Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

A call for reformation

There’s an incredibly important comment piece by Dr Taj Hargey in today’s Times.  Hargey is chair of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregration, and describes the “McCarthyite” campaign which the “Muslim heirarchy in Britain” have waged against him.  In the face of fundamentalism and Wahhabism, he calls for a reformation of Islam: “We need a reformation that saves Islam from foreign-inspired zealots. That reformation is already under way, with Muslims going back to the pristine teaching of the transcendent Koran, not taking on trust the hadith (a compilation of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad recorded some 250 years after his death by

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Richards’ law

In The Independent today, Steve Richards sets out a fundamental truth about public services: “In order to measure the effectiveness of big public institutions it is necessary to ask only two questions: To whom is the organisation accountable? To whom are its leaders accountable within the organisation? If the answers are clear, the organisation and its leadership will almost certainly be robust. But if the answers to those questions begin with the words, “Well it’s all a bit complicated…” you know for certain that the organisation and its leaders are in trouble.” This ambiguity allows institutions to believe that they accountable only to themselves. As Steve says you can see

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Gathering Storm of Same-Sex Marriage

My crack that same-sex marriage hadn’t caused the sky to fall in any of the places where it has been established prompted a socially-conservative friend to suggest this was a “lame” argument since “no historical event literally causes pure chaos”. He had a point. It was a cheap line. Nonetheless, homosexuals are going to have to move some if they’re to inflict as much damage upon the institution of marriage as heterosexuals. And of course, in terms of wider society, it is heterosexual marriage that is vastly more important. So it does seem to me that the argument over gay marriage is in some senses a sideshow as far as

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

A risky forecast

Uh-oh.  Are the Government about to make an official forecast they might regret?  Speaking to the Standard, the Treasury minister Stephen Timms strongly hints that a 2009 recovery may be pencilled into the Budget.  Here’s what he said: “I wouldn’t rule [growth this year] out. The question is when in the second half of the year and we will be a bit clearer about what we expect when we publish the Budget forecast” Now, this isn’t quite as outlandish as the forecasts in the PBR.  But it’s still towards the optimistic end of the spectrum, and you’d have thought the government would play it safe rather than risk backtracking once

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Were the G20 protestors also to blame for the attack on Ian Tomlinson?

Iain Martin suggests that amidst the justified hoopla over the death of Ian Tomlinson we shouldn’t forget the role the G20 protestors played too. They, he says, are “just as much to blame as the police”. And for the police it was a long and stressful day, mistakes happen you know, they’d been insulted and taunted all day, everything was very confusing, etc etc. I’m afraid this won’t quite do. As I argued yesterday, the only reason anyone is paying any attention to this assault is that poor Mr Tomlinson subsequently collapsed and died from a heart attack. That and the fact it was filmed. It is the very ordinary

Peter Hoskin

Balls in the dock?

Is Ed Balls in line for a kicking?  Today’s papers report that the heads of school sixth forms and colleges are considering suing the government over the terrible blunder which led to their budgets being unexpectedly cut.  Good on them.  They have a right to know exactly what went wrong here, and to hold Balls and his department to account.  Sure, whatever embarrassing revelations come out of this, I doubt Balls will ever accept responsibility.  As the exam marking fiasco revealed last year, that’s just not his style.  But he – and Brown – might be given plenty of cause to squirm.

Peter Hoskin

Bob Quick quits

It’s just been confirmed that Bob Quick has resigned from his role as a Met assistant commissioner.  He will be replaced by John Yates.  You felt it was coming after Quick’s horrendous blunder outside No.10 yesterday, although he’s certainly courted controversy and embarrassment before then.  With this happening in the wake of the Ian Tomlinson tragedy, the Met now faces a titanic task to restore its battered reputation.

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The productive and the unproductive

Camilla Cavendish’s column in The Times today contains a message that the right urgently needs to get across before the cuts debate kicks off in earnest: “There are two public sectors in Britain today: the “front line” that does jobs the public understands, often for low to middling wages, and the “back room” that is firmly on the gravy train. The back-room boys are using the front line as human shields in a battle for self-preservation.” This might be a bit simplistic but it contains a lot of truth and, politically, makes it far harder for the left to scream blue murder at any suggested cut. P.S. This is an

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Robert Gates does the Royal Navy a favour

TNR asks defence analysts Who Won and Who Lost in Bob Gates’s realignment of Pentagon spending priorities? One party that doesn’t get a mention is the Royal Navy, yet the curtailment of the F-22 fighter programme and the allocation of increased resources to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter must be considered good news for the Navy and the Royal Air Force. Given the (intolerable) pressures on the MoD budget the sooner (and the cheaper) the F-35 is developed past a point of no return, the better. Granted, it seems unlikely (in the present climate) that Britain will really buy as many as 150 of the aircraft, but the development of

Peter Hoskin

Does Cameron need to diversify?

Is Cameron overdoing it on the economy?  A silly question, perhaps, given that we’re caught up in a recession.  But it’s one prompted by an article in today’s FT, which notes that: “David Cameron has made only one speech dedicated to health and education in the past nine months, compared with 18 on the economy.” Of course, the worry is that the party’s message on the public services will get submerged under all the economic talk.  That may or may not be happening already but, even given the relative importance of the issues, the 18:1 ratio does seem rather unbalanced. To my mind, all this underlines just how Cameron-centric the

The Spectator

The latest issue of The Spectator

Just to flag up that, because of the Easter weekend, the content from the latest issue of The Spectator has been uploaded to the website a day earlier than usual.  You can access all the articles here, but here are some highlights: Rod Liddle says that the Church of England has forgotten its purpose. Fraser Nelson claims that the worst may be yet to come. And The Spectator gives its take on the continuing expenses row. The print edition of the magazine goes on sale in London today, and across the rest of the country tomorrow.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ian Tomlinson

The appalling thing – apart from his death, of course – about the death of Ian Tomlinson after he was assaulted by the Metropolitan Police during the G20 protests last week is that if it weren’t for the fact that Tomlinson collapsed from a fatal heart attack moments after he was attacked by the police, there’d be very little fuss about the incident. It would just be another example of heavy-handed police thuggery and, consequently, of no news value whatsoever. (incidentally, it also shows why it is important that the public be allowed to take photographs of the police.) The policeman who attacked Tomlinson who was, as the video footage

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s post-G20 rhetoric sounds a lot like his pre-G20 rhetoric

Yesterday brought plenty of insights into Labour’s pre-election strategy – rumours of poster campaigns; a series of attacks on the Tories; and talk of how the Government would use the G20 to refine its domestic message.  But perhaps the most striking aspect of it all was how, fundametally, the approach remains the same.  The emphasis is still on those infamous dividing lines: “investment vs cuts”, “nice vs nasty” etc.  And, while there are efforts to wrap a post-G20 bow around some of this, the content is wearily familiar.     Gordon Brown’s interview with the Independent today does little more than confirm this.  Here’s the most substantive passage: “Rehearsing his election

Peter Hoskin

Put your questions to Eric Pickles | 8 April 2009

We ran a Q&A with Eric Pickles back in August.  But as he’s had an eventful few months since then – what with being made chairman of the Tory party, as well as his appearance on Question Time a couple of weeks ago – Eric has kindly agreed to another Q&A with CoffeeHousers now. Same drill as usual: just put your questions for Eric in the comments section below; we’ll pick out the best 5 or so on Sunday, and put them to the Tory chairman; and he’ll get back to us with answers early next week.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another blow to public confidence in the police

It is hard not to be shocked by this video of the police and Ian Tomlinson last week in London. The footage (after the jump) strongly indicates that Tomlinson was no threat to anyone or anything. He was just someone slowly going about their business. This incident will be yet another blow to public confidence in the police. There were clearly people demonstrating that day whose main intention was to start a violent confrontation with the police but, judging by this footage, there is no possible way that a reasonable person could think that Tomlinson’s behaviour suggested he was one of them. Regardless of whether the police’s actions played any

Peter Hoskin

Empty seats in Parliament

So here’s a new controversy for politicians to get mired in: select committee absenteeism.  Today’s Times has a double-page spread naming and shaming some of those politicians who “routinely skip” the meetings of committees they belong to.  Last year, for instance, Nadine Dorries went to just 2 percent of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills meetings (UPDATE: Dorries offers an explanation on her blog); Bob Spink likewise.  You can find a more detailed roll call here.   Now, I’m not going to comment on individual cases.  MPs, including those mentioned above, may well have solid reasons for not attending (cf, Nadine Dorries: “This committee is chaired by someone not fit”). 

Alex Massie Alex Massie

As Iowa and Vermont go, so goes the United States?

This week the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld same-sex marriage and the Vermont legislature has overturned a gubernatorial veto and recognised gay marriage. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia’s city council voted unanimously to reognise gay marriages in DC, regardless of the state in which the ceremony took place. Commenting on this Rod Dreher writes: Gay marriage supporters will get it democratically if they can, but if they can’t, they’ll have it imposed on unwilling polities by the judiciary. It is increasingly obvious that the US Supreme Court is going to have to rule on this matter soon. It is an untenable situation for a same-sex couple to be married in

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Yet another Balls up | 7 April 2009

Nearly everyone would accept that education is the key to advancement in the globalised, knowledge economy and that now is the worst time in almost a generation to look for a job. So, it is a huge error for the government to now be telling sixth-form and colleges that there is a £60 million shortfall in funding. In the days before we became inured to governmental incompetence, this kind of mistake would have led to calls for ministerial resignations. Michael Gove, Balls’s opposite number, points out what the consequences of this cock-up by Balls’ department are: ‘The Education Secretary is now in the deeply uncomfortable position of telling thousands of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pakistan, a problem without a solution?

The New York Times Magazine profile of Asif Ali Zardari, the president of Pakistan who is known by the nickname of Mr 10 percent, is a depressing reading. It leaves you with little doubt that Zadari is not the kind of effective leader that Pakistan needs now. Then, in its final paragraphs, it turns its attention to the most likely alternative to Zadari: ‘American officials, increasingly convinced both that Zardari is not the interlocutor they had hoped for and that his days in power may be numbered, have begun to pay more attention to Sharif, long considered dangerously close to Islamist forces. Leading PML-N officials say they have learned from