Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Today’s star

The cost to the taxpayer of public sector pensions and how much more generous they are than private sectors ones is going to become an increasingly big political issue in the coming years. The deal that Alan Johnson brokered with the public sector unions back in 2005 ducked pretty much all of the tough issues and did little to reduce their huge cost to the taxpayer. This morning on the Today Programme, Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, was defending public sector pensions by arguing that they are small compensation for the low pay that public sector workers receive. Evan Davis then rather stumped him

Peter Hoskin

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 15 – 21 December

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

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 15 December 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Lisa Hilton says there are no more puffs in Paris. Fraser Nelson reports on an election with the X Factor. James Forsyth wonders about a poll puzzle, and asks the £250,000 quuestion. Peter Hoskin asks: if taxpayers’ money is to be spent in clunking fistfuls, what should it be spent on? Clive Davis highlights someone with a brilliant head for money. And Americano notes a stimulating idea.

Peter Hoskin

How long will the new poll consensus last?

Yet another poll to report on today; one which more or less falls in line with the two released yesterday.  The Ipsos MORI poll in the Mirror has the Tories on 42 percent (down 2 percentage points); Labour on 36 percent (up 4); and the Lib Dems on 11 percent (down 4).  There’s also a hefty lead for Brown on the question of which party leader is best to steer the country through the recession: he’s on 41 percent, with Cameron on 29 percent. The more the post-PBR landscape solidifies, the more questions people in the Westminster Bubble have to ask of themselves.  The general view among politicos, commentators and

Tom Stacey

We need the occasional war or economic collapse

Tom Stacey says that there is a part of man’s collective soul that yearns for tribulations like the financial crisis and the philosophical and spiritual questions they force us to confront Amid all the doom and gloom, do you ever get the feeling we had it coming? I do. During all those balmy years of ever-rising property values, non-stop invitations to borrow more, to get-now-and-pay-tomorrow, wasn’t there a little bird telling us it can’t go on like this? And now that it’s all come to a stop, does anyone else get a whiff of relief, almost gratitude, that the bubble’s burst, we’ve all come back to earth, terra jolly firma,

David Blanchard

Reasons to be cheerful | 15 December 2008

It may feel like the end of the world, perhaps it is, but even so, it’s still the season of goodwill, good cheer and good news for mankind. It seemed right then for The Spectator to ask a selection of Britain’s great and good to shed a little light on these gloomy times, and tell us why, despite our broken society and the plummeting pound, we should keep our spirits up. Boris Johnson It was the great Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now who said, ‘Some day this war’s gonna end.’ And some day this recession is going to end too. Confidence is going to come surging back with all the

Joan Collins

Christmas in L.A.

Christmas always comes early to Los Angeles. In fact, the slightly tacky decorations hit the lamp-posts even before Thanksgiving. But the really good thing about this time of year in this part of the world is the abundance of new movies being released. They proliferate both in the cinemas, in private screening rooms and in the ‘screeners’, the DVDs that the various studios send to members of the Academy hoping they will vote for them at Oscar time. I’m lucky enough to be one of the 5,000 acting members so I try to see as many of the movies as possible. Happily this year there are some excellent ones and

Murphy O'Connor

A season to relish language deeper than words

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that the heart of the Christian story is the word made flesh. Christ’s language is sacrificial love which took him to the cross One of my favourite accounts of a happy childhood is told by Laurie Lee in his delightful book Cider with Rosie. Early on, he describes his first day at school. As a new boy in the playground for the first time, he was nervous and frightened of the noise, the size and the numbers of his fellow pupils. Going into the classroom, the teacher was busy with the other pupils. She told him to ‘sit down there for the present’. The young Laurie

Emily Maitlis

I blame Jonathan Ross for all my troubles

Emily Maitlis looks back on her worst moments in 2008, the anxiety she has caused her fans and her part in a ‘YouTube classic’ Looking back, I suppose you could say the low point of 2008 was when I accused the Chief Rabbi of leaving lewd and abusive messages on people’s answerphones. That’s the trouble with live TV. You think you’re saying one thing and you end up saying quite another. I was talking to the Conservative MP John Whittingdale on the BBC News Channel about the Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs affair, when all of a sudden I found — by way of the speed reader’s elision — I had put

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Come with me to Santa’s grotto to discover the state we’re in

Rod Liddle offers a festive tour of the world at Christmas 2008: irrational fear, ignorance, stupidity, vexatious litigation, a foolish longing to abolish ‘risk’, and Christmas parties that, we are warned, have ‘absolutely nothing to do with Jesus’ In Santa’s grotto at a top London department store, Santa in his big white friendly beard sits on a bench — and there is a large ‘X’ marked on the bench a couple of feet away where the child is firmly directed to sit, allowing a wide corridor of clear and unsullied air between the child and the potential kiddie-fiddler from the North Pole, with his red cheeks, strange reindeer and unaccountable

Sunday

Lisa Hilton

No more puffs in Paris

One of the best things about Paris is that it never changes. The stone is always the colour of Champagne, the cabbies are always foul and Bernard-Henri Levi is always seated on the first table opposite the door as you go into the Flore. I’ve spent most of my adult life in Paris, and perhaps the thing I loved about it most is that one could never be unhappy there. Wretched, heartbroken, tragic, but never merely sad. All that was necessary was a noisette  and a Marlboro Light and suddenly one was Juliette Greco or Simone de Beauvoir-deliciously, adolescently, maudlin. Yet now it smells wrong. Sunday was the first time

James Forsyth James Forsyth

No marks for taxpayer value

If anyone doubts the crazy excesses of the quango culture read the Mail on Sunday’s report on Ken Boston, who has finally resigned as head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority over the SATS marking debacle. Boston was paid more than seven times what his predecessor was. What on earth was the justification for this kind of salary jump? It beggars belief that the market rate for the head of a curriculum and exams body had jumped by that amount in five years. The people who agreed to this deal clearly had scant regard to taxpayer value. The Mail reports that Boston is not alone in receiving a vastly better

Peter Hoskin

<em>If</em> taxpayers’ cash is to be spent in clunking fistfuls, what should it be spent on?

Ok, I’m as sceptical as Peer Steinbrück when it comes to Gordon Brown’s big-spending, debt-heavy approach to managing our economy.  And I regard the main fiscal debate between the splurgers and the thriftniks as perhaps the most important in British politics today.  But the fact remains that the splurgers are in power.  As Andrew Rawnsley points out in his Observer column this morning, that means that – at some level – there needs to be a secondary debate; a debate over what the splurge should be used to fund.  Rawnsley’s not impressed with where the money’s been going so far: “The more I think about it, the more sure I

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown should stop being so petty

In Britain there is no transition period for a new government to bed down in. Instead, the leader of the opposition becomes Prime Minister as soon as they have been to see the Queen after their party has won an election. Since the 1960s oppositions have had discussions with civil servants in the lead up to polling day in an attempt to ensure that they could hit the ground running if elected and to get them up to speed on various issues. These meetings helped mitigate the potentially damaging effect of such an abrupt transfer of power. But Gordon Brown has so far delayed giving permission for these talks to begin even though

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Poll puzzle

Two new polls out this morning suggest that no party can be confident about winning the next election outright. The Tories lead in both, but in the Com Res poll their margin is only one point and their six point lead with YouGov would not be enough for an overall majority on a uniform swing. The puzzle is why the Tory momentum that was developing straight after the PBR, the two polls that were conducted straight after that had the Tories 11 and 15 points ahead respectively, has stalled. Personally, I expected that the Damian Green affair would benefit the Tories in the polls. That does not seem to have

Saturday

Alex James

Slow life | 13 December 2008

A 2,000-year-old thoroughfare, St Martin’s Lane, and certainly one of my favourite places; contender, any time of year, for the world’s most festive location. On Saturday afternoon, a carnival of mad shoppers, confused sometimes, crossing roads without looking; arguing, pointing, dashing this way and that, laden down and worn out or grinning and just holding on to each other, half-drunk and completely in love. In another life I lived at the top end of the lane, at Seven Dials, and it was thrilling to be there again all of a sudden, after a frozen morning as still as a picture in the countryside. Now, all this grime and glamour were

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 13 December 2008

On our last evening in Cairo we were joined for dinner in the hotel restaurant by a local businessman who liked to socialise with the English tourists. He drew up the chair beside mine. The chair on his other side was vacant. The amplified music was too loud to permit general conversation across the table so the poor man was stuck with just me. Our table was a large one right next to the stage. He was a small, calm, dapper man. Every thought, word and gesture was so carefully measured I wondered whether he might be addicted to tranquillisers. Everything that I said he pondered carefully, as though my

Taki

High life | 13 December 2008

New York A Brooklyn-born rapper by the name of John Forte had a business idea of sorts about eight years ago. It was one of those get-rich-quickly schemes that, alas, work most of the time, hence the reason so many people are out of it most of the time. He flew to South America, bought a large amount of a liquid substance, stuffed it into an expensive briefcase, and flew into Newark airport with $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine. He was obviously hoping to make 10 or 20 times the amount once the haul was hardened by experts, cut up by more experts, and then sold to the small-time

Robin Oakley

The turf | 13 December 2008

The clatter of hooves in the stable yard, the smell of the work riders’ bacon butties drifting in the air. Warmly wrapped trainers and bloodstock agents scratching at their catalogues. Horses breezing in pairs down the Kempton straight in the misty early morning. When CNN sent me out last Friday to see what effect the recession was having on horse-racing I have rarely had such a concatenation of work and pleasure. With some people it is boot sales. Others trot regularly along to Crufts or watch the Antiques Road Show every weekend. In my case, I fear, I am becoming addicted to horse auctions. Which has led to more than

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 13 December 2008

Dot Wordsworth wades through clichés Clichés gather on the tide and stick on the shingle of daily life like tarred bladder-wrack. A curious species of cliché sets a stereotyped pattern, into which words may be fitted to taste. A particularly annoying example, because it has pretensions to humour, is exemplified by: ‘The words door, horse and bolted spring to mind.’ Or, in an online discussion of US relations with Venezuela that I have just stumbled across, ‘The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.’ This is a sort of double cliché, because it incorporates in its unvarying mould some already well-worn proverbial remark. I’d be interested in any information