Society

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne gets bolder on spending cuts

And so the Tories continue to ramp up their rhetoric on spending cuts.  On the day that the Institute for Fiscal Studies again warns of the hole in our public finances, George Osborne has claimed that a Tory government would the look at the public sector’s “inflexible” three-year pay deals.  Paul Waugh has all the key quotes, but this passage sums up the tone of Osborne’s message: “I haven’t ruled out further tax rises although I will work hard to avoid them. I think where the bulk of the strain needs to be borne is on spending restraint. I think the current spending plans pencilled in by the government of

Peter Hoskin

An expensive cabinet

Is any MP, save those frugal few, immune from expenses controversy?  After the revelations about Geoff Hoon’s housing arrangements yesterday, the latest name to emerge is that of the Chancellor.  Sure, we at Coffee House have been quite warm towards Alistair Darling recently, for his struggle against Brown’s worst excesses.  But this seems excessive in itself: “Alistair Darling has claimed thousands of pounds in expenses on his family home while renting out his privately owned London flat and living in a grace-and-favour apartment in Downing Street, it was reported last night. The Chancellor has on a number of occasions swapped the title of main home between his house in Edinburgh

Sunday

Daniel Korski

NATO’s new man at the helm

Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s bid to succeed Dutchman Jaap de Hoop Scheffer as head of NATO finally succeeded at yesterday’s summit.  Up until the last minute, the Turks were refusing to sanction his appointment because of his refusal to apologise for a Danish newspaper publishing those Muhammad cartoons.   The Danish press is full of stories about the concession that had to be given before Ankara lifted its veto. These range from having a Turkish Deputy NATO Secretary-General (the post is currently held by an Italian) to the closure of a Kurdish TV station that broadcasts from Denmark to an extension of the deadline for easing travel by Greek

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barclays vs RBS: A Tale of Luck and Greed

At the end of the Peter Oborne column James linked to yesterday, Peter writes: I believe that one genuine hero has emerged from the collapse of the British banking system. He is John Varley, the Barclays chief executive who this week proudly announced that his bank would not be taking government money to stay afloat. I admire Varley because he has fought hard to keep one of the greatest names in British banking for more than 300 years independent and out of the hands of the State. It is a hard fight and, who knows, he may yet fail. But at least Varley is doing his best. Fair enough. But

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The European Court of Human Rights is a threat to British law that must be dealt with

The most underreported story of the past few weeks has been Lord Hoffmann’s attack on the European Court of Human Rights. Hoffmann, a senior Law Lord, declared in a lecture to the Judicial Studies Board that the court “has been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on Member States. It considers itself the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States, laying down a federal law of Europe.” Hoffmann’s case against the court is that is has neither the legitimacy nor the standing to interfere as it does in domestic law; “As the case law shows, there is virtually no aspect

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The global temptation

Whatever one thinks about the substance, the G20 summit was a presentational success for Brown. But as Andrew Rawnsley writes today, there is a danger for Brown if he decides to try and repeat this move: ‘After his summit high, the temptation for him will be to look for further kicks of this kind. He palpably enjoys being Chancellor of the World. He looks much more comfortable in his skin playing that part than he ever did when he was simply prime minister of Britain. How warm is the glow of international summitry; how cold is the chill of bad poll numbers, rising unemployment figures and angry voters. Global Chancellor

Saturday

Alex James

Slow Life | 4 April 2009

A marshmallow completely failed to live up to its promise yesterday. It’s a good while since I tasted a marshmallow and I was convinced it was going to be gorgeous. Inevitable, I suppose, one’s changing tastes, but somehow it always comes as a surprise when I find I don’t like things any more. Recently, certain books that I loved when I was younger: books that I once set my compasses by, I find repellent. There was a time in my life when everything Camus wrote came over as the voice of God speaking the divine language, such a mature way of looking at the world. Now it all strikes me

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 4 April 2009

On the Eastern Airways flight from Bristol to Aberdeen I spotted a shiny £2 coin lying in the aisle. The businessman in the seat opposite saw me lean down and retrieve it. ‘Toss you for it — heads,’ he said. It came down tails. I trousered the coin and returned triumphantly to the complimentary copy of the current Spectator I’d found in the seat pocket. At Aberdeen airport I said to the taxi driver, ‘Rothes, please.’ I pronounced it to rhyme with clothes and I assumed the town was just around the corner. ‘Ya mean Roth-ess?’ he rasped. It was about 60 miles away. It was the longest and perhaps

Taki

High Life | 4 April 2009

New York Ah, finally in New York, the city of superlatives, as they say, the most diverse metropolis ever. I suppose no one has ever said it better than Jan Morris in her luminous Manhattan ’45, a title the author chose because it sounds ‘partly like a kind of gun, and partly like champagne’. Here she is right off the bat, in her prologue: ‘Untouched by the war the men had left behind them, they stood there metal-clad, steel-ribbed, glass-shrouded, colossal and romantic — everything that America seemed to represent in a world of loss and ruin.’ Morris is writing about the returning Yankee soldiers encountering the Manhattan skyline from

The Spectator

Letters | 4 April 2009

Bloody rude Sir: Michael Portillo (‘The view from Basra’, 28 March) accuses the British army of arrogance and, effectively, of incompetence. He says we’ve been humiliated. This may accord with his new television persona, but it is still disingenuous, apart from being bloody rude. It is his own political class that has been shown up — shamed, shown treacherous and craven — by reducing the British army again and again, until it could fit into Wembley stadium, but still expecting it to undertake counter-insurgency work. The army has always maintained, in its advice to the politicians, that counter-insurgency in Basra would require a full infantry division. I’d also remind Portillo,

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 4 April 2009

As I write, tens of thousands of anti-capitalist protesters are converging on the City of London to demonstrate against the G20 summit. Marching under the banner ‘Jobs, Justice and Climate’, this loose coalition of anarchists, environmentalists and revolutionary socialists aims to bring the capital’s financial centre to a standstill. ‘We hope to control large parts of London,’ says Ian Bone, the founder of Class War. ‘Whether it kicks off depends on numbers. The poll tax riots were all about 50,000 people who wanted a punch-up. This feels like that.’ Ironically, if the protesters really want to do something about the moribund state of Britain’s economy they should take themselves over

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 4 April 2009

Q. I love my husband but, when we go out together to parties, I often hear him saying things which both of us know are not true and which he is clearly saying just for effect or to keep the conversation moving along with no thought to the consequences of his talking such nonsense. I do not want us to turn into one of those couples who constantly contradict each other’s stories — that would be so boring. Whenever I upbraid him on the way home he always says, ‘Oh don’t worry about it. No one listens to what anyone else says at parties. Even if they did they wouldn’t

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 4 April 2009

Monday Our new Expenses Helpline is completely jammed. We’re not even scratching the surface of the demand. Had an MP on this morning hysterical about his Sky subscription. Something about ‘buxom babes’ and ‘essential research into Broken Britain’. Another backbencher demanding to know what to do about his hunting fees — ‘Are they saying I can’t claim them back now? Ridiculous! It’s only £115 a month for a full subscription including field money.’ I said I thought it probably best if he didn’t, just until the fuss dies down. Then someone who wouldn’t give his name but, weirdly, sounded exactly like Wonky Tom. Said he’d recently claimed back the cost

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 04 April 2009

As the true depth of the recession emerges, and fury increases against bankers for the massive bonuses they have demanded, effectively from the taxpayer, for creating it, Roman generals might set an unexpected example. Manubiae, probably derived from manus ‘hand’ and habere ‘to have’, meant the booty which a general could claim as his own, to do what he liked with, after a successful campaign. But unlike bankers, he knew where his duty lay. First and foremost, there would be handsome hand-outs to those who made it possible: troops, officers and family. He would then memorialise his achievements in Rome with public buildings, magnificent games and dinners for the plebs.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Darling’s less optimistic forecast

Good old Alistair Darling is on manouevres again. Normally, Chancellors stay quiet before the Budget but he has admitted to the Sunday Times that there will not (surprise, surprise) be an economic recovery starting in July as he predicted last October. “We must be realistic about this,” he says. “I think it will be the back end, turn of the year time, before we start seeing growth here.” I can’t remember another time that a Chancellor told a newspaper his new forecast weeks before he told Parliament. The Sunday Times confidently states that the Budget will show a 3% fall in GDP When Darling says “You must not build up

Peter Hoskin

A frugal MP?!

Just in case you’ve completely lost the faith in our political class, it’s well worth reading the profile of Philip Hollobone in today’s Independent.  Hollobone, remember, is the Tory MP who claims less than a third of the average annual expenses claim in the Commons.  How does he manage it?  Mainly by not hiring staff, and by keeping things pared down.  This passage is a good taster: “‘It’s quite simple,’ [Hollobone] says, before starting up some rickety stairs. His work room is suitably spartan. Empty computer boxes sit in the corner. The whiff of damp from the dark patches on the wall fills the air. A chipped, dark table sits

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Do they really expect us to believe this?

The weather is so fantastic today that it is hard to work up much outrage but this quote from an anonymous cabinet minister in today’s Telegraph about going to the IMF really is, as Iain Martin says, an insult to our collective intelligence: “Previously, a country would only go if they were in a very bad state. It was a bit like going to accident and emergency to get urgent help. This new facility will not be like that. It is a bit more like getting wellbeing care or even like going to a spa to recuperate.” If this country does have to go to the IMF, it will be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for upstate New York attack

This story is moving on the wires: “Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud claimed responsibility for the attack on an immigration services center in Binghamton, N.Y., the Press Trust of India reported Saturday. Mehsud said that a Pakistani and another man carried it out the attack, which left 14 people, including a man the police suspected of being the gunman, dead during a killing spree Friday.” But the principal gunman was a 42 year old Vietnamese immigrant who had recently lost his job which is hardly the usual profile of an Islamist terrorist. (The news reports I’ve seen do not report the involvement of anyone else in the attack) The Pakistani Taliban has

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Live by the spin, perish by the spin

Peter Oborne’s column this morning is magnificent, a thorough demolition of the more hyperbolic claims being made for the G20 agreement. But it is his final paragraphs on the consequences of Brown’s double counting and all the other statistical dodges that he perfected at the Treasury that is especially devastating: “The problem with this kind of duplicity is that you always get caught out in the end. So will be the case with the G20 summit. Gordon Brown has achieved brilliant headlines in the short term, and it is likely that Labour’s rating in the polls will soon start to rise as a result. However, in the long term, very

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The real scandal is that we always, always end up paying

The Jacqui Smith case and the grotesque sight of her husband apologising for watching porn films at the taxpayer’s expense are just the latest symptoms of a well-advanced political disease, says Rod Liddle. They take the voters for a bunch of mugs At last the politicians have done the decent thing and called in the police over an issue which has enraged and outraged the public these last six months or so: the leaking of MPs’ expenses details to the press. One hopes that there will be a prosecution soon. Like you, I have been appalled at the regularity with which these selfless public servants have seen their privacy transgressed