Society

Tuesday

Sean Martin

Increasing freedom

The number of democracies worldwide has almost doubled in the last twenty years, standing at 123 in 2007. These freer and fairer political systems have dramatically increased people’s happiness, a survey has shown. Out of 52 countries, with ten years of data, well being rose in 40 instances. When we think of development we tend to concentrate on income and GDP growth. But, as this study shows, monetary figures miss the true benefit of the freedoms a democratic society affords. Better minority and gender rights coupled with greater political and economic freedom has revolutionised developing societies and increased human well being. It is important when we evaluate progress human development is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Some withdrawal

From The Washington Post this morning: Russian armored vehicles moved eastward from the town to a point about 30 miles from the capital, Tbilisi, and plowed aside Georgian police vehicles at a checkpoint.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There’s no proof that Miliband is the answer to Labour’s problems, but we know that Brown is not

This morning’s ICM poll in The Guardian shows that David Miliband is no silver bullet for Labour’s problems: Cameron leads Miliband by the same margin, 21 points, he does Brown on the question of who would be the best Prime Minister. However, Miliband supporters will argue, as The Guardian’s editorial does, that Miliband’s ratings might improve as the public get to know him while the electorate has already made up its mind about Brown; August’s ICM poll shows that Labour under Brown has seen its support fall by 10 points compared to this time last year, while Tory support has risen by 10 points. It says something about Miliband’s name

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Russia’s next step

The latest Russian move in the conflict is to bulk up its forces in South Ossetia. The New York Times reports that the US believes that Russia has moved SS-21 missile launchers into position north of Tskhinvali, from there the Georgian capital of Tbilisi is in range. The Russians appear to be attempting not only to pave the way for incorporating South Ossetia into Russia but to exacerbate the fears of some European countries about admitting Georgia into Nato. To not let Georgia into Nato because of Russian aggression would send a disastrous signal to Moscow, encouraging Russia to believe that the West will back off in the face of

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ wall 18 August – 24 August

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

Daniel Korski

General confusion

Pakistan’s government had vowed to start impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf. A session of the National Assembly, Pakistan’s lower house of parliament, had been scheduled for today to initiate the proceedings. However, Musharraf pre-empted the move by announcing his resignation. Since the election, which saw the return to power of two Musharraf’s foes – former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto –Musharraf’s main constituency has been in the White House. The State Department grasped a few months ago that the president’s career was unsalvageable. Musharraf chose to jump before he was pushed. This guaranteed that he would maintain a little dignity, and avoids

Sean Martin

Our changing future

English is not the first language of one in eight schoolchildren according to a new government survey. As of January 2007, 85,000 children spoke Urdu and 70,000 Bengali as their preferred tongue. These numbers show that Britain is changing. Our society is becoming more diverse in both face and tongue. However, because English will always be this country’s first language these thousands of children who do not speak English as their mother tongue, need to be equipped with the language skills that are required to flourish both educationally and in the workplace. The educational establishment needs to start giving serious thought to how these pupils’ English skills can be brought

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Standing up for America

American public diplomacy is nowhere near as good as it should be. So, it is good to see Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home fame taking on some of the myths that do so much damage to America’s reputation. The United States is neither a perfect nation nor a perfect ally but the world is a much better place for America’s involvement in it.  America in the world will make that case and I’d urge you all to visit it.  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s return

Philip Webster reports in The Times this morning that Gordon Brown will begin his ‘re-launch’ tomorrow. Apparently, the Prime Minister is not inclined to reshuffle until October thinking that a reshuffle before then would not give ministers enough time to read themselves into their new brief before conference. It also appears that the Brownites will start a concerted push-back against the PM’s internal party critics emphasising how they are playing politics in a time of economic trouble, helping the Tories and are representative of a faction not the party at large. Meanwhile in The Guardian, Yvette Cooper issues the now traditional attack on David Cameron for ducking the tough questions

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tonight’s TV…

It’s a Sunday night in August. Hardly the most auspicious time of year for television programming. Still, that also makes it a reasonable moment to see how Channel 4 is faring in its mission to meet its public service remit. Tonight, on the supposedly up-market and less-idiotic-than-most channel, you be reassured that British TV is still “the best in the world” by watching: 19:00      Make Me a Christian: Would a return to a more ‘Christian’ way of life halt this country’s moral decline? Reverend George Hargreaves would like to find out. 20:00     Wife Swap: Working parents Suzanne and Paul Newman swap lives with Wioletta and Tony Butler. 21:00

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The other side of the Beijing Olympics

It is heartening to see Britain doing so well at the Olympics but it is worth remembering that for all the excitement of the games, China has not abided by the commitments it made to allow a modicum of freedom of expression during the games. Take this story highlighted by Bill Keller:  The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behavior went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

McCain finds another gear

Last night, both John McCain and Barack Obama took questions from Rick Warren, the evangelical preacher, in a televised forum. The two candidates appeared separately with Obama going first. Obama’s performance was fine. He was, as Chuck Todd notes, a little rusty. At times his answers were rather ponderous and he was perhaps a touch too causal, it still seems odd to hear a presidential candidate using the phrase ‘screw-up’. He also, surprisingly, lacked a crisp answer to the question of why he wanted to be president. McCain, though, turned in one of the best performances I have seen him give. His answers were clear and he hit his political

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Was that Policy Exchange report so wrong after all?

For obvious political reasons, David Cameron had to run a mile from Policy Exchange’s report on northern cities. But as John Rentoul argues in an excellent column in The Independent on Sunday, the report was actually right about certain things:  the striking thing about the Policy Exchange report is that its analysis is broadly correct. It specifically said that Liverpool, Rochdale, Bradford and Sunderland were not “doomed”. (This was reported by The Independent under the headline “Cities in North doomed, says favourite Tory think tank”.) The report went on, however: “We cannot guarantee to regenerate every town and every city in Britain that has fallen behind. Just as we can’t buck the

Saturday

Melissa Kite

Real Life | 16 August 2008

My clownfish is clinically obese and agoraphobic. He has been refusing to come out of his bamboo log for three years now, except occasionally to poke his whiskered nose out of the end to snaffle food. I hadn’t seen the whole of him in all this time until it occurred to me the other day that perhaps he couldn’t come out because he was stuck. This has happened to me before. I had an angelfish who took to his bed and eventually had to be mechanically extracted like the subject of an ITV documentary on fat people. I had to go to Travis Perkins and hire a saw. ‘Will this

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 16 August 2008

Under a low oak-beamed ceiling, three middle-aged men were perched on stools around the bar. One of these greeted me, walked around to the other side of the bar and asked me what I was having. He wasn’t the landlord, he said. The landlord was busy out at the back for a moment. There was a small selection of real ales. I chose the Badger’s Todger. He poured me a pint and returned to his stool and rejoined his muted three-cornered conversation. The bar was cosy enough but the quietness was oppressive. A big mistake coming to this place, I thought, as I took a sip. Nice pint, though. Then

Taki

High Life | 16 August 2008

That’s not fair play On board S/Y Bushido As far as I’m concerned, the less said about the goings on in Beijing the better. I know, I know, I’ll be watching the judo and the athletics, especially the former (there are no drug cheats in judo, no money under the table, no money, pure and simple), but competition among chemists does not race my motor, as they say in Detroit. The opening ceremony may have dazzled some people, but it left me cold. There was no humanity to it, just a lot of Chinese animated figures acting as robots. Who invented opening ceremonies anyway? Back in the good old days

David Tang

Diary – 16 August 2008

An immediate rumour after the opening ceremony at the Beijing Games was that an emergency meeting of the British Olympic Committee was convened in order to find an excuse for cancelling London 2012. There might have been even greater panic because Britain is expected to produce a ‘performance’ of eight minutes as part of the closing ceremony in two weeks’ time. Beckham kicking a football was believed to be billed as the British climax, but if that’s all he would be doing, the meaning of ‘damp squib’ might well assume a new dimension.  One could well understand the British alarm, given the phantasmagorical display of brilliance that the Chinese team

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 16 August 2008

Monday Copies of lads mags found lying around leaders’ office: 5 (v bad); pounds shed by Mr Pickles in name of Being The Change: 0 (v bad); inquiries about why we haven’t launched any green taxes yet: 67 (v v bad); pages read of Quick Guide To The Caucasus: one and a half (vg). So stressed, might have to take a second holiday. Am fairly sure it’s party policy to have two. Think I took the memo ordering us to stay in Britain too literally. Tom says it means that you take a week in a dreary boarding house, then clear off for two weeks somewhere sunny for a proper

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 16 August 2008

Dot Wordsworth compares the pronounciation of words in 1928 and in the present day Do you pronounce the ‘l’ in falcon? That civilised Kentish man Mr Eric Brown has sent me an entertaining newspaper cutting kept for 18 years. It is from the Times’s ‘On this day’ column, with news from 27 July 1928, of the first published booklet on BBC pronunciation for the guidance of broadcasters. It cannot have been easy for the pronunciation committee, appointed in 1926, to agree. Its members included the learned phonetician Daniel Jones and the opinionated playwright George Bernard Shaw, whose ideas about language were not always soundly based. Jones was the basis for

The Spectator

Letters | 16 August 2008

Credit where credit’s due Sir: I’m not sure if my colleague Bob Marshall-Andrews is happy to be seen as some kind of showbiz personality (‘I’m not an ambassador for New Labour’, 9 August). However wrong Bob was, in my view, in strenuously opposing allied military action which ended ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, he has undoubtedly contributed a good deal on issues concerning the rights of individuals in this country. As for the proposed 90 days’ pre-charge detention, which the government wished to see introduced in 2005, it was in fact my amendment reducing the figure to 28 which the House fortunately agreed to. Hopefully the Lords will ensure that it