Society

Sunday

25 Jan 2009

Devising an early warning system that won’t be ignored

Just taking a Sunday stroll through this week’s magazines, and thought I’d flag up the Economist’s special report on the future of finance. Plenty of worthwhile stuff in there – but this passage on how, historically, early warning systems have been ignored jumped out at me: “Some would seek to limit the ebb and flow of confidence with early warnings, as if financial busts were a hurricane or an outbreak of plague. Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, would like to see the IMF cast in that role. History suggests that such schemes do not work. People enjoy booms. Walter Bagehot, an editor of The Economist in the 19th century, observed

Fraser Nelson

A recession that the green brigade can enjoy?

The environmental lobby should be the happiest people in Britain right now. The more people laid off, and the poorer people become, the greener this country will get. All that nasty consumption, and economic growth: kaboom! No more. Those Indians and East Asians who looked dangerously like they were about to upgrade from mud huts for houses, and to start to polluting by consuming – well, they’ll be doing that a lot more slowly now. And the great unwashed British masses, who looked like they needed to be taxed out of the sky and off the roads – well, the recession will also take care of them. And the UK

Peter Hoskin

Cash for amendments threatens to sink Parliament’s reputation further

One of last year’s most memorable political quotes came courtesy of Frank Field, always one of the Good Men of Parliament. In the aftermath of the Derek Conway affair, he lamented “…it is difficult to think how much lower our collective reputation might sink among voters generally.” It sounded true enough at the time. Under a year later, though, that reputation has sunk to lower depths. In one way or another, the squabble over the publication of expenses, the Damian Green arrest, and fresh donations scandals have all undermined Parliament’s standing – and rightly so. And now there could be a new villainy to add to the list. The Sunday

James Forsyth

The state is too big

If anyone doubts that state spending has grown far too large over the past few years consider these numbers: “Across the whole of the UK, 49% of the economy will consist of state spending, while in Wales, the figure will be 71.6% – up from 59% in 2004-5. Nowhere in mainland Britain, however, comes close to Northern Ireland, where the state is responsible for 77.6% of spending, despite the supposed resurgence of the economy after the end of the Troubles. Even in southern England, the government’s share of spending is growing relentlessly. In the southeast, it has gone up from 33% to 36% of the economy in four years.” State

Saturday

24 Jan 2009

Alex James

Slow Life | 24 January 2009

I said ‘bollocks’ on live daytime television last week, on a Sunday of all days. My children were watching, too. There were complaints, and quite right. I felt bad about it, even though it was absolutely the mot juste. I got rather carried away, frustrated that a good-looking boy with a lot of potential had apparently missed the point of everything so completely, and chosen to spend his three-and-a-half-minute stab at glory yodelling. And how far he had come to stand there, live, live, live in front of 12 cameras and a million people watching, stand there and blow it so utterly. Back in October we’d set out with a

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 24 January 2009

Over the Christmas holiday I read a collection of essays edited by Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, which Jung kicks off with an essay entitled ‘The Importance of Dreams’. Dreams ought to be taken seriously, says Jung. They are a specific expression of the unconscious and as such ought to be treated as facts. He concedes that a fact expressed by the unconscious, primitive, symbol-encrusted part of the mind is never going to be easy for the contemporary, rational, conscious part of the mind to interpret with any certainty. But Jung contends that anyone equipped with an understanding of primitive symbolism can learn to interpret correctly at least some

Taki

High Life | 24 January 2009

Gstaad If someone bet that The Spectator issue of 10 January outsold or was read by more people than any other weekly — and that includes best selling popular crap like Hello! and OK! — they’d be collecting their winnings as I write. This, of course, in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland, where Gstaad lies. I suppose it had to do with something concerning the Madoff gang, most of whom live around these parts, and as of this moment are pretty pissed off with a certain poor little Greek boy. As I had predicted, the gang does not fight but screams and whines a lot. Their women, rather. If

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 24 January 2009

Sunday Strange call from Gary. Wanted to know if I knew anything about meatloaf. I said no, not my taste in music but that wasn’t what he was after. Said he’d rung every single girl in the press office and no one knew how to cook it, or what was in it, apart from meat. So I was to go and get Mummy. They were chatting for ages. She said: ‘Oh yes, it’s definitely the sort of thing one might cook for that occasion… beef … yes, organic beef if you prefer… yes of course you can have my mobile number and ring me if you get any awkward questions…

The Spectator

Letters | 24 January 2009

Islam and the Nazis Sir: Charles Moore touches on an important point when he ascribes a Nazi–Hamas continuum of interests (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 January). While helping Europe Minister Denis MacShane write his recently published book, Globalising Hatred — The New Anti-Semitism, I was numbed by the depths of the relationship between radical Islam and the Nazis, an association that, inexplicably, has been hugely under-reported. Arguably the most important source material I came across was a slim volume entitled Icon of Evil which, complete with official documents and photos, charts the mutual regard, indeed affection, between the two creeds, never so clearly underscored as in the correspondence between Hitler and

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 24 January 2009

I am not going to go on about the word Paki, though it has an interesting enough history. But when I used the word Spaniard recently, my husband asked: ‘Are you allowed to say that these days?’ I wondered, until I heard a Spaniard use it himself on Radio 4. So it must be all right. A cause for unease at this designation of Spanish people is the connotation of the suffix -ard. Consider these examples: bastard, coward, drunkard, laggard, sluggard, braggard, stinkard. Neither mallard nor wizard are very strong counter-examples, the first coming from the word male (though female ducks of this kind exist too), and the second being

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 24 January 2009

My heart goes out to the compilers of the 2009 Michelin Guide to Great Britain and Ireland which was published earlier this week. Not since 1929, the first year of the Great Depression, can an edition of the famous red handbook have been looked forward to less. In the current climate, the prospect of going out for an expensive meal is about as appealing as buying a new house. I spent five years working as a food critic and some of my most miserable evenings were spent in Michelin-starred restaurants. A typical experience would begin with being put on hold when I called to make a reservation and end with

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 24 January 2009

Q. Several chums have contacted me ‘as friends’ to alert me to the latest rumour about my extracurricular activities — to wit, according to the local Notting Hill bush telegraph, I am having an affair with a banker worth several hundred million in our social circle. As ever, I am last to know. This is annoying on several levels: I am married, so is he; though I enjoy the company of the chap in question, we’ve yet to exchange Christmas cards, let alone anything more intimate. I also resent the implication that I would commit adultery with someone just because he is rich, handsome and kind, and the disrespect to

Alex Massie

Still the Dismal Science

Preach it, Brother Wilkinson: When I see Delong more or less indiscriminately trashing everyone at Chicago, or Krugman trashing Barro, etc., what doesn’t arise in my mind is a sense that some of these guys really know what they’re talking about while some of them are idiots. What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become

Alex Massie

The Era of Regulation Never Ended

For reasons I don’t entirely understand the impression that the present regrettable economic circumstances have been caused by a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to regulation seems to be widely held. This is curious since, as Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.com, puts it in today’s Wall Street Journal, we have not been living in an age of regulatory roll-back. On the contrary, there has been a marvellous, winning combination of more and useless regulation. If spending under Mr. Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of

James Forsyth

A Tory landslide looks increasingly likely

It has been rather obscured by the torrent of bad economic news and Obama’s inauguration but the Tories appear increasingly set for a decisive victory. It now appears almost impossible that the British economy will start to grow again in the third quarter of this year as Brown and Darling predicted in the PBR. Instead, an optimistic scenario now would have growth resuming in 2010—a pessimistic one would push the recovery as far back as 2012. This means that voters will have not felt the effects of the recovery when they go to the polls. In these circumstances it is unsurprising that the odds on a Tory victory are the

James Forsyth

Nationalising the banks would just create new problems

Charles Moore’s column today on the similarities between Gordon Brown and Sir Fred Goodwin, formerly of RBS, is well worth reading. As Charles writes, “What is the difference between Sir Fred and Mr Brown? Mr Brown is still in his job.” Charles also points out how difficult, pace Kevin Maguire, nationalising the banks would be: “Even with his abiding faith in the beneficence of government and of himself, Mr Brown must know that nationalisation of the banks would be a nightmare. Either it would require compensation (£125 billion on the latest book value of the banks concerned), which would cause taxpayer outrage, or expropriation, which might make markets lose all

James Forsyth

Alternative bus slogans

As an agnostic, I find the atheist advertising campaign on the buses most odd. First of all, it seems unlikely that an advert on the side of bus is going to change minds about something as fundamental as whether or not there is a God. Second, the slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” seems to rely on the idea that most people who believe do so purely out of fear of fire and brimstone. Yet, most of those who are blessed with faith find comfort and solace in it. The idea that there is no God does not necessarily remove worry as Alan Jacobs

Daniel Yates

A British soldier’s view of Operation Cast Lead

Many thanks to Daniel Yates for contributing this article to Coffee House. Daniel was a British soldier with the Intelligence Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is writing under a pseudonym. – Pete Hoskin Having completed numerous combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I watched the television footage of Israeli soldiers deploying on Operation Cast Lead with a jolt of familiarity. I saw the emotions that I have felt in the past. I was eager to do my job properly, I had confidence in my abilities and those of my comrades, but I was also apprehensive. That apprehension was not just the fear of what harm may have come to

James Forsyth

How bad will this get?

One of the most alarming things at the moment is that no one appears to know what is going to happen next in this financial crisis. When in today’s Times interview Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester asked the City Minister Lord Myners whether there will have to be more bank bailouts, he replied: “There may well be. Who knows? It depends how we negotiate these things.” Hardly an answer that fills one with confidence. The doomsday scenarios also no long seem as far-fetched as they once did. Just yesterday at lunch in the City, I was told in a matter of fact fashion that Britain would have to call in

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 24 January 2009

The wonder horse Every so often a sportsman comes along of such supreme brilliance you can only watch and admire. Ian Botham was one — he could shut down offices when he went out to bat; so was George Best for a few wondrous years; Pele too; Roger Federer in his golden years when no one could come near him; Borg as well, cold and mysterious; Usain Bolt, who can destroy the best sprinters in the world in a few metres. Bradman by all accounts. They are sportsmen who can’t be explained in any normal way. Now we have one more great athlete, though this time with four legs. If