Society

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

The Eye of God

Ok, so I have a bit of a fascination with space and space travel, which I manfully try not to inflict on CoffeeHousers.  But indulge me just this once, as this image taken by the European Southern Observatory – and reported by the Telegraph here – is too stunning not to share.  For obvious reasons, it’s been nicknamed the Eye of God: Truth is, it’s a “shell of gas and dust that has been blown off by a faint central star”.  Even so, an arresting reminder of the beauty of our universe.

Peter Hoskin

Hardening attitudes towards welfare make reform an easier sell

There’s a fascinating table in today’s FT, taken from the new study Towards a more Equal Society (ed. John Hills, Tom Sefton and Kitty Stewart), which I’ve reproduced below. It shows how people’s attitudes have hardened towards welfare over the past couple of decades:   I suspect the recession has caused attitudes to harden even further.  Sure, the welfare rolls will be added to; but for most people in work, struggling to make ends meet and facing the prospect of tax rises to pay off Brown’s debt mountain, the idea of state handouts for unemployed people is likely to grate more and more.  In turn, this could make welfare reform

Gavin Lockhart

Crime prevention is both more effective and more cost-effective

Chris Grayling’s first major speech this week as Shadow Home Secretary has largely been written up as the latest blueprint of powers for ‘cracking down’ on hoodies. But there’s another issue at stake here: a future Conservative Government will likely inherit a public purse that’s pretty much empty which means Grayling will have responsibility to spend taxpayers’ money in areas that will achieve the most effective reductions in crime. In his speech, Grayling referred to stopping people getting on to the ‘conveyor belt’ of crime.  This goes to the heart of failure of Labour’s crime and justice policy.  He also said “tackling the causes of crime was a key part

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lives touched by tragedy

The speeches by Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable in the Commons just now were moving proof that there are times when Westminster can set party politics to one side. Watching it one couldn’t help but reflect on how many of our national leaders’ lives have been touched by tragedy. Brown and Cameron have both suffered the agony of losing a child, Vince Cable’s wife died from cancer. It is often said that politicians do not know how the rest of the country live. But fate has dictated that Brown, Cameron and Cable have had to endure things that the vast majority of us will never have to.  

Peter Hoskin

PMQs cancelled

Following the tragic death of Ivan Cameron, PMQs has been cancelled today. Instead, Gordon Brown, William Hague and Vince Cable will make brief statements at 1200. You can watch them here.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The British civil war in Afghanistan

Today’s splash in The Independent about British citizens attacking the British military in Afghanistan is yet another reminder of the challenges we as a county face from Islamic extremism. The fact that these people choose to fight with the Taliban, proponents of the most repressive form of Islam, against the military of their liberal democratic homeland sums up the problem we face. The Independent reports that the number of British voices being picked up by ground and air surveillance in Afghanistan has increased in recent months. As one Army officer tells the paper, “We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away”.

Peter Hoskin

Obama’s speech to Congress

Here’s complete footage of Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress last night (you can read a full transcript here).  Unsurprisingly, it’s economy-heavy and contains plenty of Reaganesque nods to the spirit of the American people, but it’s striking just how much Obama mentions getting the budget deficit down:

Peter Hoskin

This week’s Cabinet row

O to be a fly on the wall of the Brown Bunker, and watch the grim soap-opera unfold in real time. After the infamous Cabinet meeting over bankers’ bonuses – which triggered much of the Harriet Harman speculation – the Daily Mail’s reporting yet another angry meeting between Brown and his ministers, this time over the Government’s plans for Royal Mail.  Harman was again a dissenting voice:   “It emerged last night that a blistering row broke out at a Cabinet meeting yesterday, with ministers arguing over whether the plans should be rammed through Parliament before the summer. Lord Mandelson, who is championing the legislation, found himself facing fierce opposition

Tuesday

Martin Bright

Peter Mandelson’s Funny Bone

I’m still recovering from Lord Mandelson’s deeply peculiar behaviour during his interview with Nick Robinson on the Ten O’Clock News. He was talking perfectly calmly (too calmly) about the row over his plans to sell of 30 per cent of the Post Office. Nick Robinson made the perfectly valid and uncontroverisal point that it may seem odd to people that the government is planning to part-privatise a public service while nationalising the banks. For Mandelson this was a real side-splitter. I thought he was going to fall off his chair. Sorry to get all sanctimonious about this. But did anyone else find this funny. Mandelson was arguing that the “taxpayer” could not

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who Labour MPs would put in their top team

Last week I noted that if Labour returned to opposition, the Parliamentary Labour Party would elect the shadow Cabinet. Politics Home has now asked their panel of Westminster experts who they think will be voted in–and out–by the PLP. The results, which they’ve kindly advanced to me, make for interesting reading. The majority of the panel predict that Jon Cruddas will stroll in if he stands. Across the ideological spectrum, there’s a sense that Tony McNulty and Liam Byrne are also likely to make the cut. On the left, there is a strong expectation that Peter Hain, the blogging Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson and Sadiq Khan, who was named

James Forsyth James Forsyth

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 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 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 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

James Forsyth 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