Society

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A mad world

Keith Dovkants has a great feature in the Standard on  the relationship between Rothschild and Deripaska. But this anecdote stood out to me: “Witness his excursion into Kalmykia, a remote Russian republic run by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a charismatic leader who fought an election campaign on promises of providing a free mobile phone for every shepherd and a guarantee that Diego Maradonna would be signed up by the local football team. Ilyumzhinov confides in friends that he had been captured by aliens and has glimpsed a view of the universe not allowed most mortals. His political ruthlessness is combined with a sense of divine right and what rare visitors to his

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The heart of the matter

One of the oddest aspects of this whole Deripaska affair is why Nate Rothschild went nuclear on George Osborne. It was understandable that Rothschild was irritated about Osborne breaching the privacy of his fellow guests but writing a letter that could have destroyed Osborne’s career seems like a disproportionate response. Especially when you consider that Osborne and Rothschild are old friends. Charles Moore puts it typically well: “But why did Nathaniel Rothschild write to the Times? Yes, he was genuinely annoyed that George Osborne had relayed Peter Mandelson’s disobliging remarks about Gordon Brown to the Sunday Times. The then Mr Mandelson was Mr Rothschild’s guest, as was Mr Osborne. Mr

Peter Hoskin

It’s the statisticians wot done it

Much hoo-hah – and rightly so – over the crime statistics that the Home Office have published today.  The issue is with the “Most serious violent offences” figure, which has risen by 22 percent since last year – an increase that Jacqui Smith attributes to previous inconsistencies in how the police totted up the “GBH with intent” numbers (for the official explanation, click here).  But a passage from another Home Office document (pdf, here) is worth highlighting: “At least two-thirds of the 26% increase in GBH with intent can be attributed to the clarification in the counting rules referred to earlier. This also influences the overall figure for ‘Most serious violence against the person’.” In

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The true defenders of liberty

In Uganda there is a law against annoying the president, and last night I met an incredible person who has been jailed 12 times for breaking that law. Andrew Mwenda, founder of The Independent newspaper, was giving the keynote address at The Bastiat Prize and asking why the West was so timid in defending free markets and the open society which people like him put their lives on the line to support. A crash isn’t a crisis of capitalism, he said, it’s a characteristic of capitalism – when banks err they are punished. Why do so few in the West make this point? I asked him later if he worries

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The worst seems to have passed for Osborne

There will be relief in Tory circles this morning that today’s papers contain no further damaging revelations about George Osborne and Andrew Feldman’s holiday activities. The Tories can begin to hope that this story is on the wane or that the focus of attention will soon shift back to Mandelson; do see Melissa Kite’s revelations about Mandelson and Deripaska. The greatest danger to Osborne now is an accidental recommencement of hostilities. For instance, if a Sunday tabloid designed to try and dig dirt on the Rothschilds, Nate might go nuclear even if the Tories had not played any role in encouraging the paper. He is clearly a man with a

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The T St Rag

Here’s the usually-savvy Helen Rittelmeyer: Let’s take it as a given that Martin and Maltz are correct that Red Staters like to follow traditions and bicoastal elites like to question them; it certainly sounds true enough, at least as far as wild generalizations can be. Even given that assumption, most South Carolinians are more morally and philosophically sophisticated than most cosmopolitan Obamaniacs. Let’s put aside the question of whether or not New Yorkers really question their moral assumptions (although if someone else wanted to take up this line of argument, I wouldn’t stop them) and simply look at the end result of this Blue State skepticism. Most of the time,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Baseball Division

Yup, it’s time for the Fall Classic. I’m taking part in a symposium at Culture11. My first contribution, in which I out myself as a temporary Tampa Bay Rays fan, is here. Why Tampa? Largely, as I say in the wee piece, because I enjoy Philadelphia’s beery opera buffa and do not much fancy that being corrupted by victory. Happily Michael Brendan Dougherty and Tim Carney are around to talk, like, about actual baseball.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Political Advertising 21

Jobs being sent overseas to cosset foreigners? Not a new phenomenon.Not a new campaign themse either. Here’s a Clinton-Gore ad from 1992 that could easily have been made by Obama this year.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Last Throes

It’s over. How so? Because campaigns that have a chance of winning don’t perform stunts like this: Please join our campaign for a conference call at 11:30 a.m. EDT, with former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and McCain-Palin Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Randy Scheunemann to discuss recent news stories about which candidate terrorists would like to see in the White House in 2009. [Hat-tip: Marc Ambinder] UPDATE: Dave Weigel, bless him, has more.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Leaderless

The Times has gone understandably big on its scoop about George Osborne’s activities in Corfu. Many have been taken aback by quite how hostile the tone of its coverage has been—Osborne and The Times editor James Harding were thought to be friends—and if what Guido and several others are hearing is true, it seems that tomorrow’s coverage will be the harshest yet towards Osborne personally. But in all this there is one notable absence: The Times has not yet run a leader on the matter. On Tuesday, one of its editorials did refer to Deripaska but the reference was to his financial difficulties not to the hospitality that he had

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: the aftermath

Gordon Brown’s call for an inquiry into the allegations surrounding George Osborne was pure political mischief. But it has worked. Both the BBC and Sky reported the call prominently on their one o’clock news broadcasts. As Nick Robinson noted on the Daily Politics, it was a clever way of giving the press a second day angle to the story. The Speaker’s decision to call Dennis Skinner right towards the end is not going to do anything to silence the whispers that he is too partisan. There was only one topic that Skinner – who has previously been chucked out of the Commons for making allegations about Osborne and cocaine –

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs live-blog

Even before the revelations about George Osborne, today’s PMQs was of particular importance for the Conservatives. The encounter was perceived to be the Tory’s best chance to burst Brown’s bubble. But now it has taken on even more importance. If Cameron gets clunked, Tory backbench morale—which is surprisingly low given that the Tories still have a sizable poll lead—could plummet. We’ll have live coverage from noon. 12:03 Osborne is sitting on Cameron’s left. 12:05 Brown looks confident. But Cameron gets in a good jibe calling Brown ‘a master of dodgy accounting.’ The Labour backbenches are raucous today, the Osborne scandal has put a spring in their step. 12:10 Brown is

Peter Hoskin

The R-word

The throng saying we’re entering a recession has been joined by its most significant member so far.  Mervyn King deployed the R-word in a speech to Leeds businessmen last night, and the markets have reacted accordingly.  Sterling collapsed against the dollar – hitting a five-year low of $1.6203 earlier.  Whilst the FTSE share index has looked wobbly since opening.  All of which fuels the idea that no amount of Mandelsonian manoeuvring – or no amount of public cash – can prevent the poor state of the economy being the story of the next few weeks, months, years.  The question that remains is whether Brown & Co. will capitalise because of it.  Or whether it

Scott Payton

Shares that go up as banks go down

‘Whenever there’s a catastrophe on Wall Street, our business just gets better — because our products become more collectable.’ So says Bob Kerstein, founder of Virginia-based Scripophily.com, the world’s largest buyer and seller of historic bonds and share certificates. The recent blizzard of insurance and investment banking failures has brought Kerstein particularly brisk business. ‘Our Merrill Lynch certificates are selling very well, and we’re almost completely out of Bear Sterns certificates,’ he says. ‘A few months ago you could buy a Merrill Lynch certificate for about $20 or $30. Now they’re worth upwards of $100.’ The collectors’ market in early and historically significant bonds and share certificates first took off

Neil Collins

Banks too risky? Try flying saucers

Kim Schlunke would like you to buy a flying saucer. No, honestly, he’s got a video of it on his mobile, showing one buzzing round his lab in Perth, Australia. See it fly! See it hover! See it land delicately on its little legs! It looks, in other words, like a special effect of the sort that DreamWorks can throw into a movie with scarcely a thought. Yet this flying saucer does not break the laws of physics, and Schlunke, one of those archetypal garrulous Aussies, has actually flown in a larger version which could one day become a flying car. Well, he says he has, although his phone has

Patrick Macaskie

To muzzle the short-seller is to muzzle free speech

The market needs speculators who are willing to challenge the big battalions, says Patrick Macaskie. Don’t believe the hype: short-sellers were not the villains of this financial crisis People everywhere have been grappling with what has befallen them. Like the closing stages of A Midsummer Night’s Dream we are waking from a reverie and human folly at its most extreme is being revealed. It is harder to see the happy ending but some things will be for the better. When I think of my children I will be glad to see sensible house prices and society getting a bit more serious and self-critical. But the adjustment will come at a

Bryan Forbes

The market crashes, but the gravy train rolls on

It is difficult to think of anything more depressing than the recent photographs of a smirking Lord Mandy in his ermine drag flanked by two of yesterday’s major groupies, Lord Falconer and Baroness Jay, she who gleefully masterminded the removal of the hereditary peers, but couldn’t resist a title for herself. At the very moment the PM was berating the bonus culture, his new friend, Lord Mandy, was looking forward to trousering some serious dosh from Brussels, and senior executives of our self-congratulatory, ratings-obsessed BBC were awarding themselves £318,000 extra for doing nothing discernibly advantageous for the licence payers. A gravy train still leaves every hour for the fortunate few.

Venetia Thompson

Eat, drink and play bingo. Red or white?

Bingo is a game that I have never really seen the point of — despite recent advertising campaigns attempting to market it as the new raucous ‘girls’ night out’ of choice. It was thus with trepidation that I climbed Home House’s grand staircase and entered one of their private rooms along with 30 other guests for a game of wine bingo. I was swiftly handed a glass of something light and fizzy, thankfully, and all images of fat, single, middle-aged Gala-dwelling women and their legs-11 disappeared. It was only when I reached for what from a distance looked like a macadamia nut in a round basket, but was in fact

Gary Dexter

Surprising literary ventures | 22 October 2008

The Crows of Pearblossom is a rare children’s book by Aldous Huxley, written in 1944 and published posthumously. It originated as a present for his five-year-old niece Olivia de Haulleville, who often visited Huxley and his wife, Maria, at their ranch in Llano in the Mojave Desert (Olivia later moved to the Greek island of Hydra and became Mrs Yorgo Cassapidis). It was while living on the ranch that Huxley began experimenting seriously with psychotropic drugs such as mescaline and LSD. The story deals with two crows, the female of which wears an apron. Mrs Crow finds that her eggs are being eaten by a Rattlesnake, and after suffering 297