Society

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Senate seat for sale?

Illinois politics is legendarily corrupt. But even by the state’s high standards, the charge sheet against the current governor, Rod Blagojevich, is impressive. Blagojevich was, so it is alleged, trying to sell the Senate seat that Obama’s election had left vacant. If that wasn’t enough, Blagojevich was apparently attempting to shake down the president-elect. The sale of the Senate seat isn’t the only charge against the governor. The New York Times summarises the others as follows: “The governor is accused of racing to solicit millions of dollars in donations from people with state business before an ethics law bars such behavior in January, and threatening to rescind state money this

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 10 December 2008

Welcome to this week’s Coffee House PMQs live blog.  What to expect?  Well, as always, there’s plenty for the party leaders to say on the economy – particularly in light of Cameron’s speech yesterday, and the news today that the economy may have shrunk by 1 percent in the 3 months to November.  I’d be fairly surprised if welfare reform doesn’t feature as well. 1205: Here’s Gordon.  Alison Seabeck starts: “Businesses and small businesses have welcomed the measures introduced during the downturn…”  A question which lets Brown say “We will take action, [they Tories] would do nothing.” 1207: Cameron now. Returns to the theme of a few weeks ago: has the bailout freed up credit for small businesses?

Lisa Hilton

Mind the shoes!

Still few signs of retrenchment in Notting Hill, although at a Euro-bankers party this weekend one wit did propose that Soda-Streamed Chablis might pass as acceptably crunchy Champagne. How the time must fly in what’s left of the City. Over the canapés (chestnuts wrapped in lardo, salmon with liquorice), one guest described the distress she had felt at the appalling poverty which co-exists with the conspicuous trappings of new wealth on a recent business trip to Mumbai. Recent tragedy aside, the Western press seems reluctant to criticize this aspect of the Indian economic boom, preferring to relegate teeming misery to the status of energetic vibrancy or authentic local colour. The

Peter Hoskin

A Freud’s-eye view

Just to recommend David Freud’s comment piece in the Times today.  You’ll read few clearer explications of the welfare dependency problem and of the reforms enshrined in today’s White Paper.  In spite of Freud’s role as a government adviser, he even hints at one of the more malignant Brownies*: the willful shifting of claimants off JobSeekers’ Allowance and on to incapacity benefit (“…about 2.6 million still on incapacity benefit. In origin this phenomenon no doubt reflected government massaging of the unemployment figures.”)  In terms of potential, at least, the welfare reform plan being announced today is one of the more important political events of the past decade.  There is so

John Patten

The prospects for a proud Olympic legacy are bleak

John Patten, an Olympics adviser, warns that there is still much strategic thinking to be done for 2012 — not to mention the lax anti-terror measures at the construction sites I had to be forcibly persuaded on to the rugby field at school. Now, to my amazement, I find myself advising the British Olympic Association. I sympathise with friends who become quite hysterical at the idea of my rubbing shoulders with Sir Clive Woodward and the titans of track and field. But the BOA wanted at least one member of the semi-detached and sceptical classes to be around as a counterweight to unrealistic tendencies. The London Olympic dream is for

Daniel Hannan

The real lesson of this fiasco is that we need elected police chiefs

Perhaps now you’ll understand what we’ve been banging on about, we localists. For the better part of a decade, we’ve campaigned to place the police under elected sheriffs. Some of our chief constables, we contended, had cast off the cables that once attached them to public opinion. They were concentrating on speed cameras and hate crimes and community relations when the rest of us wanted them to concentrate on being unpleasant to scoundrels. The best way to align the police’s priorities with everyone else’s, we argued, was to place our constabularies under locally elected representatives. You disagreed — you, Spectator readers in particular. Our ideas, you felt, were downright un-British.

Oar Pali

Obama is just Bryan Adams without music

O’ar Pali talks to the ageing Canadian rocker and realises that the President-elect has merely emulated the pious pop-star rhetoric that has made Adams a global brand It would be no real surprise to pick up the first issue of The Spectator from 1828 and find a review of a Bryan Adams show: he is one of those performers who is just there, and (it seems) always has been. Unless you were on a different planet during the 1990s I guarantee that you heard, loved or hated his single ‘Everything I Do’, which was one of the best-selling records of the decade. Adams has picked up Grammy and Oscar nominations

James Delingpole James Delingpole

I am ready to go to prison for hamster murder

RSPCA Press Office Dear James, I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the RSPCA has received a complaint following your column dated 21 November. We were surprised, however, that it was felt appropriate to trivialise and broadcast a criminal act which may well have led to animal suffering. Can I remind you that whatever your personal ‘sliding scale of values’ may be it remains an offence to fail to meet an animals needs and/or cause it unnecessary suffering? Those found guilty face a maximum six-month prison sentence and/or a £20,000 fine. Obviously we urge everyone who buys a pet to be sure they have the resources and

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Scandal in Springfield

Sometimes it’s useful to remember that, despite everything, British politics is, on the whole, markedly less corrupt than politics elsewhere. That, of course, explains why so many of our scandals are disappointingly third or fourth rate. They do things differently in America. Today’ entertainment comes courtesy of Rod Blagojevich, the governor of Illinois, who has been arrested on charges of, inter alia, conspiring to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Great stuff: Federal prosecutors have investigated Blagojevich’s administration for at least three years. The governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The FBI affidavit alleges that Blagojevich also sought promises of campaign cash, as well as a cabinet post or ambassadorship in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Chicago Hardball

More from the Blagojevich indictment: [I]ntercepted phone conversations between ROD BLAGOJEVICH and others indicate that ROD BLAGOJEVICH is contemplating rescinding his commitment of state funds to benefit Children’s Memorial Hospital because Hospital Executive 1 has not made a recent campaign contribution to ROD BLAGOJEVICH. Really, if you’re not entertained by this then you probably need to rethink your interest in politics.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Does Sure Start perform?

Is Sure Start really the success story that Rachel Sylvester suggests it is? I asked my colleague at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), Jill Kirby – perhaps the leading expert on family issues – for her take. She reviewed Sure Start in her CPS report Nationalisation of Childhood. That was two years ago, and the evidence was that for children of the most vulnerable (ie, jobless and lone parents) it was, amazingly, doing more harm than good. For the others, the benefits were negligible. Since then, Professor Edward Melhuish’s National Evaulation of Sure Start has said that it is “plausible if by no means certain” that this problem on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The case for merit pay

Malcolm Gladwell has a fantastic piece in this week’s New Yorker which contains a totally compelling argument for merit pay for teachers: “Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad

Peter Hoskin

What’s this about?

The Speaker’s set to make a Damian Green-related statement at 15:30 today.  Tim Montgomerie highlights a post by Richard Benyon MP which suggests it may be to do with police access to the Commons server. Stay tuned. UPDATE, 1535: Not much to it.  Martin says that “no access was given, and no access was taken” to the Commons server.

Peter Hoskin

And so back to the economy…

There was much to be impressed about in David Cameron’s speech to the LSE earlier.  It contained some fizzy soundbites; made effective attacks on Brown’s repsonse to the downturn; and clearly spelt out the dividing lines between the Tories and Labour.  Most of all, though, it said: “We are not the do-nothing party”.  Given that the “do-nothing” charge is the key component in Brown’s spin war against the Tories, it’s an important point for Cameron to make.  And he did so by drawing a distinction between the wrong and the right “exceptional measures” (see this video clip from the Beeb): “I do believe that exceptional times call for exceptional measures

Daniel Korski

Britain should have Mugabe prosecuted

The charge sheet against Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is long and packed with crimes of both commission and omission. The World Food Program expects half the Zimbabwean population will soon need food aid. Official inflation was 231 million percent in July – the last time statistics were released. Unemployment is over 85 percent; poverty over 90 percent; and foreign reserves almost depleted. Since Mugabe took power, thousands have died at the hands of his goons. Operation Murambatsvina, in 2005, alone cost some 700,000 people their homes, livelihoods or both. Now an outbreak of cholera has claimed around 600 lives and, according to Medicins Sans Frontieres, threatens another 1.4 million people.  As

Peter Hoskin

A second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty for Ireland?

This from the Standard’s Paul Waugh: “Premier Brian Cowen will tell the EU summit this week that he wants his country to ratify the treaty by this time next year. Although the words ‘second referendum’ may not pass his lips, his colleague Europe Minister Dick Roche has just made plain that that is what will happen. Roche says that the treaty can be amended to meet Ireland’s fears over neutrality, tax, abortion and its own Commissioner.” At best, I’d say this “try and try again” mentality is patronising to those who voted ‘No’ the first time around. One wonders what will happen if a second referendum delivers a second ‘No’

Peter Hoskin

Putting up barriers to social mobility<br />

Another week, another essential column by Rachel Sylvester; this time on the successes and failures of the Sure Start programme.  Here’s the key passage on how the programme could encourage social segregation: “In some cases parents are asked whether they have a garden for their children to play in. The objective is clear – to identify the middle classes. A friend of mine was telephoned by her local Sure Start organiser and asked not to come to baby massage classes any more because she was too posh… …Of course it’s important that Sure Start reaches the people it was originally designed to help. But it would be ironic if the

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Poll blues for the Tories

There’s another post-PBR opinion poll for us to mull over tonight; this time courtesy of The Times / Populus.  The headline figures put the Tories below the 40 percent mark, and have Labour once more closing the gap: Conservatives — 39 percent (down 2) Labour — 35 percent (no change) Lib Dems — 17 percent (up 1) It all seems counterintuitive.  What about the sceptical response to Brown’s PBR?  What about the Damian Green affair?  Either this poll is an outlier, or these events – which felt seismic within the Westminster bubble – just haven’t registered that much with the public.  I guess we need to see a few more

Peter Hoskin

Brown gets his way

The Commons have just voted down an attempt to change the remit of the committee being established by Michael Martin to look into the Damian Green affair – and by the slenderest of margins (285-281).  Those four votes mean that the seven-person committee will most likely have a government majority on it; just as Brown wanted.  One suspects it was the Labour whip team wot won it. UPDATE: Harriet Harman’s “government majority” version of the committee has been passed (293-270).  Given that the Tories and the Lib Dems are now boycotting it, will anyone actually give any regard to its findings?  Will be interesting to see if this rebounds on Brown &