Society

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cambridge University’s decision makes the case for school reform

In some sense, the critics of Cambridge University’s decision to call for an A* grade from its applicants have a point – it will, most likely, make it disproportionately more difficult for students from state schools to get into the university.  After all, despite educating only seven per cent of pupils, independent schools produce more students with three A grade A-levels than all the country’s comprehensives put together – a shocking statistic, among countless others, which James highlighted last week.  But those same critics are directing their anger at the wrong target.  That the performance gap between British state and British private schools is the largest in the world is

Peter Hoskin

More of the same from Brown

So here it is.  After Cameron’s apology last week, Brown has used his interview in today’s Guardian to hit back with an apology of his own.  Or maybe not.  Truth is, the Prime Minister says he accepts “full responsibility” for his actions, but – as usual – follows it up with a caveat which passes the buck: “I take full responsibility for all my actions, but I think we’re dealing with a bigger problem that is global in nature, as well as national. Perhaps 10 years ago after the Asian crisis when other countries thought these problems would go away, we should have been tougher … keeping and forcing these

Monday

Mark Wallace

Taxpayers’ money must not be used to fund hateful propaganda

Last week, James rightly argued that, as a nation, we must be watchful of Islamists active in Britain, to make sure they are not providing logistical or financial succour to the enemy in Afghanistan or Iraq. As well as being alert to the ideological and military threat of Islamism, though, we need to make sure that we are not inadvertently supporting the growth of that movement. For example, it has long been clear than many Islamist extremists in this country are happy to fund their lifestyles through the welfare state, paid for by the British citizens whom they so despise. It is increasingly clear that British taxpayers’ money is fuelling

Peter Hoskin

Clever politics – but not something to really loosen the fiscal squeeze

The take-home point from Cameron’s press conference seems to be his announcement that the Tories would freeze the 2 percent rise in the BBC licence fee pencilled in for this year – Jeremy Hunt also discussed this earlier on ConservativeHome.  My quick take on it is that it’s clever politics, but deeply unambitious.  The clever politics first: after the recent scandals that the Beeb’s been embroiled in, there’s less public goodwill towards the corporation, and more reluctance surrounding the licence fee.  The Tory proposal keys into that, as well as giving them a platform to talk about saving money for households, ordinary families and the like.  To some extent, any

Peter Hoskin

Crunched households

The research by PricewaterhouseCoopers in today’s Independent delivers some more figures for the credit crunch scrapbook: “The total value of shares and homes owned by British households has fallen from £6.8trn in 2007 to £4.9trn now – a decline of £1.9trn, or 28 per cent, the PwC figures show. During the credit crunch, houses have lost 20 per cent of their value (or £800bn) and equities 40 per cent (or £1.1trn). Thus, each adult Briton has lost on average £17,000 from the property slump and a further £23,000 in the value of shares, held either directly or indirectly though pension plans. The losses are likely to rise, and there could

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 16 March – 22 March

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 – provided 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

The tension over BJ4BW continues

In the wake of the Lindsey oil refinery strikes, there’s evidence that Gordon Brown’s deeply misguided ‘British jobs for British workers’ soundbite has provoked some dangerous trends.  Take the Harris poll in this morning’s FT.  It finds that 78 percent of British adults think immigrants should be made to leave the country if they don’t have a job (with around 50 percent strongly supporting this idea).  And that 54 percent of British adults oppose citizens of other EU countries getting a job here.  Compared to the other countries polled – France, Germany, Italy and Spain – Britain displays the highest levels of hostility to migrant labour. The hope now has

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Going back to where we were will just lead to an even bigger crash

The Washington Post has an interesting interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of the black swan thesis. In it, he’s very dismissive of economists and makes some sensible comments about bonuses. But what struck me as most interesting was his final answer: “My rosy scenario is that a better economic environment will develop, a low-debt, robust growth world, in which whatever is fragile will be allowed to break early and not late. My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.” One of the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The New Threat to America: Europe

Mark Steyn weighs in on the alleged (that is, non-existent) plot to “europeanise” America: “Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you’ve spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory.” If one considers Mr Steyn as an entertainer or a mischievous bomb-thrower (a sort of high-class Coulter if you like) then this is just a bit of fun, right? Then again, Mr Steyn likes to think of himself as a Serious Commentator. Which in this instance seems to risk making him seem an ass. Never mind that, according to the most recent World Values Survey, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden each

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another G20 disappointment for Brown

Today’s Observer reports: “Gordon Brown’s hopes of uniting the world’s most powerful economies behind a massive new package of tax cuts and public spending increases suffered a serious blow yesterday when he failed to persuade France and Germany to back his plan to revive the world economy. After talks at Chequers to prepare the way for next month’s G20 summit in London, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, ruled out ordering another “fiscal stimulus” in the short term, and made it clear that if more action were to prove necessary in Germany it would be for Berlin to decide, not the G20. Her comments were echoed by the French finance minister,

Peter Hoskin

Government by clique?

An important article by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer, setting out the “clique of four” at the heart of the Tory party – David Cameron, George Osborne, Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton – and the deleterious monopoly they have on decision-making.  This passage outlines the extent of the problem: “Some shadow cabinet members report that their leader can be good at soliciting the views of colleagues and treating their portfolios with respect. Others complain that they are so frozen out of the inner gang that they have never had the opportunity for a one-to-one discussion with him about their policy areas.” The claims of the latter shadow cabinet members flag

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The American-led “Peace Process”?

John F Burns is a great reporter, but did he really write this or did some sub-editor in New York alter his copy? The relative prosperity that peace has brought, the respite from the anguished cycle of killings and revenge, has built a constituency for the power-sharing government in Belfast. That arrangement, which has worked awkwardly but steadily for 22 months, has given practical form to the reconciliation envisaged in the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which was brokered by the United States. [Emphasis added.] Outside the Clinton family, no-one in their right mind can consider the Good Friday Agreement to have been “brokered” by Washington. Mr Burns, who is

Saturday

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 14 March 2009

I thought no one else was going to turn up at the crematorium to wave Terry off. But as the seconds ticked closer to the appointed time, knots of ashen-faced mourners began to trickle in from the car park and congregate around the chapel doors. Then Terry arrived. He arrived in a cardboard box inside a wickerwork casket laid longitudinally in the back of the hearse. He’d been dead nearly a month. Lung cancer. Diagnosed ten days before he died. He was cleaning windows right to the end. Today would have been his 65th birthday. Terry’s three brothers hoisted him in through the doors and the rest of us trooped

Taki

High Life | 14 March 2009

Gstaad I stood outside the hotel lobby watching the snow blanket the parking lot, turning it into an almost pretty sight. I had been playing backgammon inside with a large and rowdy cast of characters, some of whom, like Floki Busson, mother of Arpad, and Leonida Goulandris, are veterans of the great games of the past. Others are of more recent vintage, like John Sutin, who read about the 300 Spartans long ago and applies their theory of no surrender to the game. Having watched Sutin accept a double that even Hitler in the closing days would have dropped, I went outside for a breath of air when the caravan

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 14 March 2009

The Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior was supposed to conclude an operatic scene one night by leaping upon a mechanical swan gliding across the stage. Unfortunately the appointed swan arrived, and departed, before he had concluded the key aria. More than a little miffed by the failings of the production team, Melchior turned to the audience and inquired acidly, ‘Anybody know the time of the next swan?’ I too have a fairly spectacular missed-bus problem. Although most readers will not see this article before Friday or Saturday, The Spectator’s production schedule requires the copy to be delivered on a Monday. This offering cannot therefore reflect on jump racing’s major event of

The Spectator

Letters | 14 March 2009

No axis of evil Sir: Melanie Phillips’s article (‘Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists’, 7 March) contains untruthful statements about me. I have never said that I wish Israel, in her words, ‘to be destroyed’ or to ‘disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa’. I have never believed this and categorically reject any position that threatens the integrity of Israel as a sovereign nation. I have, however, spoken out against Holocaust denial as well as religious extremism. Far from seeking to ‘appease radical Islam’, I have criticised Islamist attacks against Christians in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan. I have never knowingly, to use her

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 14 March 2009

‘Quantitative easing?’ said my husband with an unpleasant iatrical chortle. ‘Reminds me of that bit in Humphrey Clinker.’ Tobias Smollett had trained as a surgeon, and he set up practice in Downing Street, surprising as it might sound, where his initial physical interventions proved no more financially rewarding than Gordon Brown’s decade of fiddling with the body politic. Even by the time he published Humphrey Clinker, in 1771, the year of his death, he had not vanquished his habit of presenting bodily distress as an object of humour. In the novel, a trick is played on a fat, high-living magistrate called Frogmore, whose drink is doctored. When he gets up

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 14 March 2009

I can well imagine my children saying to me: ‘This is off the record, Dad’ As a member of the chattering classes, I am riveted by the Julie Myerson story. For those of you who haven’t been following it, Myerson has just published a book called The Lost Child in which she intercuts the story of a Regency watercolourist who died aged 21 with the story of her own wayward son whom she and her husband kicked out of home when he was 17, mainly because he refused to stop smoking cannabis. Almost every Glenda Slagg on Fleet Street has weighed in on the topic, with the majority condemning Myerson.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 14 March 2009

Q. My husband is a retired scientist but still much in demand. Recently he was part of a small committee organising a world congress in Brisbane, judged to have been very successful, thanks in no small part to him. Every time we now meet one of the other committee members, a businessman, he teases my husband, mainly in regard to his age (75). I am finding this increasingly irritating, particularly since this man has little else to say to my husband apart from the teasing. He is a perfectly pleasant chap, whom we must meet socially occasionally, and I don’t want to make too strong a retort, but I am

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 14 March 2009

Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Gerry Adams’ predictably psychopathic view that the murder of two soldiers by the Real IRA was merely a tactical error points up only too clearly how little interest Sinn Fein has either in democracy or in the wishes of the people of Ulster. Ancients would not be surprised. For them a ‘peace process’ implied the cessation of the ‘war process’, and a ‘war process’ could be ended