Society

Kabul They look very impressive, marching around a rain-soaked square while their US-trained Master Sergeant sends a punishing salvo of parade instructions their way. These new recruits in the Afghan army represent Afghanistan’s proudest post-2001 achievement. I spoke to dozens of them from all of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, saw their commander and watched several live-fire drills. Now, as the New York Times reports, President Obama is planning to double the security forces. From a projected troop strength of some 130,000 plan the plan is to create a force of about 400,000 Afghan troops and police officers. But, after today’s visit to the Afghan army, I am clear that such a

I wrote yesterday about how the Treasury Select Committee must call back Lord Myners and Sir Tom McKillop to ascertain whether the Committee had been misled over what the government knew and when it knew about Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. Today comes news that John McFall, the chairman of the Committee, has asked McKillop to supply written evidence on this point. This is a welcome first step to getting to the bottom of this important matter.

Ben Brogan’s got it right.  Mervyn King has just “blown a hole” in Gordon Brown’s strategy for the next few weeks and months, by telling the Treasury Select Committee that there’s no case for another fiscal stimulus.  Here are the BoE governor’s exact words: “Given how big [UK fiscal] deficits are, I think it would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits. The level of the fiscal position in the UK is not one that would say: ‘Well, why don’t we just engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion?'” If Brown now does push for a further

A Minister misleading the House is one of the most serious offences they can commit. If any Minister does so anything other than completely unintentionally, they should–and must–resign. So, when an accusation emerges that a Minister has done so it must be cleared up one way or the other.   On Saturday, The Times reported that Sir Tom McKillop, the former chairman of RBS, had written to the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, John McFall, alleging that Lord Myners had been ‘told exactly how much’ Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension was worth. This, if true, contradict Miners’ statements (as recorded in the uncorrected transcript) to the Committee: Now, I have

William F. Buckley’s 1955 editorial declaring that the Nation Review “stands athwart history, yelling Stop” is one of the defining texts in modern conservatism. But as David Frum argues, the changes that have happened since 1955 have, on balance, been overwhelmingly for the better: “But think how much worse a place the world would be if Bill Buckley had actually succeeded in calling a stop to history in 1955. Vienna would still be occupied by Soviet troops. The federal government would still regulate prices on everything from natural gas to brokers commissions. Racial segregation would remain American practice. People would continue to die unnecessarily of cigarette smoking or in unseatbelted

The most important story of the day might not be the bank rescue plan in the US or any of the British domestic political stories, but this news from China: “China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund. The goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies,” Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said in an essay posted in Chinese and English