A clear dividing line on defence
Society
Thursday
Hackette of the Week
Let’s hear it for Liz Jones – “funny, outrageous and downright rude” according to her employers at the Daily Mail – for this piece that, really, you’d think must actually have been written by Glenda Slagg. But, no, apparently it’s not a parody… I have long derided so-called ‘spas’, but the modern hairdressing salon is the female high-maintenance equivalent of being sent to Guantanamo Bay – torture. The horrid black nylon gowns are just as bad as orange jumpsuits. Despite the trendy piped music, sleek interiors and ‘massage’ chairs (have you tried one? It is like sitting on a sack full of ferrets) the modern salon is still stuck firmly
MPs need to clarify their timetable
The ever-perceptive Andrew Sparrow has sifted through the ‘Parliamentary Trends: Statistics about Parliament‘ report so that you don’t have to. I’d recommend you read his post for the whole series of “12 things you probably didn’t know about Parliament”. But, given that we’re a couple of weeks into parliamentary recess, it’s this entry which jumped out at me: “The Commons sits for more days per year than almost any other legislature in Europe. In 2004 MPs sat for 160 days at Westminster. In France the National Assembly sat for 135 days, in Germany the Bundestag sat for 64 days, in Austria the national council sat for 33 days, in Belgium
Dumbing down
If you ever want to convince people that exams are getting easier, point them to the examples of science exam questions which Michael Gove gives about a minute into this clip: Hat-tip: Conservative Home
Why the headlines won’t help Brown
So the papers have picked up on a set of stronger-than-expected results in the housing, manufacturing, and services sectors, and are now talking about “new hope” and “economic fightback”. As Mike Smithson asks over at Political Betting: are these the headlines that Brown has been waiting for? Well, given what we hear about Brown’s green shoots strategy, they probably are. But, like Smithson, I doubt they – or the potential recovery they herald – will do Brown much good. There are plenty of reasons why. For starters, there are the political trends. The tide has turned against Labour for reasons other than the economy: everything from Smeargate, through the expenses
Wednesday
Why Cameron should ditch the 50p tax rate
When justifying his decision to keep Gordon Brown’s 50p tax for the super rich, Cameron has recently taken to saying that the well-off must “pay their fair share”. This is worth closer examination. The richest 1% in Britain contribute 24 percent of all income tax collected – it is unclear whether Cameron regards this as “fair” or not. But if he wants it to rise, then it is clear what he should do. Data released last week from America, and picked up by the smarter economics bloggers, gives us a striking example. If he wants to soak the rich, cut their taxes. This US data shows that the richest 1
Georgia on my mind
Last August was dominated by Russia’s invasion of Georgia and two recent stories are reminders that this conflict could flare up again. Radio Free Europe reports that Georgian officials says that Obama told Medvedev and Putin that the US “would not stand aside” if Russia marched in again. At first glance, this seems odd. Obama stumbled during the presidential campaign last year because of his cautious reaction to Russia’s move and it would be unusual for him to be sounding more bellicose in office than he was on the campaign trail. Also, Obama’s diplomacy so far has been thoroughly realist — it would be more in keeping with his administration’s
Are You Smarter than the US Congress? Almost Certainly.
As any fool knows, the principle benefit of the United States Congress is to make other legislatures seem positively benificent by comparison with the gallery of clowns on Capitol Hill. Compared with these people, even Westminster seems as though it must be populated by latterday Solons. Verily, we live in a Periclean age compared to our poor cousins across the Atlantic. Consider this piece of jaw-dropping idiocy: It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be
Putin the Action Man
I thought Harriet Harman’s posturing could not be bettered, but Vladimir Putin’s annual Alexander Nevsky tribute act takes the biscuit. Each year he varies his macho stock in trade of hunting, shooting and fishing in the buff. Last year he invaded Georgia. And this year he played 20,000 leagues under the sea’s Captain Nemo, by manning a midget submarine and diving to the bottom of the world’s deepest lake. That it was a stunt is in no doubt: he gave some luckless Russian journalists a running commentary throughout his two hour descent into darkness. For those looking for an arresting image, the Telegraph’s report has this photograph: Doesn’t
Despite its reputation, the civil service recognises the need for cuts
Hazel Blears’ former SpAd, Paul Richards – who wrote that perceptive, Monty Python-referencing analysis of Labour’s defeat in Norwich North a couple of weeks ago – has an article in today’s Times on the “Sisyphean task” that the Tories may face in reforming the civil service. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but its central point is enshrined in this passage: “…the culture of the Civil Service is so risk-averse that it is hard to see it embracing its own transformation. When I arrived at the Department of Health I was told this story: when Tony Blair walked into the Cabinet Room at Downing Street for the first time
Why Labour will copy the Tory open primaries
In its lunchtime email, LabourList asks whether Labour should now adopt the Tory idea of open primaries to select candidates. To be honest, I can’t see them doing anything but. Not only is the Tory primary getting good coverage in today’s press – and rightly so – as a decent reforming measure. But, for the time being, it’s also one of the best potential get-out-of-jail-free cards for a constituency party caught up in an expenses scandal. How so? Well, the theory is that if you give all voters a chance to pick a single party’s candidate, then they’re somehow invested in that candidate and will be more likely to vote
Harman-a-rama
Harriet Harman is everywhere in today’s papers. I mean, just look at the stories in the Times. On their cover, they have news that she’s clashing with her colleagues and civil servants over new rape laws: “Labour’s deputy leader used her position as Gordon Brown’s stand-in to demand a more radical overhaul of the law, such as targets for prosecutors and police to secure more convictions. She has the backing of Vera Baird, the Solicitor-General, but Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary and Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, do not want to widen the terms of reference and the review has been postponed… …According to Whitehall officials, she tore up plans
Suicide is Painless, It Brings on Many Changes…
No-one could mistake back-bench Conservative MPs for advocates for limited government. So it’s scarcely surprising that Nadine Dorries and Edward Leigh are up in arms over proposals to “clarify” the law (in England and Wales) on assisted suicide. You might think it’s your body and your life but that doesn’t mean you have the right to decide your own fate. No way. Not if these energetic busybodies have anything to do with it. On her blog, Dorries raises the preposterous prospect of state-sponsored death squads marauding through Britain’s nursing homes and hospitals, pulling out plugs and smothering pensioners with their pillows. She doesn’t put it quite as colourfully as that,
Mandelson’s holiday plans: no Russians, no yachts, no Osborne
George Osborne might be steering well clear of Corfu after all the trouble that his holiday encounters there last summer got him into, but Peter Mandelson is a fighter not a quitter and so has headed back to the island. His spokesman tells the Mirror that this trip will be “much less glamorous” than last year’s — “He is there for a week but this time without Russians, yachts or George Osborne” — and that the peer had flown out there on Easy Jet.
Will the NHS respond to Dr Sykes’s treatment?
Corporate titan turned London healthcare chief Sir Richard Sykes faces his toughest challenge yet, says Judi Bevan — but he’s full of praise for the handling of swine flu Sir Richard Sykes darts across the hallway of the Athenaeum club to greet me. Lightly tanned, thin as a whippet, the former head of GlaxoSmithKline and Imperial College cuts a dash in pinstripes and a tie the colour of crushed raspberries. Sykes is to ‘change czars’ what Roger Federer is to tennis. In both his former roles he radically changed the institutions he headed. Through the takeover of Wellcome, followed by merger with SmithKline Beecham, he transformed middleweight Glaxo into GlaxoSmithKline,
The ominous creep of Baby Chic
How can we expect our children to grow up, asks Harry Mount, when British culture is becoming increasingly babyish — full of primary colours and little letters It first struck me how babyish modern Britain has become when I got a flyer through my door about a new doctors’ surgery in Kentish Town, my patch of north London. I’d bicycled past it as it was being built — it’s your usual faceless ziggurat of undecorated, angular white concrete, with spindly, metal-framed windows half-blocked by lime-green steel grilles. No worse than the usual publicly funded horrors dumped on London’s pretty terraced streets; no better. And then I read the flyer —
The great football myth
Far from being invented and refined by toffs, Richard Sanders says that the world’s most popular sport was civilised and modernised by ordinary people As a new football season begins, and a sporting legend (Sir Bobby Robson) passes away, it seems the right time finally to expose the big lie at the heart of football. Though it’s universally assumed that the modern game was created by the upper classes, who took the rough-and-tumble kickabout beloved of common people and refined it into the world’s best-loved sport, in fact the opposite is true. The myth runs something like this. The game played by the common people from the Middle Ages onwards
Whitechapel trio
The newly renovated and extended Whitechapel offers a trio of new shows: one of sculpture and two of painting. How refreshing to find such a bold showcase of contemporary painting in this citadel of fashionable art. The East End Academy: the Painting Edition (until 30 August) is a triennial exhibition open to all artists living or working east of Aldgate Pump, and this year a dozen painters have been selected from over 600 submissions. The range and quality of work on display offer much hope for the future of painting. The rich and ancient art of painting is as relevant, subtle and multifarious today as it’s always been. It just
The great thaw
We had a running joke in my family that entering the Soviet Union was a bit like smuggling in somebody else’s nose. Every school holiday, as I presented my passport to the granite-faced Soviet border guard at Moscow’s Sheremetevo Airport, my photograph would be scrutinised at length to make sure it matched my face. Sometimes more senior guards would be summoned in an agonising ritual that left Western visitors in little doubt they were entering hostile territory. Our apartment was bugged. We were followed. Russians were not allowed to visit our flat without permission. Those who challenged the regime — the tiny group of courageous dissidents — were inevitably broken
The human condition
The hardest thing about the advent of a new collection of stories by A. L. Kennedy — her fifth, called What Becomes — is the search for synonyms for ‘brilliant’. Her uncanny dialogue is as note-perfect as J. D. Salinger’s, her vision as astutely bleak as Alice Munro’s, and her ability to summon up a society in a few strokes rivals William Trevor’s. To these gifts, Kennedy adds a few twists all her own — a relish for the grotesque, sudden splashes of violence, and the kind of contagious, verging-on-hysteria laughter that attends final examinations, wakes and other emergencies. Readers of Kennedy will find the terrain in this collection familiar.