Society

Thursday

29 Jan 2009

A cry for help | 29 January 2009

Sky News’s John Craig has a must-read on reports of Gordon Brown’s behaviour before the vote on the third runway for Heathrow which Labour won narrowly: ‘Labour MPs claim a “tearful and dewy eyed” Prime Minister called the Labour waverers into his Commons office one by one and pleaded with them to back the Government. “If we lose this vote it will de-stabilise the Government and de-stabilise the markets,” said the embattled Prime Minister, according to one MP who voted with the Tories despite the emotional appeal.’ If Brown did get this emotional over the Heathrow vote, one dreads to think how he responded to the IMF’s report saying that

Wednesday

28 Jan 2009

James Forsyth

The next American economy

Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package has just passed the House, albeit without a single Republican vote. But too often lost from the conservation about the stimulus and how effective it will be is what the US economy will, and should, look like once this storm has been weathered. In short, where will the growth come from? David Leonhardt has a fantastic piece in the upcoming New York Times magazine looking at this question. His argument is that education is the absolute key to this question. As he notes: “The median male worker is roughly as educated as he was 30 years ago and makes roughly the same in hourly pay.

Fraser Nelson

Obama all set to snub Brown?

When someone says they “hope” to come to your party, it’s normally a polite way of saying “forget it”. And when Brown spoke to Obama on Friday, the president said he “hopes” to come to the G20 summit in London. (White House readout here). It wasn’t a slipup. I called the Foreign Office who confirmed: it is yet undecided as to whether the G20 will be a finance ministers summit or a head of government one. The invites go out next week, and they may find out the week after. Maybe later. To treble check, I contacted the US Embassy in London – is the president coming to the G20?

William Blackstock

Could you get arrested for owning a graphic novel?

Film adaptations of graphic novels such as Zack Snyder’s 300 and the upcoming Watchmen mean that graphic novels are growing ever more popular. They’re not just in dingy comic book shops anymore but on the shelves in Waterstones and Borders. So is it right that they are now under threat by government anti-pornography legislation? There are two bills in parliament at the moment that, if successful, could make the possession of “extreme pornographic images” an offence. An “extreme image” is defined in The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act as one that is “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character”. So far, so good, right? That all

Alex Massie

What English backlash?

My sense is that, like their Scottish counterparts, English nationalists are disproportionately vocal online. Certainly, anything one says about Scotland and the future of the United Kingdom seems to draw them out. But for all that we keep being prmised an English nationalist backlash against Scotland (and Wales!), stubbornly it never quite seems to come. At least that seems to be the case if the results from the latest British Social Attitudes Report are in any way accurate. True 32% of people in England feel Scotland receives an unduly generous share of public spending (up from 22% in 2003) and 61% think Scottish MPs should not vote on English-only legislation.

Peter Hoskin

A graph to scare future governments

Earlier, from the IFS Green Budget launch, I wrote of how long it’s going to take for future governments to pay off Brown’s debt binge. Above is the graph, from the Green Budget, which illustrates the point. As you can see, it will take until around 2032 for us to get back to the 40% debt-GDP ratio that (officially) prevailed under Brown’s fiscal rules – and that’s assuming that governments between now and then embark on a fiscal tightening programme of spending cuts and tax hikes. Even with more severe fiscal tightening, it’s going to take until around 2025. One thing this fails to account for, though, is how much

Alex Massie

Dating a Banker Anonymous. Yes, really.

For all that it’s often criticised in the blogosphere, there’s an awful lot of good stuff in the New York Times. And some of it is very well written. This, for instance, is a splendidly judged intro and set-up: The economic crisis came home to 27-year-old Megan Petrus early last year when her boyfriend of eight months, a derivatives trader for a major bank, proved to be more concerned about helping a laid-off colleague than comforting Ms. Petrus after her father had a heart attack. For Christine Cameron, the recession became real when the financial analyst she had been dating for about a year would get drunk and disappear while

Alex Massie

The Unconventional Problem of Conventional Wisdom

An oldie but a goodie: Frank Foer’s defence of Conventional Wisdom dates from 2001 but it still a jolly read: Since 1980 the New York Times editorial page has published at least 38 columns condemning world hunger, 241 against South African apartheid, and 465 containing the phrase “conventional wisdom”–and never once did the Times mean it in a nice way… The New Republic has been even more hostile–savaging ” conventional wisdom” in 352 articles since 1983 (and TNR comes out only once a week). The consensus against CW has grown so powerful that even CW’s most distinguished purveyors now denounce their craft. In what can only be described as an

Alex Massie

Ulster Lessons

I’ve a piece up at the New Republic today, looking at how George Mitchell’s experience in Northern Ireland may inform his approach to his role as Barack Obama’s middle eastern envoy. Readers of long-standing will know that I take a rather more jaundiced view of the “peace process” than most and that, accordingly, am less enthused (but still hopeful!) by Mitchell’s appointment than most commentators. Nonetheless, Mitchell appreciated that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to forge a peace agreement absent the cooperation of the men of violence. In his view, “To be sure, their participation will likely slow things down and, for a time, block progress. But their

Peter Hoskin

Uncertain times as the IFS delivers its Green Budget

I’m embedded at the IFS/Morgan Stanley Green Budget event – at which the two organisations present their own prognoses for the UK economy and public finances – and my head’s swimming with numbers, forecasts and graphs. Two things are standing out, though: just how much uncertainty there is about where we’re headed, and how restricted future governments are going to be because of Brown’s stewardship of the public finances. First, the uncertainty. As Morgan Stanley’s David Miles put it, there is “an unusally large amount of uncertainty about the UK economy” right now. Even the experts just don’t know what’s coming next, and they’re having to come up with numerous

Peter Hoskin

Expanding Heathrow would ground expansion at every other airport in Britain

If you want to know how anti-competitive a third runway at Heathrow could be, then check out this article in today’s Times. It highlights a study by the Campaign for Better Transport which claims that – thanks to the Government’s climate change target – Heathrow expansion would mean every other airport in Britain having to abandon their own expansion plans. I wonder whether Gordon Brown’s factored that in when he boasts about how many jobs would be “created” by a third runway at Heathrow? Somehow, I doubt it…

Peter Hoskin

The attack that Labour fears

This article in today’s FT is an intriguing addendum to my post yesterday about Labour accepting the “headless chicken” charge. It points out that Gordon Brown has now been “warned by Labour ministers and MPs to stop churning out initiatives to tackle the recession”. And then goes on to describe an “anxious” parliamentary meeting of Labour MPs on Monday night, where one backbencher lamented Brown’s “blizzard” of initiatives. Increasingly, it seems like Labour fear the “headless chicken” attack more than the Tories fear the “do nothing” counter. The political tides certainly favour the Tories here – the “do nothing” tag was always disingenuous, and would become less effective as Team

Ross Clark

A boom market in economic nonsense

The government recently proposed that schoolchildren be given lessons in personal finance. Can I ask that, alongside the Lower Fourth, room be made in the classes for the AA spokesman who recently said this: ‘People wanting to get high-aspiration vehicles at an affordable price will have been hit by the crash in [the cars’] value.’ Yes, this remark really is as stupid as it seems, but first a little context. He was talking about a form of hire purchase called ‘Personal Contract Purchase’, whereby a motorist pays a deposit, followed by two years of monthly payments. At the end of this period, the buyer has two options: he can either

Matthew Lynn

City death: why so many moneymen kill themselves

Among the many overused clichés that have been dusted off to describe the chaos in financial markets over the past few months is the observation that this is ‘a crisis like no other’. Yet in one rather dark respect, it is following convention to the letter. As losses pile up and billions evaporate, an increasing number of financiers have decided to take their own lives rather than face up to the scale of the catastrophe. In Germany, the billionaire Adolf Merckle threw himself under a train as one of Europe’s greatest family fortunes unravelled. In this country, Kirk Stephenson took the same way out after his private equity firm ran

David Tang

Heed the Chinese ghosts of Morecambe Bay

‘Since Dad went to work in England, Mum and I have been missing him all the time. Dad isn’t young anymore and he’s alone in a foreign country. It’s all because of me. What an unworthy daughter I am! Dad wants me to go to university and have a good life. He’s making money for me. We haven’t been in a photo together for five years. That’s how long he’s been gone. When the families have reunited over the New Year, we have only sorrow, and worries for Dad.’ This was written by a 17-year-old girl in China at the last Chinese New Year. A year later, nothing has changed.

Ross Clark

Savers are Britain’s new underclass

While my remaining bank shares were plummeting last week I bought a copy of Socialist Worker to try to cheer myself up. At least somebody must be enjoying themselves, I reasoned, as I sat down to enjoy what I thought would be red-blooded demands for insurrection and the public execution of Sir Fred Goodwin. I cannot say how disappointed I was. I might just quote this less than revolutionary sentence from a leader: At the very least, the government could insist on an end to the threat of repossession and debt collectors. Doing so would mean we would get something in return for billions of pounds of our money. Could

Justin Cartwright

My memories of the American Dostoevsky

Justin Cartwright recalls his conversations over the years with John Updike, who died this week, and the master’s contention that the only excuse for reading is to steal I love John Updike immoderately. I am profoundly shocked that he has gone, because he was for me the greatest American writer of the second half of the 20th century. He was also a gracious, charming and witty man. But above all he had a very rare quality in writing — absolute integrity. He never jumped on bandwagons, he never wrote down or pretentiously, he never pulled his punches, he never renounced his patriotism or his religious faith, as he applied himself

Joan Collins

Obama Notebook

As Obama-mania engulfs America, I feel that I’m living in the middle of a historical bubble. As Obama-mania engulfs America, I feel that I’m living in the middle of a historical bubble. The palpable excitement that began two months ago, when Obama was elected president, has grown into a great thumping worldwide lovefest. I have never seen such immense pride in a new president. His every move and those of his wife and kids is chronicled, yet amazingly he hasn’t (yet) apparently put a foot wrong, even when snapped chomping on a chilli-dog in a diner. Obama is awe-inspiring. On his train trip from Chicago to Washington, he descended at

Michael Tanner

Leave well alone | 28 January 2009

The Beggar’s Opera Linbury Studio The Magic Flute Coliseum Is there any good reason for reviving The Beggar’s Opera now? None of the mercifully few productions I have seen has given any reason for answering yes (I don’t count The Threepenny Opera). The new production at the Royal Opera’s Linbury Studio emphatically doesn’t. Originally to have been conducted by Richard Hickox, the City of London Sinfonia was in the hands of Christian Curnyn, and on the musical side things went smoothly. It was done in Britten’s realisation, which has points in its favour, but several against, too. While his touch as an arranger was always sure, though more so in

Kate Chisholm

Sound and vision

A tale of two dramas, both from the city and of our time but very different in execution. Déjà vu is the first bilingual radio play on the BBC, written in French and English, and produced in a new collaborative project between Radio Four and Arté, the internet-only TV and radio station. It goes out on air in the traditional way next Wednesday in the Afternoon Play slot on Radio Four, but the following day it will go ‘live’ on the internet on artéradio.com, where you will be able to listen to it whenever you like, and as often as you like, over the next five years. It’s a totally