Society

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

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.

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.

An alternative to the Barnett Formula

Many thanks to Mike Denham – the author of a Taxpayers’ Alliance report on the Barnett Formula, released today – for the following post… In the last week, the allocation of money between England and Scotland has been in the news with the Scottish National Party planning to abolish council tax in Scotland, replace it with a local income tax and have English taxpayers foot a part of the bill.  The Government’s Calman Commission, set up to review devolution, is mandated to investigate whether fiscal devolution would be a good idea.  Disputes over the distribution of taxpayers money between Scotland and England aren’t new, but those disputes have rarely been

Take the Maths Challenge

The think-tank Reform has just wired us a copy of their maths challenge – a set of 10 questions designed not only to test the grey-matter, but also to promote a rigorous maths curriculum.  The challenge will be distributed at the party conferences – to see how the politicos fare – but we’ve reproduced it below for the benefit of CoffeeHousers.  For information on how to have your answers checked, click here.  Do let us know how you get on…  Questions Note: These problems are designed to be tackled without a calculator 1.(a) 15 x 9 = ?;   (b) (2 1/2 + 5/3 ) ÷ 2 1/2 = ? 2.When

James Forsyth

Is sunshine the best disinfectant?

Anne McElvoy’s piece in the Standard today on the Cameron-Osborne relationship makes the following claim: “As their differences are in the open, they do not fester.” It is tempting to agree that sunshine is the best disinfectant. But I wonder how the press would have reacted to Osborne publicly drawing distinctions with Cameron and taking a thinly-veiled slap at Cameron’s jejune approach to Iraq as he did in The Guardian on Monday, if the Tories were not close to twenty points ahead in the polls?   PS Those interested in the Cameron-Osborne relationship should make sure to read Tamzin tomorrow.

The laureate of intractable conflicts

Looking every inch the Brit that he isn’t, American playwright Christopher Shinn takes a bite of a sandwich in a Shepherd’s Bush rehearsal room on a rainy summer afternoon and confesses that, although grateful, he still finds it ‘a mystery’ that it should have been London’s theatrical community, rather than New York’s, that made his career. For his latest play, Now or Later, recently opened at the Royal Court, will be his fifth to premiere in London before going anywhere near his own continent, about which he relentlessly writes. It’s not that Shinn, 32, is not successful in his native country. Quite the contrary: the author of nine critically acclaimed

Rod Liddle

Have we ever faced an enemy more stupid than Muslim terrorists?

Isn’t it about time Muslim terrorists rethought their strategy of recording glorious martyrdom videos, in advance of failing to blow anything up? Wouldn’t it be a bit less embarrassing for all concerned? Time after time we see these imbeciles on our television news promising all sorts of mayhem and misery, the righteous and cleansing fires of Allah poured down upon we imperialist decadent kafir scum, ‘body parts’ scattered in the streets, etc. And then they forget to take a cigarette lighter with them to the airport, or the detonator doesn’t work, or they’re arrested buying 5,000 bottles of hydrogen peroxide from the local hairdresser’s shop and thus somehow arousing suspicion

How I became a world record holder

At a Google conference in Rhodes, Matthew d’Ancona finds himself part of a bid to break the world record for Zorba dancing — and to relive one of the greatest scenes in cinema ‘Teach me to dance. Will you?’ Few scenes in cinema have the emotional poignancy and magic of the last moments of Zorba the Greek (1964), as Basil, the young English writer played by Alan Bates, seeks his final lesson in life from Anthony Quinn’s majestic peasant-magus, on the Cretan shore. All around them are broken dreams, and the air hangs heavy with the prospect of their parting: but nothing can repress their joy as that familiar theme,

Alex Massie

Queen of the Silver Dollar

A mini-blogging hiatus, folks, as I’m off to Glasgow tonight to see the one and only Emmylou Harris play at the Royal Concert Hall. I assume Norm will be seeing the great lady when her tour reaches Manchester in a couple of days time. I think Chris Dillow is also a fan and – since three bloggers are more than enough to sustain a trend – does this make Emmylou the biggest country star in the British blogosphere?

James Forsyth

The McCain campaign mocks Gordon Brown

The news that Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind Barack Obama has raced round the internets. If truth be told, Brown hasn’t endorsed Obama or done anything like that. Rather, a clumsily written article has implied that he has by singling out Obama for praise and not mentioning McCain. The McCain campaign’s response to these reports is scathing. In a post on the McCain report entitled “The Coveted Gordon Brown Endorsement” it points out that Obama no longer advocates the policy that Brown praised him for. Now, really this is a storm in a tea-cup. But it is hard to imagine the Bush or Kerry campaigns sending up Tony Blair

Fraser Nelson

Hari’s unfair charge

 I have today been unmasked as a racist.  Johann Hari of The Independent has managed to peer into my psyche and diagnose me. You see in my News of the World column (now online) I called Barack Obama “uppity”. Except, of course, I didn’t – I said that this was the charge being levied against him by his opponents. But Hari wouldn’t recognise this distinction – it spoils the fun. As he explains “Visit the South, and the word that invariably follows “uppity” is “nigger.”” Richard Littlejohn has used the u-word, and I find myself in the dock beside him. So Hari asks his jury: “The question is, are Nelson

China’s changing – quietly

I was in Beijing last weekend and, having heard about the “Great Firewall of China”, I typed ‘Tiananmen Square’ into Google. I was surprised to find the Wikipedia page describing the 1989 massacre – complete with image of the iconic ‘Tank Man’. Just six months ago, this page was unavailable. The Chinese government isn’t making a song and dance about this.  Combine this with the fact that more and more Chinese children are now learning English and an ever increasing number of young Chinese adults are coming to study in the west and you can see that glasnost is taking place even if it hasn’t been announced to the world.  Considering

A class act?

Polly Toynbee’s piece in the Guardian this morning is what one might expect – telling us class is not dead in Britain and inequality is more of an issue than ever. Maybe so, but she still waxes lyrical about phenomena she doesn’t seem to understand. She writes: “there was nothing cool about Sunday’s picture of Prince Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy holding a “chav” fancy dress party, where royal hangers-on dressed in (very expensive) shell suits, hoop earrings and gold necklaces. What’s hip about hoorays mocking their idea of the working class? The new classlessness is just the yob rich shedding all class embarrassment.” If Polly Toynbee believes that ‘hoorays’ can’t discern between the

The latest Strategist has gone live

The Strategist section of the latest Spectator Business has now gone live. In association with IBM, Strategist brings you in-depth analysis of the latest business issues. You can access the new articles here. Do also check out Strategist Online – an exclusive vodcast concentrating on one of the articles. You can watch the latest episode here. The next episode will appear early next month. If you have any questions that you’d like featured in the programme, please e-mail them to: strategist@spectatorbusiness.co.uk

James Forsyth

The struggle over the surge

The latest extract from Bob Woodward’s book about the battle over Iraq policy among the military is well worth reading. It reveals quite how bad relations got between advocates of the surge and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jack Keen—a retired general and a key advocate of the surge—was even banned from travelling to Iraq by the military at one point. While President Bush was forced to send back-channel messages to General Petraeus telling him that he “will have as much force as he needs for as long as he needs it” to counteract the pressure being put on by Petraeus for a precipitous draw-down by his military superiors. Woodward also reveals

Darling enters the lion’s den

Is Alistair Darling in for a mauling at the TUC conference later today? The official line from the brothers is that he’ll get a “frosty but polite” reception. But given that the Chancellor is most likely going to turn down calls for public sector pay rises, it’s anyone’s guess as to how long the politeness will last. Whatever happens, there’s certainly an extra buzz about this latest union get-together. Rachel Sylvester nails it in her column today, when she writes: “[The TUC conference] in Brighton this week is worth watching … because it could actually be a picture of the future. The union leaders promoting an ever-more left-wing agenda –