Society

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 12 December 2008

Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson reveals the true extent of Britain’s debt, and says the government is squeezing the poor through Northern Rock. James Forsyth outlines the case for merit pay, and wonders whether Peter Mandelson is an idoelogical Blairite. Peter Hoskin stresses the importance of convincing the creditors, and asks whether Brown’s PMQs gaffe was petty or revealing. Lisa Hilton exclaims: Mind the shoes! Daniel Korski says Britain should have Robert Mugabe prosecuted. Melanie Phillips observes groundhog day in primary school. Clive Davis laments the Westminster playground. Trading Floor delivers some good news. And Americano highlights the importance of

Peter Hoskin

Cutting through the spin

Remember the statistics released by the Home Office yesterday – and reported in the newspapers today – which highlighted positive devlepments in the war on knife crime?  Well, you can officially disregard those statistics.  The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Michael Scholar, has issued an angry letter saying that the numbers weren’t ready for public consumption and blaming Number Ten for getting them released prematurely.  The Standard’s Paul Waugh has the complete text of Scholar’s letter, but here’s the main thrust of it: “It has been reported to me by the National Statistician’s Office that officials or advisers in No. 10 Downing Street caused the Home Office to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pulling Cameron’s leg

Tony Blair used to drive those who disliked him almost insane. Judging from Jan Moir’s column in the Daily Mail today, David Cameron has the same effect on his opponents. Here’s how she starts: “David Cameron has the most annoying legs in British politics. In fact, the Tory leader has the most annoying legs in Britain, full stop. His ankles are as prettily turned as a showgirl’s. His knees are too shapely. Above them, like great crags of sinew, lurks the beefy heft of the Cameron thighs. Ug, ug, ug. Yet worst of all are his calves. Oh God, how I hate those smug calves! There is something about the

Peter Hoskin

Deidre for President

As it’s Friday, I’ll let you in on a little past-time we have here at Spectator Towers.  My colleague Mary Wakefield and I often instigate ‘Dear Deidre’ reading sessions – whereby one of us reads out the letters sent into the Sun’s resident agony aunt, Deidre Sanders, while others say how they’d respond or guess at Deidre’s actual response.  Sounds tragic, I know, but it’s fun nonetheless – and oddly heart-warming too. These Dear Deidre sessions usually end with us commenting that the Tories should hire her as some kind of adviser on “family breakdown”.  After all – with years of experience at this kind of thing – Deidre’s answers tend

James Forsyth James Forsyth

For cricket’s sake

England have had a fantastic day in the cricket today, reducing India to 155 for six at the close. But I still can’t get over the stupidity of the ECB who are refusing to guarantee Lords a Test match every summer. Despite having the biggest capacity of any cricket ground in England, Test matches at Lords sell out. It is always a great occasion, England taking on the touring team at the home of the game. The idea of a summer without a Lords Test is just wrong. The ECB has form when it comes to dumb decisions. Taking live Test cricket off terrestrial television was the worst kind of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron hints at a reshuffle

In his interview with the Daily Telegraph, David Cameron drops a heavy-hint that a shadow cabinet reshuffle is in the offing: “I think I have a very good team, but there is always ways of involving the best and bright and I’d always look at that,” he said. “I don’t want to get into specifics on names on that.” As Gaby Hinsliff noted yesterday, the reshuffle won’t happen until the investigation into Caroline Spelman reports which isn’t expected to be until towards the end of January. Regardless of the verdict, Cameron should appoint a new chairman. He needs a heavy-hitter in that slot going into an election campaign. One area

Peter Hoskin

Driven down

Does the failure of the bailout package for the US car industry mean we’re going see another of those apocalyptic days in the markets?  Things certainly aren’t looking great so far.  The Hang Seng index closed down 5.48 percent; the Nikkei was down 5.56 percent; and – at time of writing – our very own FTSE 100 index is down 2.63 percent.  So far as the FTSE’s concerned, the big losers are the banks. Lloyds TSB down 18.86 percent; HBOS down 17.81 percent; RBS Group down 13.01 percent; the list goes on.  It will be interesting to see what the Dow Jones looks like when it opens later today.  We’ll

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s battle with the Germans rumbles on

So yet another German politician has launched a broadside against Gordon Brown’s debt-heavy approach to the downturn.  Here’s what Steffen Kampeter said earlier:  “The tremendous amount of debt being offered by Britain shows a complete failure of Labour policy… …After years of lecturing us on how we need to share in the gains of uncontrolled financial markets, the Labour politicians can’t now expect us to share in its losses… …In questioning the British government’s approach, Peer Steinbrück is exactly expressing the views of the German Grand Coalition.” Sure, Kampeter is just a backbencher.  But, still, the fact he’s a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party – along with his claim that the SDP’s Steinbrück

Beryl Bainbridge

A Literary Life

The days leading up to Xmas are such fun, aren’t they? All those cards and presents to buy and all those charity requests reminding one of starving children, crippled adults and abandoned dogs. Over the last few days I’ve been trying to concentrate on more important things, such as Sight and Time. Obviously the two go together, for both determine a view of the world. In regard to Sight, my bathroom ceiling fell down because the house next door put up scaffolding and the chap in charge stepped on to my flat roof and put his foot through it. He denied doing so, of course. When I now get into

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 12 December 2008

I am old enough to remember the last slump — I was three in 1932 and lived in the Potteries in North Staffordshire, always a precarious area economically, and badly hit by slack trade. Most of the workers in the pot bank were women and girls, traditionally paid low wages, and now subjected to pay cuts. The men worked in the pits, if they were lucky. My mother, who came from Lancashire, and had a song for everything, used to sing: Colliery lads make gold and silver. Factory lads make brass. Who would marry a hand-loom weaver, When there’s plenty of colliery lads? In the wasteland not far from our

Henrietta Bredin

Animal magic | 12 December 2008

Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte opens with the hero, Tamino, being pursued by a terrible monster. It’s always a challenge to depict such a creature on stage but for the first performances of Nicholas Hytner’s now much revived production at English National Opera, a startling image was conceived. The tenor Tom Randle (then, as now, unaverse to showing off his well-toned torso) would appear, naked, wrapped in the writhing coils of a live snake. A snake handler was duly found and turned up for rehearsal with a battered brown suitcase from which emerged yard after yard of python. Serpent and singer got on well and all seemed set fair until the unfortunate

Patrick Marnham

Photopoetry

Photopoetry, by Manuel Alvarez Bravo Manuel Alvarez Bravo, born in 1902, lived to be 100 and worked as a photographer in Mexico for eight decades. He was destined to spend his life as a clerk in a provincial tax office but escaped with the help of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. This collection, which contains 370 of his images, confirms his versatility. His work included landscapes, portraits, reportage, nudes and occasional excursions into surrealism. It is frequently described as ‘mysterious’ by critics looking for context or commitment. But there is no mystery; it is just that Bravo was generally more interested in form than in argument. He was not concerned

Janice Warman

An idea whose time has come

On my walk from Charing Cross station each morning I see Steven outside Boots, rain or shine, his outstretched arm holding the latest Big Issue at eye level for passing commuters. He’s part vendor, part performance artist. Many, like me, stop to buy; others look down and hurry on. Though passers-by might pretend he’s invisible, the company that helps to get him and other homeless people back on track by selling magazines is part of a quiet revolution whose impact is only just beginning to be felt. The social enterprise sector — run for social or environmental purposes (or both) rather than for shareholders’ profit — is a tiny part

David Young

Lessons for life from the Crash of ’73

David Young, who later served in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet and as chairman of Cable & Wireless, recalls his struggle for survival as an up-and-coming entrepreneur There are some days you just never forget. It was Monday morning, 12 November 1973, and I was in my office at Town & City Properties in Carlton Gardens. I was a main board director and a substantial shareholder, having sold my company, Eldonwall, to Town & City some three years before. Those years had brought about a remarkable property boom. We were already the second largest property company on the London stock exchange — but I think Barry East, the founder and chairman, wanted

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tobacco Futures

Courtesy of the Daily Mash: SMOKERS BANNED FROM LOOKING AT CIGARETTES WHILE SMOKING SMOKERS will have to hold a large piece of card over their face so they cannot look at the cigarette they are smoking, ministers said last night. The ‘smoking mask’ will include a small mouth hole and a handle though later models may be fitted with elasticated straps… The mask will also carry a warning which reads: “Lighting a Cigarette While Wearing This Mask May Cause You to Set Fire to the Mask Instead of the Cigarette and Burn Your Face Off.” Health secretary, Alan Johnson, said: “If you can’t see nicotine, it can’t see you. And,

Peter Hoskin

Your questions for Theresa May

It’s been a few days now since we asked CoffeeHousers to put forward their questions for Theresa May.  We’ve since picked out the best, which have now been put to the shadow leader of the Commmons.  She’ll get back to us at the start of next week. Anyway, here are the questions: john miller “Why have Government ministers been able to spout the most outrageous lies over the last few months, effectively unopposed by the Conservatives? The Tories seem to lack a short succinct rebuttal that gives a voice to the feelings of the public.” Rajesh “There has been a lot of comment about the Damien Green case and how

Peter Hoskin

Petty or revealing?

Just how significant was Brown’s “Saved the world gaffe” in  PMQs yesterday?  Was it – as one respondent to Politics Home’s latest PHI100 Index puts it – “a tiny motif … that tells a bigger story” about Brown’s hubris?  Or is the whole thing childish and overblown, as the Spectator’s own Clive Davis argues?  These questions may seem trivial – and I guess, to some extent, they are – but the opposition parties will certainly want to know the answers.  With Campbell and Mandelson back on the scene, the war of words has become even more hard-fought, and Cameron and Clegg will be sorely tempted to remind the public of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Spending increases vs tax cuts

Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist who was chairmen of the of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers between 2003 and 2005, has an important post on his blog about the relative benefits of spending increases and tax cuts as forms of economic stimulus: “Bob Hall and Susan Woodward look at spending increases from World War II and the Korean War and conclude that the government spending multiplier is about one: A dollar of government spending raises GDP by about a dollar. Similarly, the results in Valerie Ramey’s research suggest a government spending multiplier of about 1.4… …By contrast, recent research by Christina Romer and David Romer looks at tax changes

Peter Hoskin

Cutting deals

The Telegraph’s Iain Martin quotes a “Labour man,” who offers the following take on the next general election: “Brown holds the election, fights on the economy and emerges at the head of the largest party. Vince Cable becomes leader of the Lib Dems, is made Chancellor in a coalition and demands a deal on Proportional Representation which Gordon gives him. PR means the Tories can never win again. Gordon stays as PM for a while and then walks off into the sunset having destroyed the Conservatives.” Now, this highlights two things in particular.  First, the growing confidence in Labour ranks that their man can actually defeat Cameron – a confidence that’s palpable ’round Westminster way.  And,