Society

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Recession and oligarchs

The Deripaksa story rumbles on in the papers today but Osborne will be relieved to see that he appears to be out of the woods now. The Guardian reveals that Mandelson and Deripaksa met in October 2004, a meeting which his Brussels staff appear to have been unaware of. Meanwhile, The Independent reports that David Cameron took free flights to go and see Rupert Murdoch aboard his yacht.  In other news, official figures out later this morning are expected to show the first quarter of negative growth since 1992.  One imagines that the public are not overly impressed by tales of politicians spending their times on super yachts with Russian

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Mad World, My Masters

Clive Crook pops back to Blighty and finds himself pining for the sanity and phlegmatic common-sense of life in the United States. Can’t say I blame him. Consider this story, for instance: plans for a Christmas ice-rink in Bath have been abandoned after complaints that the temporary rink would be a magnet for paedophiles who could take advantage of it to “groom” children. Seriously. Not to get all Daily Mail on you, but not for the first, nor I fear last, time there’s not much you can do except wonder what on earth is wrong with this country. [Hat-tip: Mr Worstall]

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Photography We Can Believe In

Callie Shell has been following and photographing Barack Obama for Time since the beginning of the campaign. You can see some of her work here and, especially, here. I particularly love the photo of Obama doing a pull-up moments before delivering a speech. There’s a matter-of-fact coolness about it. Glamour too, as Virginia Postrel could doubtless confirm. Actually, the Obama who appears in – or is presented by – many of Shell’s pictures is, to my mind, strikingly reminiscent of a star such as, say, Paul Newman.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What should McCain’s final roll of the dice be?

The state polling numbers are grim for McCain right now. One poll today even had Obama up by 10 in Indiana, a state Bush won by 20 points. McCain clearly needs to do something to shake things up. Mike Murphy, who worked on McCain’s 2000 campaign but in recent months has been a critic of the style of McCain’s campaign, has an intriguing idea: “There is no state by state way to break out of the campaign’s current spiral. Trips to Iowa will not do it. McCain has to go global with a big closing message. So, why not… Strip down the state by state media budget and use the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A mad world

Keith Dovkants has a great feature in the Standard on  the relationship between Rothschild and Deripaska. But this anecdote stood out to me: “Witness his excursion into Kalmykia, a remote Russian republic run by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a charismatic leader who fought an election campaign on promises of providing a free mobile phone for every shepherd and a guarantee that Diego Maradonna would be signed up by the local football team. Ilyumzhinov confides in friends that he had been captured by aliens and has glimpsed a view of the universe not allowed most mortals. His political ruthlessness is combined with a sense of divine right and what rare visitors to his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The heart of the matter

One of the oddest aspects of this whole Deripaska affair is why Nate Rothschild went nuclear on George Osborne. It was understandable that Rothschild was irritated about Osborne breaching the privacy of his fellow guests but writing a letter that could have destroyed Osborne’s career seems like a disproportionate response. Especially when you consider that Osborne and Rothschild are old friends. Charles Moore puts it typically well: “But why did Nathaniel Rothschild write to the Times? Yes, he was genuinely annoyed that George Osborne had relayed Peter Mandelson’s disobliging remarks about Gordon Brown to the Sunday Times. The then Mr Mandelson was Mr Rothschild’s guest, as was Mr Osborne. Mr

Peter Hoskin

It’s the statisticians wot done it

Much hoo-hah – and rightly so – over the crime statistics that the Home Office have published today.  The issue is with the “Most serious violent offences” figure, which has risen by 22 percent since last year – an increase that Jacqui Smith attributes to previous inconsistencies in how the police totted up the “GBH with intent” numbers (for the official explanation, click here).  But a passage from another Home Office document (pdf, here) is worth highlighting: “At least two-thirds of the 26% increase in GBH with intent can be attributed to the clarification in the counting rules referred to earlier. This also influences the overall figure for ‘Most serious violence against the person’.” In

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The true defenders of liberty

In Uganda there is a law against annoying the president, and last night I met an incredible person who has been jailed 12 times for breaking that law. Andrew Mwenda, founder of The Independent newspaper, was giving the keynote address at The Bastiat Prize and asking why the West was so timid in defending free markets and the open society which people like him put their lives on the line to support. A crash isn’t a crisis of capitalism, he said, it’s a characteristic of capitalism – when banks err they are punished. Why do so few in the West make this point? I asked him later if he worries

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The worst seems to have passed for Osborne

There will be relief in Tory circles this morning that today’s papers contain no further damaging revelations about George Osborne and Andrew Feldman’s holiday activities. The Tories can begin to hope that this story is on the wane or that the focus of attention will soon shift back to Mandelson; do see Melissa Kite’s revelations about Mandelson and Deripaska. The greatest danger to Osborne now is an accidental recommencement of hostilities. For instance, if a Sunday tabloid designed to try and dig dirt on the Rothschilds, Nate might go nuclear even if the Tories had not played any role in encouraging the paper. He is clearly a man with a

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The T St Rag

Here’s the usually-savvy Helen Rittelmeyer: Let’s take it as a given that Martin and Maltz are correct that Red Staters like to follow traditions and bicoastal elites like to question them; it certainly sounds true enough, at least as far as wild generalizations can be. Even given that assumption, most South Carolinians are more morally and philosophically sophisticated than most cosmopolitan Obamaniacs. Let’s put aside the question of whether or not New Yorkers really question their moral assumptions (although if someone else wanted to take up this line of argument, I wouldn’t stop them) and simply look at the end result of this Blue State skepticism. Most of the time,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Baseball Division

Yup, it’s time for the Fall Classic. I’m taking part in a symposium at Culture11. My first contribution, in which I out myself as a temporary Tampa Bay Rays fan, is here. Why Tampa? Largely, as I say in the wee piece, because I enjoy Philadelphia’s beery opera buffa and do not much fancy that being corrupted by victory. Happily Michael Brendan Dougherty and Tim Carney are around to talk, like, about actual baseball.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 21

Jobs being sent overseas to cosset foreigners? Not a new phenomenon.Not a new campaign themse either. Here’s a Clinton-Gore ad from 1992 that could easily have been made by Obama this year.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Last Throes

It’s over. How so? Because campaigns that have a chance of winning don’t perform stunts like this: Please join our campaign for a conference call at 11:30 a.m. EDT, with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and McCain-Palin Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss recent news stories about which candidate terrorists would like to see in the White House in 2009. [Hat-tip: Marc Ambinder] UPDATE: Dave Weigel, bless him, has more.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Leaderless

The Times has gone understandably big on its scoop about George Osborne’s activities in Corfu. Many have been taken aback by quite how hostile the tone of its coverage has been—Osborne and The Times editor James Harding were thought to be friends—and if what Guido and several others are hearing is true, it seems that tomorrow’s coverage will be the harshest yet towards Osborne personally. But in all this there is one notable absence: The Times has not yet run a leader on the matter. On Tuesday, one of its editorials did refer to Deripaska but the reference was to his financial difficulties not to the hospitality that he had

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: the aftermath

Gordon Brown’s call for an inquiry into the allegations surrounding George Osborne was pure political mischief. But it has worked. Both the BBC and Sky reported the call prominently on their one o’clock news broadcasts. As Nick Robinson noted on the Daily Politics, it was a clever way of giving the press a second day angle to the story. The Speaker’s decision to call Dennis Skinner right towards the end is not going to do anything to silence the whispers that he is too partisan. There was only one topic that Skinner – who has previously been chucked out of the Commons for making allegations about Osborne and cocaine –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs live-blog

Even before the revelations about George Osborne, today’s PMQs was of particular importance for the Conservatives. The encounter was perceived to be the Tory’s best chance to burst Brown’s bubble. But now it has taken on even more importance. If Cameron gets clunked, Tory backbench morale—which is surprisingly low given that the Tories still have a sizable poll lead—could plummet. We’ll have live coverage from noon. 12:03 Osborne is sitting on Cameron’s left. 12:05 Brown looks confident. But Cameron gets in a good jibe calling Brown ‘a master of dodgy accounting.’ The Labour backbenches are raucous today, the Osborne scandal has put a spring in their step. 12:10 Brown is

Peter Hoskin

The R-word

The throng saying we’re entering a recession has been joined by its most significant member so far.  Mervyn King deployed the R-word in a speech to Leeds businessmen last night, and the markets have reacted accordingly.  Sterling collapsed against the dollar – hitting a five-year low of $1.6203 earlier.  Whilst the FTSE share index has looked wobbly since opening.  All of which fuels the idea that no amount of Mandelsonian manoeuvring – or no amount of public cash – can prevent the poor state of the economy being the story of the next few weeks, months, years.  The question that remains is whether Brown & Co. will capitalise because of it.  Or whether it

Scott Payton

Shares that go up as banks go down

‘Whenever there’s a catastrophe on Wall Street, our business just gets better — because our products become more collectable.’ So says Bob Kerstein, founder of Virginia-based Scripophily.com, the world’s largest buyer and seller of historic bonds and share certificates. The recent blizzard of insurance and investment banking failures has brought Kerstein particularly brisk business. ‘Our Merrill Lynch certificates are selling very well, and we’re almost completely out of Bear Sterns certificates,’ he says. ‘A few months ago you could buy a Merrill Lynch certificate for about $20 or $30. Now they’re worth upwards of $100.’ The collectors’ market in early and historically significant bonds and share certificates first took off

Neil Collins

Banks too risky? Try flying saucers

Kim Schlunke would like you to buy a flying saucer. No, honestly, he’s got a video of it on his mobile, showing one buzzing round his lab in Perth, Australia. See it fly! See it hover! See it land delicately on its little legs! It looks, in other words, like a special effect of the sort that DreamWorks can throw into a movie with scarcely a thought. Yet this flying saucer does not break the laws of physics, and Schlunke, one of those archetypal garrulous Aussies, has actually flown in a larger version which could one day become a flying car. Well, he says he has, although his phone has