Society

Sunday

15 Mar 2009

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

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

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

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

14 Mar 2009

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

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

James Forsyth

Petraeus planning 2010 visit to Iowa

Update: Michael Goldfarb now says he meant the Iowa item as a joke. So, this post is no longer operative. Apologies, I thought Goldfarb was being serious. “THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that General Petraeus is planning on delivering the commencement address at the University of Iowa in 2010.” So reports Michael Goldfarb, late of the McCain campaign, on the magazine’s blog. Petraeus going to Iowa, a state he doesn’t have previous ties to, is going to create a huge amount of buzz about his presidential ambitions because the Iowa Caucuses kick off the whole presidential nomination process. If he does, deliver the address—and Petraeus must know this—it will be

James Forsyth

The more we hear about tax havens, the less the G20 will have achieved

James Kirkup has a very astute post up at Three Line Whip about how to gauge the success of the G20 summit in April. Kirkup writes, “The more you hear Mr Brown, Mr Obama and the rest talk about tax havens, the more they have failed to agree on more important things. No one likes tax havens. They’re the low-hanging fruit of the G20 process – saying rude things about the Swiss and the rest is pretty easy and uncontroversial. But it’s also missing the point. This crisis didn’t begin in Guernsey or the Caymans, it began in New York and London. Remember that on April 2. If tax havens and

James Forsyth

Utter Balls

Sometime a politician says something that is so at odds with reality that one almost hopes that it is spin rather than what they really think. Yesterday, Ed Balls said that it was “nonsense” to claim that IGCSEs are more demanding than GCSEs. This is patent rubbish. Pretty much any teacher, or pupil, will tell you that IGCSe are far harder than GCSEs. The GCSE IGCSE split, the number of pupils from independent schools taking IGCSE exams trebled last years, threatens to further heighten the divide between the state and independent sectors. But rather than dealing with the problem that GCSEs have become debased, Balls is just claiming that nothing is

Peter Hoskin

Where is the foreign policy?

Matthew Parris hits the nail on the head this morning, with an article bemoaning the lack of Tory foreign policy. Do read the whole thing, although the final paragraph sums up the charge: “As Opposition leader, Margaret Thatcher defined herself in brutal and angry outline as a cold warrior. Today there is no need for such clarity from Mr Cameron and something to be said for wait and see. But in Europe Britain’s natural allies in the “new” EU would be glad of an outstretched hand from our likely next government. And in Asia we are snagged in the barbed wire of a bloody conflict. I’m told Mr Cameron is

James Forsyth

Failure in Afghanistan would have terrible consequences

Max Boot and Fred and Kimberly Kagan’s report on Afghanistan in The Weekly Standard is well worth reading in full. The three authors played key roles in making the case for the surge that has helped to transform Iraq and their comparisons of the two countries are instructive and suggest that the situation is less dire in Afghanistan than is often portrayed. One thing that is hampering the effort in Afghanistan is coordinating the various members of the coalition. Aside from the caveats issue, there are simple problems that could—and should—be resolved. For instance, take the situation at ISAF headquarters: ‘most Americans stay in Afghanistan for at least a year, most

Guy Wilkinson

Church of England Inter-Faith Relations

Guy Wilkinson responds to Melanie Philips’ recent article in The Spectator We have seen in recent days in Northern Ireland just how deep antagonisms go and how long their poisonous roots remain in the ground, ready to spring to life like nettles to sting. And to continue the metaphor, we have seen in Luton how some kinds of words can be the means by which such roots are strengthened and enabled to spread. Anything that matters deeply to people – religion, politics, football, patriotism – gives rise to passion and to passionate words. And passionate words can make for good or for ill, for peace or for violence. The words which

David Blackburn

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Intelligence Squared event report – ‘Afghanistan: the future’

Yesterday’s Intelligence Squared / Spectator event was a discussion, rather than the usual debate. There was no motion, and panellists presented possible outcomes. Matthew Parris was mischievous, rejecting all analyses except that “Afghanistan is not Britain’s fight”. What was this “nearly third rate power doing there”? Fighting a war “we can’t afford” against a “cultural and religious identity we don’t understand is mad”. Britain was not fighting at the Afghans’ invitation. “Imagine the card: The Afghan people request and require your presence for a limited military occupation.” He predicted that fellow speakers Lords Inge and Ashdown would espouse the Mastermind approach to foreign policy: I’ve started so I’ll finish. The