Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Filling the PFI gap

Remember those PFI projects which were doomed to collapse because the banks are no longer willing to stump up the cash for them?  Well, an article in today’s Times suggests that Alistair Darling is going to raid the public purse to ensure they’re completed: “A multibillion-pound rescue of building programmes involving schools, hospitals and motorways that are threatened by a lack of private finance is to be announced by the Treasury within days, the Times has learnt. The Chancellor is expected to guarantee bridging finance to enable public sector schemes being built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to go ahead if they are already in the pipeline.” Two things

Peter Hoskin

Banning Wilders is bad for social cohesion

What to make of the state’s refusal to allow Geert Wilders into the UK yesterday?  The issues involved are so fundamental that my take on them is almost instinctive: of course he should have been allowed into the country, and the excuse that a private screening of his film Fitna in the Lords is a criminal threat to “public security” is craven in the extreme.  Philip Johnston strikes a similar note in his excellent Telegraph article today.  Here’s a key snippet: “Wilders claims that these verses from the holy book of Islam are being used today to incite modern Muslims to behave violently and anti-democratically. You may think he is

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Death of a Gadfly Playwright

Hugh Leonard has died. His Telegraph obituary reeks of boozy afternoons in Dublin’s finest hostelries: Indeed, Leonard relished quarrels. “An Irish literary movement,” he used to say, “is when two playwrights are on speaking terms”… Leonard resented what he saw as his exclusion from the Irish arts world, and poured vitriol on lesser performers. The trouble with Ireland, he said, was that it was “a country full of genius, but with absolutely no talent”. His critics were equally forthright about the Leonard ego. He was, said one, not an original playwright, merely “an adapter always in search of a plug”. Leonard retorted in kind. He eagerly debunked other famous names,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lincoln’s words are his memorial

The view from the top of the steps on the Lincoln Memorial on in Washington, DC is one of the finest views in the American capital. You look across the reflecting pool, down the national mall to the Washington Monument and to the Capitol beyond. Standing there, at the place where Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech, you can almost feel the arc of American history bending towards justice. This tilt would not have been possible without Lincoln’s determination to win the Civil War and his realisation as the war continued that slavery could not be contained, as he had argued in his first inaugural, but

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The post-election dynamics

Shmuel Rosner has an interesting post up at Commentary about the coalition negotiations in Israel following the elections. Rosner argues that there’s no point following then hour by hour developments during the next few days as all that is going to come out is spin and bluff and counter-bluff.  The key dynamics to watch, he says, are that Israeli voters want a unity government and that Netanyahu does not want to be on the left of his own coalition. As Rosner writes: “Don’t buy the smiling faces of Netanyahu and the leaders of right wing parties that he is now courting. Sitting with them in a coalition — in which

Toby Young Toby Young

The school of my dreams

My friend Barry Isaacson has just sent me an email about the Renaissance Arts Academy, a Charter School in Los Angeles that he’s just been to look at with a view to sending his son there.  Charter Schools are the American equivalents of Free Schools – ie, privately-run, but publicly-funded. If Michael Gove makes it easier for parents/educators to start schools like the Renaissance Arts Academy, then more power to him. This is precisely the kind of school I’d like to start in Acton. Here’s Barry’s description: “This place is an astonishing local institution founded by parents with distinguished teaching experience and very uncompromising standards. It’s a so-called ‘Arts Magnet’;

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Darwin teaches us the humility of the agnostic

You’d think Darwin created the world all by himself with a few test-tubes, the amount of attention he’s getting. I’m not denying he’s a brill biologist, but there’s more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his theory. And the discussion about science and religion that surrounds him is just bo-oring. No religious believer intelligent enough to get air-time disagrees with evolution (or does Anne Atkins?), so what happens is this. Atheists strongly imply that his theory, which is the best thing in human history, strongly implies atheism. Christians queue up to say how keen they are about the tree-of-life stuff, and to point out that the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Notes from a Parallel Universe

Courtesy of Joe Klein: Karl Rove: House Republicans had the wisdom to continue to talk to the Obama White House. This made them look gracious, even as the president edged toward a “my way or the highway” attitude. Pete Wehner: Right now President Obama and his team look at times amateurish and somewhat overmatched by events. But look! Obama just passed a gargantuan piece of legislation. It may be a bad bill and it may not achieve its stated aims but it’s a “stiumulus package” of about the size Obama said was needed, passed about the time by which he said it needed to be passed. Whether one approves of

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Solving the Ian Bell Question

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person who ever defends Ian Bell. Not that this will do him much good since it seems probable that he’ll be dropped for the second test against the West Indies tomorrow. An odd consensus appears to have emerged that Bell is especially culpable for England’s failures in the first test and that, accordingly, his is the head that must roll. Mike Selvey fires his Katyushas at Bell today: Last Saturday, before lunch on what was to prove the final day of the first Test at Sabina Park, Ian Bell played a stroke of such staggering ineptitude that it alone should be reason enough

Peter Hoskin

The Spectator’s take on Darwin, 1882

Given that today’s the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, I’ve just delved into the Spectator’s archives to see what we said about the great man on the occasion of his death in April 1882.  I’ve typed out the whole obituary below for the benefit of CoffeeHousers and for the sake of posterity: By the death of Charles Darwin, which occurred on Wednesday, England has lost the most original, as well asfar the most celebrated, of modern men of science – the one man whom European Science would, with one voice, probably agree to consider as the most eminent scientific thinker and writer of the present century. No man of our century has changed so

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Drug War: Epic Fail

Lots happening on the Drug War front. First, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, headed by former Presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, issues a report confirming that the tide of opinion in South America is turning against the Drug Warriors. In some respects the report simply states the obvious: It is imperative to rectify the ‘war on drugs’ strategy pursued in the region over the past 30 years… Prohibitionist policies based on the eradication of production and on the disruption of drug flows as well as on the criminalization of consumption have not yielded the expected results. We are further than ever from the announced goal of

Peter Hoskin

Johnson’s admission puts Darling on the spot

As an addendum to Fraser’s interview with Alan Johnson in the latest issue of the mag, it’s worth flagging up this exchange between George Osborne and Alistair Darling in the Commons earlier.  Osborne picks up on Johnson’s claim that we’ve got to be prepared for two more years of recession: Mr. Osborne: Either the Chancellor knew what was going on and did nothing, or he was entirely ignorant, and neither is much of a defence. Is not the net closing in on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor? Their accomplices are resigning, their alibi that no one knew what was going on has been blown apart, and their fingerprints are all over the mistakes

Peter Hoskin

Was the ONS right to release ‘jobs for immigrants’ statistics?

There’s an intrgiuing sub-plot brewing over yesterday’s ONS statistical release, covered in grand detail by the Times today.  Apparently, ministers are “fizzing with anger” about the publication of numbers showing how many UK jobs go to immigrants, and feel that the ONS chief, Karen Dunnell, is trying to inflame political tensions in the aftermath of the BJ4BW row.  Given how the Government treats statistics – and given that the ONS is meant to be an independent body – I can’t see that Dunnell has a case to answer here.  But Keith Vaz tries to concoct one anyway, writing against the ONS release.  He shoots himself in the foot with his

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator Inquiry into the causes of the recession

We need your help. The Spectator is to launch an inquiry into the causes of the 2008 recession, and it is to be a wiki-inquiry: one that will be directed by you, report regularly back to you, and be moulded by your collective wisdom. It will live or die by your input. Finding out just why the economy went pop is perhaps the most important question in British politics right now: our understanding of the past will shape the future. Blaming the bankers, while a great national sport, could be a national calamity in the long run. Sure, we can regulate them all the way to Singapore, but it won’t

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Government by the Phone Book

I confess I find this entertaining and reassuring in equal measure. A new Rasmussen Report in the United States finds that: Forty-four percent (44%) [of] voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided. The entertainment comes from the 20% who aren’t sure and would like a little more time to think about it. But it’s also reassuring. Politicians may dislike people “carping on the sidelines” but then they would, wouldn’t they? Lowering our expectations of politicians and, for that matter, reducing the amount

Wednesday

Martin Bright

McNulty survives the Newsnight ambush

A great edition of Newsnight tonight, featuring an ambush of employment minister Tony McNulty in an empty, echoing Birmingham factory. McNulty had been characteristically honest by saying that things are likely to get worse before they get better. Paxman was right to remind Theresa May that there are still a million fewer people unemployed than under the last Tory government. She didn’t have an answer for that. Yet that’s no consolation for those people who are losing their jobs right now. But the real point is that this recession is hitting very quickly. Unless the government acts quickly then redundancies will already have been made and it will be too

Daniel Korski

Who knows what Afghans think?

The political class loves polls. They tell them — or at least they think they tell them — what the public think. The hunger for polling data has now spread to post-conflict situations. Want to know how things are going in Afghanistan? Commission a poll. So this week David Miliband has been hitting the airwaves to respond to a new poll of Afghan opinion. The poll, the fourth conducted by an international media consortium since 2005, showed falling support for President Hamid Karzai, and a sharp decline in the proportion of people who think the nation is heading in the right direction, from 77 percent in 2005 to 40 percent

Peter Hoskin

Write Gordon’s apology

So, Our Dear Leader’s studying tapes of Barack Obama to find out just how to say sorry.  We still may never hear an actual apology, but at least he’s doing his homework.  Here at Coffee House, we figured we should help him out.  So this, CoffeeHousers, is your mission… Write out a script for Brown’s Great Apology, of no more than 300 words, and post it in the comments section below.  The idea came from Alex’s classic blog post earlier today, and I’d recommend you read his effort for inspiration.  Here’s a snippet: “Mistakes do happen, you know. Nobody’s perfect. Not even Tony. When this government encouraged risk-taking and suggested

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Far more than shallow speech

In debates about Afghanistan, and previously Iraq, people like to puff themselves up and declare that ‘there is no military solution’ and that ‘we must talk to those who are prepared to give up violence’. They then rest back in their chairs and wait for everyone to applaud their wisdom. But in fact they have merely made two obvious and shallow statements. In his speech to the Munich Security Conference, General Petraeus pointed out the flip side to these statements of the obvious. On the first point, while there is not a purely military solution there can be no solution without the military. In these kind of conflict / post-conflict

Martin Bright

Why select committees matter

I take my hat off to the Treasury select committee for the spectacle of the hearings on the banking crisis. This is more theatre than genuine scrutiny – but without real powers to subpoena witnesses and force the disclosure of evidence then this is about as good as it’s likely to get. In the absence of real judicial teeth, the committee has to rely on the tools of the jobbing journalist – leaks and whistleblowers. Step forward Paul Moore, the HBOS head of risk who was sacked by the bank’s chief executive Sir James Crosby for warning of the dangers ahead. This is gobsmacking. In a better world, Crosby would be arraigned