Society Archives

Tuesday

24 Feb 2009

Obama heads to The Hill

Tonight President Obama addresses a join session of Congress in a televised, prime-time address. It will be in style, if not title, just like a State of the Union speech. So expect special guests—notably Captain Sullenberger who landed that plane in the Hudson, lots of glad-handing as Obama walks to the Speaker’s chair and wave after wave of standing ovations. One thing to watch for is how much the Republicans applaud the President. The unified Republican opposition to the stimulus in the House and the fact that only three Republicans crossed over to vote for it in the Senate has come to define the Republicans. The plus side for them

Peter Hoskin

Byrne comes across as complacent

With all the subtlety of a bludgeon, Liam Byrne goes on the attack against those warning about the hole in our public finances. His primary target is Iain Martin’s column last week, but he also takes aim at Malcolm Offord’s recent report claiming that £100 billion of public spending cuts may be needed by 2020 to get the public finances in an acceptable state. This kind of thinking, Byrne suggests, represents an “underground movement” behind David Cameron; proof that “The marketing is all progressive; but the product is all conservative.” So far as the spin cycle’s concerned, Byrne’s remarks are striking for two reasons. First, they show just how determined Labour

Alex Massie

David Frum’s Warning

David Frum gets it: A federal bank takeover is a bad thing obviously. I wonder though if we conservatives understand clearly enough why it is a bad thing. It’s not because we are living through an enactment of the early chapters of Atlas Shrugged. It’s because the banks are collapsing. Obama, Pelosi, et al are big-spending, high-taxing liberals. They are not socialists. They are no more eager to own these banks than the first President Bush was to own the savings and loan industry – in both cases, federal ownership was a final recourse after a terrible failure. And it was on our watch, not Obama’s, that this failure began.

James Forsyth

How revealing are Madoff’s quirks?

I must admit to being rather fascinated by the details about the lives of the fraudsters who are being caught out now that the financial tide has gone out. New York Magazine has a set of pieces on Bernie Madoff this week that not only suggest he was slightly relieved to be caught—when the FBI told him they were there to see if there was an innocent explanation for everything he immediately said ‘There’s no innocent explanation’—but also highlight his odd side. Consider his loathing of curves: “Bernie—whose office is in the famously ovoid Lipstick Building—couldn’t bear curves. “He was paranoid about them,” says one employee. In one office, he

Peter Hoskin

Real airbrushing now

From Stalin to Mr Bean back to Stalin again? Turns out that Gordon Brown’s new ‘Real Help Now’ website has already been airbrushed to delete references to action being taken by his political foes, in this case the SNP. Here’s how they report it: Efforts taken by the Scottish Government to help the economy through the recession have been “airbrushed” from a UK Government website less than twenty-four hours after they were listed on a site launched by the prime minister. Yesterday (Monday) the UK Government’s “real help now” website highlighted SNP Government action, such as the Council Tax freeze and flexible business support, as key efforts being taken to combat the

James Forsyth

A poll to undermine Brown’s authority

Today’s Guardian poll suggesting Labour would do better with someone other than Gordon at the helm is another blow to Brown. Realistically I can’t see Brown being replaced as Labour leader before the next election, there’s no stomach for the bloody struggle that it would take to prise Brown out of Downing Street and it is not obvious that anyone would actually improve Labour’s fortunes once installed in the job. But the idea that Brown is dragging down Labour’s numbers being splashed across the front page of The Guardian reduces Brown’s authority. It is harder for him to tell the Cabinet and the party that they have to listen to

Matthew Dancona

A landscape of risk and potential

The Daily Mail has today picked up a scare story initially given (rather more nuanced) prominence by the Guardian’s ever-more influential Jackie Ashley. Speaking in a debate about social networking sites, Baroness Greenfield, Oxford neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, argued that the new digital technologies may actually be changing the brains of a generation as well as the means of communication that they have at their disposal. Web 2.0., in other words, may have neuroscientific consequences of immense importance. “My fear,” said Professor Greenfield, “is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who

Peter Hoskin

Dragging a Rock

There’s plenty in today’s papers about Alistair Darling’s U-turn on Northern Rock. The Lombard column in the FT sums it up: the Rock has become a “dangerous laboratory for banking policy”, screeching from reining in its business one minute to expanding back into the mortgage market the next. To my mind, it’s a clear demonstration of what can happen when something becomes political. The government knows it’s open to criticism over its handling of NR, so it’s flapping around to find something – anything – that will work. Problem is, what grabs the short-term headlines may result in medium-term embarassment. Take the figure the Government have slapped on Northern Rock’s new

Monday

23 Feb 2009

James Forsyth

The next Republican president

Tomorrow night, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, will give the Republican response to Barack Obama’s televised speech to a joint session of Congress. Jindal is the rising star of the Republican party. Only 37, Jindal is the governor of Louisiana having already been a Congressman and an assistant secretary at Health and Human Services in the Bush administration. He’s a fiscal and social conservative and is rapidly developing a deserved reputation for competent governance; just compare the state of Louisiana’s response to hurricanes Gustav and Katrina. The Bush presidency lost the Republicans their historic reputation for competence, Jindal offers them a chance to win it back and it is

Peter Hoskin

Some Monday night viewing

This is as nectar for political anoraks: a new collection of BBC archive videos charting Margaret Thatcher’s rise to becoming Prime Minister. Some nostalgic viewing in there for CoffeeHousers, I dare say. Hat-tip: Conservative Home

Peter Hoskin

Grayling debuts his own soundbite

Say what you will about soundbites, but there’s little doubting the power they can have. Take, for instance, Tony Blair’s famous declaration that Labour would be “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Not only was it memorable and snappy, but it encapsulated, and still encapsulates, the kind of Broken Windows thinking that’s since become near-consensus. Problem is, it’s so good a soundbite, that – despite Labour’s failure to live up the pledge – subsequent politicians and oppositions have struggled to escape its shadow. How else to describe an approach on crime? Chris Grayling made a valiant effort to shift the goalposts in his first major speech as shadow home

James Forsyth

How Brown’s backtracking on school reform

Ever since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and Ed Balls Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, there has been a steady attempt to undermine the academies programme. Brown and Balls have set about rolling back the freedoms that the academies had been given and quietly bringing them back under the dead hand of the local education authorities. This letter (reprinted in full below) to Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, from the Independent Academies Association details just what the Brown government is trying to do and how pernicious it is. Regardless of whether Brown and Balls are doing this out of a wrong-headed ideological commitment or to appease interest

James Forsyth

Corporate criminals should be brought to book

There’s much I disagree with in Ken Macdonald’s piece in The Times today but he is right that the authorities’ attitude to corporate crime is disgracefully lax. As Macdonald writes: “In Britain, no one has any confidence that fraud in the banks will be prosecuted as crime. But it is absolutely critical to public confidence that it should be. If there was fraud in RBS or in any of the other failed banking institutions, if there was fraudulent misselling or corruption or any other criminal activity, it needs to be uncovered and dealt with. The alternative is the worst possible lesson for our national life. Do people believe this will

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 23 February – 1 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

Lib-Con love after the next election?

An intriguing insight from Tim Montgomerie, about some potential Lib-Con love after the next election: “I understand that a group of shadow ministers believe that one of Tony Blair’s bigger strategic mistakes was to row back on co-operation with the Liberal Democrats when he won such a large Commons majority in 1997. These shadow ministers believe that – contrary to Labour’s ‘under-delivery’ to the LibDems – the Conservatives should deliver more in practical co-operation in government than they promise in opposition. The discussion is not of ministerial positions – although there might be some significant appointments to policy reviews – but of working groups on issues of shared interest. Action

James Forsyth

The weakening of the New Labour coalition

As Martin says, the divide in the government right now is whether the right legislative response to the recession is to–in political shorthand– ‘ease the burdens on business’ or ‘protect workers more’. Today’s splash in The Times about Peter Mandelson’s plan to postpone the plans for more generous maternity leave and tougher equalities legislation which Harriet Harman has been pushing for, and were announced in the Queen’s Speech in December, shows that this debate is live not theoretical. Stoking the tension is that everyone knows that, in the Labour leadership contest that would follow a defeat at the next election, those who are ‘on the side of workers’ will benefit. Harman’s

Peter Hoskin

The return of rage

One of the few things missing from our country’s, and Gordon Brown’s, cocktail of woes has been major civic unrest. Sure, we’ve seen strikes – most notably at the Lindsey oil refinery – but nothing as vitriolic, or as large, as the riots in Greece or Saturday’s protest in Dublin. That could be about to change. According to today’s important Guardian cover story, police are gearing up for a “summer of rage”, the timing of which could dent Brown’s Last Great Hope to rescue his premiership: [Superintendent David] Hartshorn[, chief of the Met’s public order branch] identified April’s G20 meeting of the group of leading and developing nations in

Sunday

22 Feb 2009

James Forsyth

The real number two at the White House

The Obama campaign was a no-drama operation. Partly this was a matter of the candidate’s temperament but it was also to create a contrast first with the drama-filled Clinton campaign that suffered from a surfeit of egos and then with the McCain campaign whose principal seemed, at times, to be almost addicted to the dramatic gesture. But the decision to bring in some of the most colourful figures in the Democratic Party into the administration has, though, rather changed things. Take the hyper-competitive Rahm Emanuel, the former Clinton White House staffer—Josh Lyman in the West Wing is based on him—turned Congressman, who Obama drafted in to be his chief of staff.

Fraser Nelson

Jade Goody’s dying wish indicts our failing education system

Jade Goody got married today, and I can well imagine what CoffeeHousers think of the hullabaloo. In her defence, I’d say that she’s done more to promote awareness of cervical cancer than the last ten years of government initiatives put together – screening is up 20%. And the cash she’s getting? Sure – but this is my main point. She’ll put it in a fund to educate her sons. “I know I’m ignorant, but I’m going to make sure my boys are not,” she says. She means, of course, send them private – and the fact that no one questions her logic is a powerful comment on the country we

James Forsyth

I worry about the anti-politics mood our politicians are fostering

Read pretty much any Sunday newspaper today and you’ll come across stories of politicians making expenses claim that, to put it mildly, stretch the spirit of the regulations. The Jacqui Smith story has prompted the press to go digging and they have come up with a lot of stuff. The MPs involved are not all from one party and so all this strengthens the public’s sense that they are all at it, that the political class is fundamentally corrupt. The tax-paying public, who in many cases are desperately worried about their own finances because of the recession, look at the gravy train which exists at local, national and European levels