Society

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Why did Harman’s Big Idea see the light of day?

Harriet Harman’s idea of imposing a legal obligation on public bodies to narrow the gap between rich and poor has the potential to be a dangerously regressive measure.  With that in mind, we should welcome the suggestion in Andrew Grice’s Independent article this morning that it doesn’t have the backing of the Government: “The second ‘class war’ accusation came when the social mobility paper was published. This time it was more justified. Harriet Harman, the Equalities minister, wants a new law to put ‘the persistent inequality of social class’ on the same footing as discrimination on grounds of race, gender, sexuality or disability. Contrary to some reports, she did not

Peter Hoskin

The Tories should heed Milburn’s warnings

There’s been a lot of garbage spoken about social mobility in the past few days – almost all of it from the government.  But if Tories need reminding that Alan Milburn – the new social mobility czar – gets it, then they should read his interview with Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester in today’s Times.  Here’s one particularly striking paragraph: “Labour’s arch-moderniser is not, however, going to limit himself to considering the number of internships at law firms. In his view, the key to social mobility is education, and he has radical plans for reforming the entire schools system. He backs the Tory proposal to allow companies, charities and parent

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 17 January 2009

Last month saw the usual spate of newspaper articles ridiculing the circular letters sent with Christmas cards. A series of books by Simon Hoggart now documents the worst of these. Funny as his examples are, he’ll be hard put to beat the instance sent in by a reader of the Daily Telegraph: ‘I suppose the high spot of our year was John’s Nobel Prize.’ Even so, am I alone in being slightly uncomfortable with all this opprobrium? If you care enough to spend 50p sending someone a Christmas card, shouldn’t you expect them to spend a minute or so hearing what’s happened to you in the past year? Is it

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 17 January 2009

In Competition No. 2578 you were invited to imagine the speech that Shakespeare, as a boy, might have delivered as he was slaughtering a calf. This challenge was inspired by John Aubrey’s portrait of the young bard in Brief Lives: ‘His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father’s trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.’ You plundered the works of the adult Shakespeare with inventiveness and to great effect. Michael Brereton’s slaughterhouse oration was accompanied by scholarly analysis. Part of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If fat people can’t adopt, who’s to say that drinkers or blacks won’t be next?

Should blacks be allowed to adopt healthy children? Or should they be kept as an emergency reservoir of care for the damaged or ill children nobody else wants? It is time we got a little more rigorous about who we allow to adopt the kiddies, don’t you think? Black people are slightly less likely, on average, to abuse their children sexually than are white people — however, that’s pretty much their only plus point. They are slightly less likely to stay together as parents and disproportionately more likely to have been involved in some form of crime. Black fathers will be less well-educated, on average, than their white counterparts and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

You think Abraham Lincoln had it tough?

James Forsyth says that Barack Obama will need all his remarkable talents to confront an extraordinary set of challenges — not only the economy, but global security Short of wearing a stove-pipe hat, Obama could not make his desire to be compared to Abraham Lincoln any more obvious. He plans to travel to his inauguration via the same route that Lincoln did, be sworn in on the Lincoln Bible and eat lunch off replicas of the Lincolns’ White House china. Michelle and the girls must have wondered if he was going to change their name when he took them to the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday night. Obama has set a

Con Coughlin

Don’t misunderestimate Bush’s record

Oh, the fun we’ve had. Not since the Reverend William Spooner dumbfounded Oxford undergraduates have we been so entertained by the garbled syntax and grammatical infelicities that have been one of the more diverting features of the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush. ‘Tell me, was it you or your brother that was killed in the war?’, a question Spooner asked a former student after the first world war, could just have easily been posed by Dubya to an American soldier fresh back from fighting on one of the many front lines in the war on terror. The debate over the achievements and failings of the eight-year presidency of George

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 17 January 2009

My wife tells me, and so it must be right, that now that we are retired we must beware of the involution of our habits and interests. It is all too easy for old people to live the petty round, in which a visit to the grocer seems an expedition of some magnitude, and not to change their clothes for weeks on end. And yet there is something deeply reassuring about the scale of the quotidian, that seems suddenly upon retirement to be so much more important than it seemed before: besides, one cannot always be considering the deepest questions of existence, and not being a cosmologist or an astronomer,

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was… | 16 January 2009

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Matthew d’Ancona recommends Frost/Nixon and offers CoffeeHousers a chance to see it for free. Fraser Nelson says that Heathrow should be improved before it’s expanded, and applauds the Tories for making debt a human issue. James Forsyth finds no wealth of talent in the Cabinet, and outlines the Ken Clarke conundrum. Peter Hoskin asks whether Mandy’s latest scheme will kickstart the car industry, and laments the Government’s equality overdrive. Melanie Phillips observes the astounding shallowness of Britain’s Foreign Secretary. Clive Davis asks: was Bush right after all? Trading Floor writes on what not to do about climate change.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory task on foreign policy

There has been a conspicuous silence from the Tories about David Miliband’s deeply mistaken piece in The Guardian yesterday. While there are not many votes in foreign policy for an opposition, it is vital that a party that wants to be a success in government uses its time out of office to work out its world view. So far, there’s insufficient evidence that the Tories have done this. David Cameron has developed impressive relationships with foreign leaders but the intellectual framework for Tory foreign policy, especially when it comes to the broader Middle East, is lacking. Part of the problem is that there is no ideas infrastructure on the right

Mike Penning

More Brownies from Bradshaw

This week, my colleague Andrew Lansley quite rightly corrected Ben Bradshaw’s misleading assessment of Conservative plans for NHS spending. Bradshaw has a tendency to be over-zealous in his role as the Department of Health’s attack dog, and this wasn’t the first time in the last year that the Minister has been somewhat economical with the truth. During July 2008, the Government published a strategy for Primary Care with the intention of giving patients more choice over their GP. Obviously worried that it wouldn’t get much coverage, Ben Bradshaw duly went on the offensive against family doctors. The Minister, who, it would be reasonable to assume, held an extensive collection of data,

Peter Hoskin

The split over Heathrow

The Standard’s Paul Waugh flags up a new YouGov poll on attitudes to a third runway at Heathrow.  Do check out Paul’s blog for some intriguing below-headline findings (i.e. it seems that men are much more in favour of the project than women), but here are the main numbers: Among Londoners For a third runway — 35 percent Against — 43 percent Don’t know — 22 percent Among West Londoners For — 37 percent Against — 50 percent Don’t know — 13 percent I guess time will tell whether this issue will be electorally important, but these numbers should at least give some London-based MPs food for thought.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Hunt for a new Tory party chairman

Even if Caroline Spelman is completely exonerated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner she’ll still be moved from her post as party chairman. The party needs a better media communicator in the job in the run-up to an election. If the reshuffle rumours are to be believed, Jeremy Hunt is in pole position to replace her. Hunt is one of the most effective members of the shadow cabinet and comes across well on TV and radio. But a top trio of Cameron, Osborne and Hunt is too similar. Three southern, Oxford educated public school boys are always going to find it hard to reach certain sections of the electorate. Apparently that

Peter Hoskin

All about timing and delivery

Great timing by Dave with his environmental proposal today.  After the Heathrow announcement yesterday, talk of a greener national infrastructure by the Tory leader is sure to irk a few Labour MPs, and could set the political dividing lines in his party’s favour.  What’s more, the Tory policy idea – a £1 billion “investment” in what would apparently be a smarter, cleaner, more efficent National Grid – sounds like something that even the envirosceptics can sign up to; depending, of course, on where that £1 billion comes from. Marks also have to be given for delivery.  Today’s announcement is set to be the UK’s first online policy launch – and

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lies, damned lies and league tables

According to the school league tables published today no pupils at Eton are “achieving 5 A*-C GCSEs including English and maths”. How can that be? Well, Eton like various other top private school have abandoned GCSEs in certain subjects and instead have their pupils take international GCSEs which don’t count in the league tables. IGCSEs, though, are far harder than their British counterparts, more like the old O-Levels than GCSES. For all the talk from Balls and Brown about “social mobility”, they have presided over the erection of a new barrier to social mobility: the rise of an alternative set of exams that are more highly valued by universities and employers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It’s a small world at the top

Ben Smith spots a passage in Michael Wolff’s Murdoch biography which might explain why Murdoch’s New York Post is so enthusiastically backing Caroline Kennedy: “As Rupert Murdoch begins to plot to get the Wall Street Journal, he’s also worried about getting Grace into private school in New York. He wants her to go to Brearley, where [an older daughter] went. He recruits Gary Ginsberg, who knows the Kennedys, to help him get Caroline Kennedy, a Brearley Alumna and board member, to write a letter on Grace’s behalf.” The other thing this snippet makes you think is how absurdly competitive and socially-based the admissions process is at these New York private

Peter Hoskin

Digby Jones gives the civil service a kicking

Sounds like Lord Digby Jones, the former trade minister, gave a fiery performance during his select committee appearance earlier.  This quote on his experience of the civil service is simply too good not to reprint:  “I was amazed by how many people frankly deserved the sack – and yet that was the one threat they never worked under, because it doesn’t exist as long as they have not been criminal.” And now Gordon Brown’s waded into the fray, issuing this through his spokesman: “I think you will find that the civil service is full of honest, decent people who work hard.” I guess that’s ok then… Hat-tip: The Telegraph’s Christopher Hope

Peter Hoskin

How much longer can Brown and Mandelson rein in Labour’s discontents?

After John McDonnell’s suspension from the Commons today, it’s time for another installment of Rebellion Watch.  Truth is, numerous Labour MPs aren’t behind the Heathrow proposal – indeed, Brown’s said to be pretty much the only Cabinet member who truly supports it – but they’re being won over, for now, by the prospect of it creating more jobs as well as, I’m sure, by the notion of causing difficulties for the Tories.  By all accounts, much of the behind-the-scenes persuasion is being done by Peter Mandelson – but can the Enobled One hold back all the tides of rebellion as 2009 progresses? It’s not looking promising for Brown ‘n’ Mandy.  As well as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband’s argument is bananas

One of the great mysteries of British politics is why David Miliband has a reputation for being a deep-thinker. Far from being a bold new agenda for British foreign policy, his piece in today’s Guardian, which Pete reviewed earlier, is, as Melanie argues, embarrassingly shallow. First, it is hardly ground-breaking to observe that ‘war on terror’ is an inadequate and misleading phrase. Back in August 2004, President Bush conceded this point:  “We actually misnamed the war on terror; it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies, who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the

Peter Hoskin

Bad news buried under the third runway

Just to point out an important post by Sam Coates over at Red Box.  Turns out the House has chosen today, when the airwaves are dominated by the Heathrow announcement, to publish an audit of MPs’ expenses (pdf here).  I’ll leave you to check out the details in Sam’s post, but it’s now looking less likely that we’ll see a full publication of expenses or, indeed, any proper restrictions introduced.  All in all, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Government’s quite pleased that John McDonnell has been suspended from the Commons for protesting the Heathrow expansion.  There’ll be even less room in the papers for these dispiriting cover-ups to be exposed.