universities have all wedged their doors firmly shut. This year was hugely competitive with great heaps of top grade applicants to choose from (that, of course, is another story). And they are determined not to take any of the 10,000 extra unfunded places thrust at them by a Government desperate to quell the rising tide of Parent Fury. Some modern universities will still enter Clearing. But it will be a

Peter Hoskin

Something the Tories shouldn’t admit to

There’s an intriguing story in today’s Telegraph about how the Tories plan to “decapitate” – that is, target and win the seats of – certain Labour ministers come the next election.  The list is said to include Alastair Darling, Ed Balls and Jack Straw.  Here’s what a “senior shadow cabinet source” told the paper: “Certain Labour Party big beasts, and they know who they are, are already experiencing more activity on the ground from us. We are going to make Ed Balls and Alistair Darling and some of their ministerial colleagues feel very uncomfortable. They will not only be fighting their most difficult general election campaign on a national front

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Logic, School Choice, Milton Friedman… And Polly Toynbee

Unsurprisingly, Brother Nelson has a useful primer on some of the latest skirmishing over the Tories plans to introduce (in England) Swedish-style education reform. I’m also pleased he highlighted this Polly Toynbee column since, while she tries to claim, erroneously, that Sweden’s Free Schools are merely middle-class playthings she ends up by arguing that: The only countries where children succeed according to talent and perseverance more than social class are the most equal societies: the Nordics, Japan, the Netherlands. Whatever the school system, Britain’s dysfunctional inequality will usually trump teaching. Japan is a case unto itself for all sorts of reasons, but it’s worth observing that two of her other

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mike Huckabee’s Middle Eastern Hucksterism

First there was Mitt Romney and his plan to redouble his efforts to appeal to the Republican party’s nationalist base; now Mike Huckabee is in Israel doing much the same thing. To wit, Huckabee rejects the idea of a two state solution entirely: Speaking to a small group of foreign reporters in Jerusalem, Huckabee, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said the international community should consider establishing a Palestinian state some place else. “The question is should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes, I have no problem with that. Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That’s what I think

Kate Williams

We are fast forgetting how to be guilty about the past

Kate Williams says that Tarantino’s reduction of Nazi atrocities to entertainment is part of a dangerous trend in which the great evils of history become show business One of this summer’s big screen openings is Quentin Tarantino’s hyperbolic battle movie, Inglourious Basterds. Featuring Brad Pitt demanding his men search for ‘100 Nazi scalps’, this ironic shootfest is bloody, explosive, rowdily entertaining — and a fantasy. ‘You haven’t seen war,’ screams the trailer, ‘until you have seen it through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino.’ As the pound falls and Germany under Merkel is resurgent, 2009 is the year in which our representations of the Third Reich and the second world war

Bryan Forbes

It takes a vindictive mind to tax a view

Downloading the Valuation Office Agency’s no-longer-secret £13 million database, I find that having lived in my house for the past 50 years and having, for those five decades, diligently paid my income and council taxes, my home is about to become my misfortune because of so-called taxable amenities. Using the Freedom of Information Act I find that another 94,373 households are listed as having a view of sorts; a further, whopping 777,189 householders have been covertly assessed as having the gall to improve their property by adding on a conservatory and will be liable for a retrospective tax. I have discovered that unless this massively incompetent bunch of losers and

John Preston

The Booker favourite who dared to put on her armour

Hilary Mantel lives in a lunatic asylum. Admittedly it hasn’t been a lunatic asylum for a while — the site was converted into flats 20 years ago, and Mantel and her husband are up on the top floor in a scrupulously ordered apartment with views over the treetops of Woking. Nonetheless, there’s something apt about her choice of home. It’s not that Mantel herself comes over as remotely mad. With her china-blue eyes and her chalk-white skin, she looks like a figure from a Dutch painting, and exudes a similarly contained, watchful air. But just as some of the building’s grim history seems to seep up from below, so darkness

Jonathan Foreman

The terrible price that is paid by the forgotten casualties of war

Jonathan Foreman says that the focus upon the death toll in the Afghan conflict obscures the high numbers of soldiers who have suffered catastrophic wounds — and the scandalously inadequate compensation they have been offered once home in a land unfit for such heroes It is not easy to measure success and failure in counter-insurgency warfare. Modern military establishments have all sorts of ‘metrics’, as they call statistics, but the politicians and the general public tend to focus on one measure alone: fatalities, and our fatalities at that. The deaths in Afghanistan of other Allied forces rarely make the headlines (though the loss of ten French troops in a single

Tuesday

David Blackburn

What has been going on at Bromley Council?

Both the Standard’s original report and Bromley Council’s clarification suggested that giving assistance to fee-paying parents has been discussed because state schools in the area are becoming oversubscribed. Yet, Bromley Council informed me that state schools in the area were not oversubscribed and that the Council reviewed that issue frequently. So, if the Council were aware of that, why did they, as Councillor Stephen Carr says, feel “duty bound to consider this, as is good practice,” following a question being asked at a June meeting? And, why did Councillor Peter Morgan, the Conservative Councillor who raised the question, feel the need to do so? Mr Morgan was due to go

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s Afghanistan balancing act

It’s frequently pointed out that our involvement in Afghanistan is based more on a political consensus than a public one.  Deep swathes of the country want to get out troops out of harm’s way – but many in Westminster feel that the job needs seeing through to the end, to help prevent the spread of terror to British shores.  This is the essential struggle the next government will find itself caught up in.  Does it cede to public or to political consensus?  Or does it try something else? Interviewed on Sky just now, David Cameron toed a line somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.  He seemed to reaffirm

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Remember Kim Hughes?

It’s important to remember that the Ashes is still tied at one test apiece. It’s not as though this has been a disastrous summer for English cricket. It just feels as though it could have been better. That being said, I don’t think many people are confident that England will find a way to win at the Oval and England’s pusillanimous selection has both failed to inspire confidence and dampened enthusiasm for the fray. Perhaps this is too pessimistic by far. Perhaps it’s a little too soon to be quite so gloomy. Nonetheless, there’s a sense of foreboding about this test match. So it’s good to be able to read

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Responding to the opponents of “Swedish schools”

Given how potentially transformative the Tory schools policy could be, it’s surprising it hasn’t attracted more enemies. But in school policy, silence is deceptive. The enemies of reform tend to operate under the radar. Local authorities, whose grip over state education is threatened, will lobby their local MP. It’s crucial to understand here that Tory councils are just as bad. They fought Kenneth Baker’s plans for direct grant (i.e. quasi-independent) schools with as much energy as Labour councils did. And already, you can hear Tory MPs voicing questions about the Gove “Swedish schools” policy – and they join a harder Labour critique. I thought I’d run through a few here.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

6 million are on out-of-work benefits

Policy Exchange hits the headlines today with a report highlighting that 6 million are on out-of-work benefits. This is no guesstimate by a think tank, but borne out by official DWP figures* released recently (but not announced, they just slip ’em up on the website) showing the count at 5.8m in February.  Given the trajectory of unemployment, it will have passed 6m now as PolEx shows and may well peak closer to 6.5m. The DWP website shows a time series for the last ten years  – see it here which gives the below picture. This is a remarkable 15.7% of the working-age population. But again, this is a national study