Society

Saturday

Richard Northedge

The Housing Market

If Britain’s housebuilders really want to sell more homes, they ought to slash their prices rather than lobby the government for packages like last week’s ill-conceived attempt to boost the property market. That’s what the rest of us have done, but while prices of all other houses have plunged, new homes have still been selling for more than they did a year ago. When the Halifax announced that the fall in house prices had reached double digits in the year to July, the figure that failed to catch the headlines was that new homes had gone up by 1.1 per cent over the previous year. Are we really to believe

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 13 September 2008

When is too old? When too young? Almost every day I hear a story of someone, at the height of his power and energy, being compulsorily retired at 60. Or there is a fuss because a girl wants to get married at 15. I recall that Lydia, youngest of the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice, was 15 when she ran off with the miscreant Wickham. She prided herself on the fact that she was taller than her siblings and was obviously precocious. When it came to the point the problem was not her age but getting Wickham to marry her. An underage girl is a moveable feast. I have

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Another Voice | 13 September 2008

In these straitened days, when the international money markets teeter nervily between relief and panic, and stock exchanges hang upon the slightest twitch of one of Alistair Darling’s implausible eyebrows, I must be mindful of my position in the camelid world. If I sneeze, the British llama market may catch pneumonia. Not that I am any sort of a spokesman. Llamas and alpacas have greater authorities than me to pronounce on their welfare and prospects. Wise and expert breeders in Britain constitute a community in which I’m a very minor player — indeed I fear my subscription to the Camelids Chronicle may even have lapsed. But regular references in national

The Spectator

Fannie, Freddie and Gordon

Last week, at a cost of a billion pounds or so, the Chancellor announced a package of measures to boost the housing market, including a temporary raising of the stamp duty threshold and some tinkering with shared equity schemes and social housing budgets. In response, the pound — already depressed by Alistair Darling’s observation that Britain now faces arguably the worst combination of economic circumstances in 60 years — fell a little further. Lord Lamont, the last chancellor to resort to a stamp-duty holiday in the face of a house-price collapse in December 1991, pointed out that the device did no good at all for the housing market or his

Tom Parfitt

Moscow’s secret war in Ingushetia

Russia’s President, Dmitry Medvedev, pretends that this republic is a haven of stability. Not so, says Tom Parfitt: the Ingush are subject to a campaign of murder and repression Among the first-class passengers who flew into Ingushetia’s Magas airport from Moscow on the afternoon of 31 August were two grey-haired men in suits. The pair avoided each other’s gaze. One was Murat Zyazikov, 50, a former KGB officer and president of Ingushetia, the small Muslim republic which borders Chechnya in southern Russia. The other was Magomed Yevloyev, 36, an outspoken critic of Russia’s brutal rule in Ingushetia, founder of the ingushetiya.ru website, and Zyazikov’s great nemesis. The fates of the

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Making government “cool”…

What a choice Americcans have! There’s the elderly candidate with precious little interest in domestic policy whose signature legislative achievement was to abridge the First Amendment and whose running mate, for all her charms and freshness, is not someone you’d be terribly comfortable seeing running the country. Then there’s the young fellow who, for all his political gifts and for all his capacity to inspire people, can come out and say something like this: Obama would, he said, “transform Washington” and “make government cool again.” May heaven preserve us all. To be fair to Obama, he was speaking at a youth forum at Columbia dedicated to the notion of national

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Waiting for Glenrothes

So, the conventional wisdom is that Gordon Brown has survived and will not, in fact, face a leadership challenge anytime soon. Why? Because it’s too difficult to get rid of him and, in any case, there’s no obviously more palatable successor. As the BBC’s Nick Robinson put it this morning: Friends of the Prime Minister put it more positively. MPs have come to realise, they say, that it’s not Gordon Brown that’s the problem but “the economy stupid” and he’s the best man to sort it. In this respect, and this one only, the polls are helpful for Mr Brown. The public does not say it wants a change of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Blairites have moved, now the left must

Siobhain McDonagh has become the first person to quit their payroll job in an attempt to force a leadership contest. If others are brave enough to follow her example, then the game really will be afoot. The Progress article by a dozen Blairite MPs which is scathingly critical of where and how Labour is being led is also a clear statement of intent. What should worry the Brownites about it though, is that some names are noticeable by their absence; suggesting that there might be a plan for a programme of rolling criticism of Brown in the run up to conference. But as long as the campaign to force Brown

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Neil O’Brien to head Policy Exchange

It is great news that Neil O’Brien is the new director of Policy Exchange. Neil is one of the smartest and most decent people in Westminster and under his leadership Open Europe has been the very model of a modern think thank, brilliantly mixing research and campaigning. With Neil in charge, Policy Exchange is going to go from strength to strength. This is great news for those of us on the centre-right who want to see a bold agenda for addressing the country’s problems laid out.  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

No change, no chance for Labour

Gordon is safe is the new conventional wisdom. Nick Robinson, the arbiter of the CW, said this morning on the Today programme that “Gordon Brown no longer appears to be under threat.” This strikes me as evidence that Labour has given up, that it lacks the stomach for the fight. Looking at Brown’s poll rating—74 percent think he is a bad Prime Minister—it is almost inconceivable that Labour could win the next election with him in charge. Indeed, one suspects that Brown is leading Labour to a defeat of epic proportions. It is not as if Brown has faced down his internal enemies. It is just that they have retreated

Peter Hoskin

Will power-sharing work?

The power-sharing deal reached in Zimbabawe is certainly an historic development. It’s hard not to conclude that it’s a positive one too. After all, the pro-West MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, will now have some role in the governance of the country. Ok, he should have been made President back in March, if democracy had been allowed to run its course. But, on that front, this latest still seems like a step in the right direction. But it’s also difficult not to be sceptical about the deal. Details will be announced on Monday, but early word is that we’ll effectively be looking at two parallel governments – Tsvangirai will be Prime

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ohio Impromptu

Wins my support. How could he not, him being a Trinity man and the only Nobel laureate for literature to have played first-class cricket? [Hat-tip: Alex Ross]

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Kith and Kin: Global Edition

Ever wondered how common your surname may be? Ever wondered where folk who share your name live? Well, now you can find out! Unsurprisingly, Massies tend to be found in the UK and the dominions. In fact Massie is now a more common name in Canada (46 of us per million names), the USA (41) than the UK (38). Australia (26 per million) and New Zealand (15) come next. In the USA, you’re most likely to find us in Virginia and West Virginia; in Canada its Quebec and Alberta. I’m also intrigued by the wee cluster of Massies around Biarritz in south-western France. By contrast, everyone with my mother’s maiden

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The next left

If you want to know how a post-Brown Labour party might take on the Tories, I’d thoroughly recommend the Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford edited Is the future conservative? It is one of the first things from the left that I have read that takes the Cameron Tories seriously and maps out how the left can fight back. Here’s Cruddas and Rutherford’s rallying cry to the left: The future does not belong to the Conservative Party. Right now it belongs to a social democracy that is willing to bring liberal free market capitalism and corporate power back under control. The debate is about how we secure this post neoliberal politics.

The Spectator

Win a luxury holiday to Dubai

The Spectator have teamed up with Dubai tourist office and Pure Luxury to offer one lucky reader a free holiday in Dubai.  To be in with a chance of winning, enter the competition here. 

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The danger of a Tory Brown bubble

The new Populus poll shows that 74 percent of the electorate thinks Gordon Brown is a bad Prime Minister. As Peter Riddell—not a man prone to over-statement—writes in The Times today, “The public have given up on Gordon Brown.” This is, obviously, in one sense great news for the Tories. Running against an incumbent who is a busted flush during a recession is about as good as it gets for an opposition. But the extent of Brown’s unpopularity should cause the Tories the odd nervous moment. Imagine for a second if Labour did get its act together and dump Brown. All of a sudden the 67 percent of voters who

Brian Cullen

Labour’s confused agenda

It seems today’s Guardian bears the fruit of the Labour briefing paper they obtained earlier in the week on how best to attack the Tories.  Stephen Byers’s op-ed toes the ‘same old Tories’ line to a tee, focusing –above all – on the Conservative belief in small government: “Cameron is an old-style Conservative who is deeply uncomfortable with the state playing any role in our lives…I believe that now is the right time for a debate about the size and role of government: in particular, the need to establish a new relationship between citizens and the state. This is something that Cameron is trying to avoid. His is a dogmatic

Peter Hoskin

9/11 remembered

It’s seven years since almost 3000 people lost their lives in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.  The anniversary will be marked by a series of commemorative services across the world – including one at Ground Zero in New York, which will be attended by both John McCain and Barack Obama – and a new memorial will be unveiled in Washington by George Bush.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sarah Palin’s Feminism

Camille Paglia agrees with me. Should I be worried? Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard… For an alternative, more policy-based, take, see Kate Marsh at TNR.