Society

Tuesday

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

Peter Hoskin

Cameron courts the public academics

I’ve just got back to my desk after watching David Cameron in conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb – the author of The Black Swan, and one of those folk hailed as a “prophet” of the Crash – over at the RSA.  Although, to be honest, “conversation” might be stretching it.  Until it came to questions from the floor, Cameron largely left Taleb to it; letting him riff on everything from the national debt to biodiversity in Europe.  No bad thing, I assure you. As for the details of Taleb’s address, there were plenty of decent quotes and observations.  He warned of the “high risk” of hyperinflation, for instance, and laid

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Monarchy is Better than a Republic

If you wrote this about a monarch it might seem a trifle silly; writing it about a mere politician is simply embarrassing. So, take it away Peggy Noonan: I always now think of a good president as sitting at the big desk and reaching out with his long arms and holding on to the left, and holding on to the right, and trying mightily to hold it together, letting neither spin out of control, holding on for dear life. I wish we were seeing that. I don’t think we are. Heaven help us. If the President is expected to be Comforter-in-Chief, can you have an effective, let alone a sensible,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The End of the Affair: America & Obama Fall Out of Love?

So, it’s August and Barack Obama’s approval rating is barely above 50% and only 40% of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction. The President’s legislative agenda – to say nothing of its eventual cost – is frightening folk and the days of “No Drama Obama” seem like a story from the distant past, totally at odds with the current febrile political mood in the United States. No wonder the traditional comparisons with poor old Jimmy Carter are appearing. Already. Has the new President bitten off more than he can chew? Plenty of pundits seem to think so. Is he betraying his promise to the American people?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The flu jab choice the Department of Health might not tell you about

Which flu jab would you like this season – the one with mercury, or without? It’s a question you’re unlikely to be asked when the NHS vaccination programme gets underway in October but there actually is a choice. One swine flu vaccine ordered by the government, Panderix, contains thimerosal, a preservative which is 49.6% mercury by weight. The other swine flu jab, Celvapan, is mercury-free. I found this out by calling the Department of Health on a hunch. When governments order vaccines, and have no intention of telling patients what’s in the mix, they tend to go for the bulk cheap ones. These often contain thimerosal. But the use of

Peter Hoskin

While the cat’s away, the mice will undermine his authority

So the Times reveals something we all half-knew already: that Alistair Darling dug his heels in when there was talk of him being ousted from the Treasury during the last reshuffle.  Here’s the lowdown: “Alistair Darling remained as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the June reshuffle after telling Gordon Brown that he would leave the Government rather than move to another job, The Times has learnt. The Chancellor, who is in charge of the Government this week while Mr Brown is on holiday, told him that as the Prime Minister he had every right to put whoever he wanted into the Treasury. But his insistence that he would not take

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall 17 August – 23 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

Peter Hoskin

Andy Burnham goes way too far<br />

There’s little denying that the planets aligned just right for Gordon Brown last week: a Tory in cahoots with those dastardly folk on the “American right”; a chance to defend that popular cause, the NHS; and all wrapped up in a funky new medium which the papers love to write about.  But there are signs that, in their desperation to keep the #welovetheNHS story running, Labour are taking things way too far.  I thought it a few days ago, when Andy Burnham called Dan Hannan “unpatriotic”.  But now the Health Secretary has exceeded himself, with a press release he sent out last night which makes a series of bizarre demands

David Blackburn

City bonuses need to be curbed, but more tax is not the answer 

One upshot of George Osborne’s and Alistair Darling’s attacks on city bonuses was that the FSA had not gone far enough in trying to curb excessive reward. This morning, the left leaning think-tank Compass and Vince Cable have joined the debate. They suggest that there be a ‘High Pay Commission’, to examine wage ratios within financial institutions, and that the tax system is restructured to close the gap between income tax and capital gains. Cable makes the case in the Guardian, but this paragraph struck me: ‘There is no need for a return to a 1970s-style income policy for top pay – though, of course, the government is indirectly responsible for funding

Sunday

David Blackburn

One way to slim down the quangocracy

Despite Cameron’s recent announcements on the issue, there’s still quite a few frustrating question marks over how they’ll go about demolishing the quangocracy.  One attractive is turning quangos into angos – making them autonomous by introducing market principles and ensuring that organisations operate profitably and efficiently. To a certain, limited extent, this process is already underway. An employee of the General Medical Council (GMC), a completely autonomous and profitable organisation, recently explained to me how the BMC is taking over the Postgraduate Medical Education Training Board (PMETB). The PMETB is representative of the explosion of the Quango state. Its accounts show snowballing costs, all funded by the taxpayer. In 2007-08

Alex Massie Alex Massie

England Trott Towards Disaster

So, the selectors have spoken. And what a dreary story they have to tell. The selection of Jonathan Trott (and the retention of Ian Bell) for the final test of the summer is depressingly timid. Worse than that, it is recklessly timid, since it presumes that England have been more competitive in this series than is actually the case and that modest tinkering with the side is all that is required to produce a final victory. This is not an analysis that is endorsed by the facts: England were comprehensively outplayed at Cardiff and Leeds, while their victory at Lords rested upon: a) a sloppy Australian batting performance, b) an

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If the Tories are to take full advantage of this moment, they must cut out the unforced errors

The last week has been one of the worst the Tories have had in a while. As Pete said on Friday, a bad week in August is unlikely to do lasting damage. But the Tories should learn from the events of then past few days: they have been thrown onto the defensive not by clever Labour attacks but by their own unforced errors. Alan Duncan was a fool to say things to a prankster who he had never met before that he did not want made public and Dan Hannan should have realised that a Tory politician criticising the NHS in the context of the US healthcare debate was going

Peter Hoskin

Why the Tories are right to tackle IB claimant numbers

So far as political stories are concerned, the Sunday papers are surprisingly action-packed.  Few are more eye-grabbing, though, than this item on p.2 of the Sunday Times, headlined “Tory benefit cuts may raise jobless to 4m”.  Sounds bad, huh?  But, when you read the full thing, it turns out that the Tories may have had a good, honest idea. Basically, the ST story claims that “senior Tories” are planning to move around 1.5 million people who claim incapacity benefit (IB) on to jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) within a year of taking office.  Hence the big leap in jobless figures, from what will be around 3 million, up to 4 million.  It’s

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why we need a proper debate about healthcare

What we’ve seen in the last few days cannot be described as a debate about healthcare. It was a session of transatlantic insult slinging – and damned lies. This raises two questions: is the future of the NHS a subject that can be discussed rationally? And is the internet taking to British politics to the inane extremes that we see in certain sections of the American media? Let’s take this #welovethenhs Twitter campaign. Contrary to several British press reports, Sarah Palin did not describe the NHS as Orwellian or evil (she didn’t even mention Britain in her Facebook entry, here). But suggestions to the contrary have helped stoke this image

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 15 August 2009

The answer to all my problems, I read last week in a fascinating little booklet on fungal infections, is a substance called caprylic acid. Left to run riot, it predicted, the fungus growing in my throat and digestive tract will cause flatulence and itching (which I already have in spades), and eventually psychosis. Caprylic acid, a substance found in coconuts and breast milk, was the best natural substance to combat it, it said. That, combined with as much raw garlic as I can stomach. Of course I can always visit a doctor and get a prescription for some virulent chemical that will have a scattergun effect and kill off the

Taki

High Life | 15 August 2009

On board S/Y Bushido, off Corfu In a state of pre-orgasmic tension and anticipation, I sail into Nat Rothschild waters off the north-east tip of the island. Just across the narrow channel lies Albania, the land that God forgot for close to 75 years. Greeks are known to dislike Albanians, but young Taki is an exception. Albanians are fair with blue eyes and are totally committed to stealing, as well they should be after 75 years of great poverty and Godless communism. As the crow flies, or better yet as the dolphin swims, two miles separate one of the world’s richest and best-connected families from Europe’s poorest schmucks. The Rothschild

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 15 August 2009

It is the weather men rather than the steaks most of us want to grill slowly over hot embers this non-barbecue summer. But there are consolation days and nowhere better to appreciate them than Newmarket’s July course. The staff are friendly. Nobody looks askance at those who choose not to wear a tie and the fillies in silky pastels are as beguilingly undercovered as those in a risqué Edwardian pencil sketch. Flowers abound beside the parade ring and unsaddling enclosure, and I have never agreed with my late mother, who used to complain of others’ gardens, ‘Marigolds, dear…so common.’ The July course has been pleasantly re-developed. But at my age

The Spectator

Farewell Freddie

Not since Ian Botham has a cricketer so captured the public imagination as Andrew Flintoff has these past few years. Flintoff’s appeal comes from the fact that he brings the game of the village green to the Test match arena. He plays the sport as all those of us who have put on whites would like to. He bats with uncomplicated power, bowls with pace and turns matches through the force of his personality. He has played as hard off the field as he has on it. But there is something very English about his excess: more booze than bling. Few other sportsmen could have charmed the nation by turning