Society

Monday

15 Dec 2008

How to cut your own throat

Via Megan McArdle, I see that the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are taking a novel approach to the malaise that’s crippling newspapers across America (and Britain): make it much more difficult for people to buy your product. At first you may think that this is so counter-intuitive that it must be brilliant. But it’s not: it’s every bit as stupid (I think!) as it sounds. The Motor City papers are apparently only going to deliver papers to their readers’ homes three days out of every seven. The theory, as I understand it, is that all this printing and delivering is too expensive to be justified on lighter

Alex Massie

New York Dynasty

So it’s official: Caroline Kennedy does want to be the next Senator from New York. A shocking development. I mean it’s not as though the departing Senator traded on a famous name to snare the seat herself, is it?

James Forsyth

Another sign that Labour is gearing up for an early election in 2009

Iain Dale has heard from a friend of his in the ad trade that Labour is buying up advertising space for January. This is going to take the rumours about an early election to the next level following on from The News of the World story that never was about election planning meetings in Downing Street and Trevor Kavanagh’s speculation this morning about a February poll. The argument for Brown going early is that he needs to go during the crisis stage of the recession and before it is evident whether or not the measures he has taken have worked. But the danger for him is that by once again

Peter Hoskin

Should Brown fear a Labour backlash?

Just as an addendum to Fraser’s post on the international resistance to Brown’s world-saving act, there’s an intriguing little story in today’s Independent about “Labour backbench unrest” over the fiscal stimulus announced in the PBR. I quote it here in its entirety: “Frustration is growing among Labour backbenchers over the Government’s rescue plan for the economy. Several MPs believe a VAT cut was the wrong way of spending the bulk of the fiscal stimulus package, and others fear more should have been funded through tax reforms. ‘Going shopping last week I was offered a little over a pound off a £35 item,” the former environment minister Michael Meacher said. “It really isn’t doing anything. It seems

James Forsyth

Reasons to disregard the “parallels” with 1992

There’s a lot of talk in Westminster at the moment about the parallels between now and 1992. Those who think that Brown can win the next election argue that 1992 shows how a governing party can win in a downturn and from behind. But looking at the polling from 1992, which admittedly got the final result rather wrong, shows a slightly different story. Two of the last three polls before Major named the date of the election had things dead even and the other had Labour ahead by only a single point. The Tories are in a far better position now than Labour was then. If you think that Brown

James Forsyth

From hug a hoodie to hang a banker

David Cameron’s speech this morning was a clever and important piece of political positioning. By calling for the full force of the law to be brought to bear on those in the City who have acted illegally, Cameron is moving to defuse the idea that the Tories are on the side of the bankers not the people. They need to do this because Labour are just itching to make a guilt by association charge stick against the Tories—just count the number of times you hear Labour MPs refer to ‘the Tories’ friends in the City.’ As Jackie Ashley writes this morning, “the jibes about Eton and Bullingdon connections may be

Peter Hoskin

The other Miliband stakes his claim?

One of the quaintest – and most enduring – of all Westminster traditions is how ambitious politicians skirt around the question of whether they want to be party leader/PM. They don’t say “yes” – that would be far too brash. But they don’t say “no” either – feeling, for some reason, that that’s the one lie they can’t tell. Instead, we get ambiguous non-denials, which almost everyone interprets as a “yes” anyway. For the record, Ed Miliband’s the latest to issue such a non-denial, in the ‘You ask the questions’ section of today’s Independent: Do you have any desire to be Prime Minister? WILLIAM BIRD, LIVERPOOL [ED MILIBAND:] I’ve got enough on my plate working towards Britain meeting its

James Forsyth

Today’s star

The cost to the taxpayer of public sector pensions and how much more generous they are than private sectors ones is going to become an increasingly big political issue in the coming years. The deal that Alan Johnson brokered with the public sector unions back in 2005 ducked pretty much all of the tough issues and did little to reduce their huge cost to the taxpayer. This morning on the Today Programme, Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, was defending public sector pensions by arguing that they are small compensation for the low pay that public sector workers receive. Evan Davis then rather stumped him

Peter Hoskin

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 15 – 21 December

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 15 December 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Lisa Hilton says there are no more puffs in Paris. Fraser Nelson reports on an election with the X Factor. James Forsyth wonders about a poll puzzle, and asks the £250,000 quuestion. Peter Hoskin asks: if taxpayers’ money is to be spent in clunking fistfuls, what should it be spent on? Clive Davis highlights someone with a brilliant head for money. And Americano notes a stimulating idea.

Peter Hoskin

How long will the new poll consensus last?

Yet another poll to report on today; one which more or less falls in line with the two released yesterday. The Ipsos MORI poll in the Mirror has the Tories on 42 percent (down 2 percentage points); Labour on 36 percent (up 4); and the Lib Dems on 11 percent (down 4). There’s also a hefty lead for Brown on the question of which party leader is best to steer the country through the recession: he’s on 41 percent, with Cameron on 29 percent. The more the post-PBR landscape solidifies, the more questions people in the Westminster Bubble have to ask of themselves. The general view among politicos, commentators and

Tom Stacey

We need the occasional war or economic collapse

Tom Stacey says that there is a part of man’s collective soul that yearns for tribulations like the financial crisis and the philosophical and spiritual questions they force us to confront Amid all the doom and gloom, do you ever get the feeling we had it coming? I do. During all those balmy years of ever-rising property values, non-stop invitations to borrow more, to get-now-and-pay-tomorrow, wasn’t there a little bird telling us it can’t go on like this? And now that it’s all come to a stop, does anyone else get a whiff of relief, almost gratitude, that the bubble’s burst, we’ve all come back to earth, terra jolly firma,

David Blanchard

Reasons to be cheerful | 15 December 2008

It may feel like the end of the world, perhaps it is, but even so, it’s still the season of goodwill, good cheer and good news for mankind. It seemed right then for The Spectator to ask a selection of Britain’s great and good to shed a little light on these gloomy times, and tell us why, despite our broken society and the plummeting pound, we should keep our spirits up. Boris Johnson It was the great Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now who said, ‘Some day this war’s gonna end.’ And some day this recession is going to end too. Confidence is going to come surging back with all the

Joan Collins

Christmas in L.A.

Christmas always comes early to Los Angeles. In fact, the slightly tacky decorations hit the lamp-posts even before Thanksgiving. But the really good thing about this time of year in this part of the world is the abundance of new movies being released. They proliferate both in the cinemas, in private screening rooms and in the ‘screeners’, the DVDs that the various studios send to members of the Academy hoping they will vote for them at Oscar time. I’m lucky enough to be one of the 5,000 acting members so I try to see as many of the movies as possible. Happily this year there are some excellent ones and

Murphy O'Connor

A season to relish language deeper than words

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that the heart of the Christian story is the word made flesh. Christ’s language is sacrificial love which took him to the cross One of my favourite accounts of a happy childhood is told by Laurie Lee in his delightful book Cider with Rosie. Early on, he describes his first day at school. As a new boy in the playground for the first time, he was nervous and frightened of the noise, the size and the numbers of his fellow pupils. Going into the classroom, the teacher was busy with the other pupils. She told him to ‘sit down there for the present’. The young Laurie

Emily Maitlis

I blame Jonathan Ross for all my troubles

Emily Maitlis looks back on her worst moments in 2008, the anxiety she has caused her fans and her part in a ‘YouTube classic’ Looking back, I suppose you could say the low point of 2008 was when I accused the Chief Rabbi of leaving lewd and abusive messages on people’s answerphones. That’s the trouble with live TV. You think you’re saying one thing and you end up saying quite another. I was talking to the Conservative MP John Whittingdale on the BBC News Channel about the Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs affair, when all of a sudden I found — by way of the speed reader’s elision — I had put

Rod Liddle

Come with me to Santa’s grotto to discover the state we’re in

Rod Liddle offers a festive tour of the world at Christmas 2008: irrational fear, ignorance, stupidity, vexatious litigation, a foolish longing to abolish ‘risk’, and Christmas parties that, we are warned, have ‘absolutely nothing to do with Jesus’ In Santa’s grotto at a top London department store, Santa in his big white friendly beard sits on a bench — and there is a large ‘X’ marked on the bench a couple of feet away where the child is firmly directed to sit, allowing a wide corridor of clear and unsullied air between the child and the potential kiddie-fiddler from the North Pole, with his red cheeks, strange reindeer and unaccountable

Sunday

14 Dec 2008

Lisa Hilton

No more puffs in Paris

One of the best things about Paris is that it never changes. The stone is always the colour of Champagne, the cabbies are always foul and Bernard-Henri Levi is always seated on the first table opposite the door as you go into the Flore. I’ve spent most of my adult life in Paris, and perhaps the thing I loved about it most is that one could never be unhappy there. Wretched, heartbroken, tragic, but never merely sad. All that was necessary was a noisette and a Marlboro Light and suddenly one was Juliette Greco or Simone de Beauvoir-deliciously, adolescently, maudlin. Yet now it smells wrong. Sunday was the first time

James Forsyth

No marks for taxpayer value

If anyone doubts the crazy excesses of the quango culture read the Mail on Sunday’s report on Ken Boston, who has finally resigned as head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority over the SATS marking debacle. Boston was paid more than seven times what his predecessor was. What on earth was the justification for this kind of salary jump? It beggars belief that the market rate for the head of a curriculum and exams body had jumped by that amount in five years. The people who agreed to this deal clearly had scant regard to taxpayer value. The Mail reports that Boston is not alone in receiving a vastly better

Peter Hoskin

<em>If</em> taxpayers’ cash is to be spent in clunking fistfuls, what should it be spent on?

Ok, I’m as sceptical as Peer Steinbrück when it comes to Gordon Brown’s big-spending, debt-heavy approach to managing our economy. And I regard the main fiscal debate between the splurgers and the thriftniks as perhaps the most important in British politics today. But the fact remains that the splurgers are in power. As Andrew Rawnsley points out in his Observer column this morning, that means that – at some level – there needs to be a secondary debate; a debate over what the splurge should be used to fund. Rawnsley’s not impressed with where the money’s been going so far: “The more I think about it, the more sure I