Society

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Is Darling set to axe the fuel duty rise?

Alistair Darling’s interviewed in today’s Standard and, in response to a question about vehicle excise duty, he says: “I think the bigger question for motorists, frankly, is the fuel duty … That’s something you pay every week, not once a year, and that is something that we in government are very focused upon.” Which is – I think rightly – being read as a strong sign he’ll axe the 2p rise in fuel duty planned for this October. I guess it would be U-turn No.1,347 for Darling, but it’s a good U-turn nonetheless.  At a time when huge swathes of the British public are struggling with the cost of living, there’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Failing the laugh test

The confusion that underlies the government’s attitude to testing is illustrated by the interview with Ed Balls in this week’s New Statesman. Martin Bright and Suzanne Moore press Balls on whether children are being stressed out by being tested too much, to which Balls replies: “No seven-year-old should ever know they are doing SATs.” Balls goes on to explain this slightly bizarre answer by saying: “The best headteachers will ensure that no six- or seven-year-old knows they are doing SATs. I promise you that is the case. If you are telling pupils in Year 2 that they are doing SATs next week then that’s the wrong thing to do. You

The Spectator

CoffeeHousers’ Wall | 3 July 2008

We’ve added a new linking button to Coffee House – one which takes you through to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall.  It’s about halfway down on the right of any Coffee House page.  Should make it easier to head over to the Wall, and have your say on the week’s events. Alternatively, you can find this week’s CoffeeHousers’ Wall here.

Maurice Gerard

Smoke and mirrors | 3 July 2008

Harare, Zimbabwe It’s smoke and mirrors for Zimbabweans. State-run TV has been blaring non-stop Mugabe’s statement that he is willing to sit down and negotiate with the opposition MDC – and would even accept a “unity” government, whatever that means. Tsvangirai is holding his ground; the capital’s more salubrious bars are a-buzz with speculation over an imminent deal brokered by the South Africans. The reality will be disappointing, I fear. “The violence in the run-up to the poll and Mugabe’s rushed inauguration was all about leverage,” one Harare political analyst told me, a former government advisor. “In the event of any negotiations, he wants to show the MDC that he’s still boss.”

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Better (and braver) Administrators Please

One of the sadder constants in international sport is that any major decision made by the International Cricket Council will, more probably than not, damage the long-term best interests of the game. That sorry streak continues today: The result of the controversial 2006 Oval Test between England and Pakistan is to be changed, the BBC understands. The match was awarded to England when the Pakistan team refused to come out onto the field after tea after being accused of ball-tampering. But the International Cricket Council is expected to change the result to a draw at its meeting in Dubai. BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew said the move would open up

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The laws of war in the war on terror

I’ve just got round to reading the Christopher Hitchens piece on being waterboarded which everyone is talking about. It is definitely worth a look, it deals fairly with both sides of the argument. Hitchens sums up the case that the proponents of waterboarding make thus: As they have just tried to demonstrate to me, a man who has been waterboarded may well emerge from the experience a bit shaky, but he is in a mood to surrender the relevant information and is unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for another bout in quite a short time. When contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay. No thumbscrew, no pincers, no

Peter Hoskin

The Gurkha ruling is shameful

Over the past few weeks, three Gurkha veterans have been challenging the Government’s imbalanced pension plan for Gurkhas – by which those who signed up for the army before July 1997, and retired after that date, are valued at between only 24 and 36 percent of British rates.  Today, the High Court turned their challenge down.  It’s a shameful ruling.  After all, these three veterans – and the group they represent – were just as prepared to sacrifice their lives for our country as any other soldier.  By that alone, they have done more for the UK than most people ever will.  And that’s before we get onto the Gurkha’s proud 200-year history, or the 13 Victoria crosses they’ve accrued in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

There should be a cost to doing business with the Mugabe regime

A fortnight ago Peter Oborne wrote in his cover story on Zimbabwe about how “The Munich-based company Giesecke & Devrient continues to supply, unhindered, truckloads of large denomination banknotes. This enables Mugabe to bribe his army, police force and irregular militias but only accelerates the total collapse of the economy.” Giesecke & Devrient also manufactures the Oyster card. Today’s Evening Standard reports that Boris Johnson has promised that Transport for London will not renew the contract at the end of the month. This is welcome news, companies that work with the Mugabe regime should pay a heavy price for their actions.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Saudi moves in Syria

David Ignatius’s column this morning in The Washington Post on covert efforts to pin back Iranian attempt to establish hegemony in the Middle East, contains this fascinating detail: Saudi Arabia has taken a tougher stand to oppose what it sees as Iranian meddling in the region. There are reports out of Syria, for example, that the Saudi military attaché in Damascus was expelled a few months ago after the Syrians uncovered what they believed was a plot to pay $50 million in subsidies to members of a prominent Syrian tribe. One source said the money was simply intended to support the kingdom’s longtime tribal friends rather than organize political opposition

Richard Orange

Fading memories of the Raj in the tea gardens of Assam

Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s bumpy drive from the Assamese town of Jorhat. Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate,

Christopher Fildes

The market’s favourite scapegoat

Oh, dear, what a setback. The usual suspects have slipped through the net. They will have to be locked up in the Financial Services Authority’s waterside fortress for 42 days, while the investigators try again to find some evidence. These suspects are the short sellers: everyone’s favourite scapegoat. They are accused of rocking the banks’ leaky boats, of destabilising the stock market, of profiting from other people’s misfortunes, of driving share prices downwards to suit their own book. If it wasn’t for them, we should all be rich, or richer, at any rate, than we are now — or so we are led to believe. The textbook way to become

Steven Berkoff

I was starstuck by David Cameron

It was a large thickish card. ‘180th anniversary of the Spectator’, to be celebrated at the Churchill Hotel in elegant Portman Square. It looked to be an event not to miss and I’m quite partial to a little schmoozing from the ‘Right’ since it is from within my domain on the Left that I have been the most scourged. This has always been a bit of a mystery to me, but I conclude that the Left is not quite so left as it would like to pretend it is. The traffic was horrendous, and like the maze of Theseus, each turn I took sadistically led me back via one-way streets

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Et tu, Scott? Bush’s press aide turns on his boss

‘Yes, I think there are,’ replies Scott McClellan, George W. Bush’s former press secretary, when I ask him if he thinks there are others like him who followed Bush from Texas to Washington but who are now disillusioned. McClellan was one of Bush’s Texas loyalists — he had served the then Governor in Austin, worked on the presidential campaign and then moved to the White House where he rose to become White House press secretary, the public face of the administration. But with the publication of his memoirs he has broken spectacularly with his old boss. The title of Scott McClellan’s book tells you where he is coming from: What

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

McCain’s War Record

So, General Wesley Clark mouths off about John McCain on TV today, thusly: CLARK: He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, “I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not, do you want to take the risk, what about your reputation, how do we handle this publicly? He

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Statistics in a cloud of smoke

If Philip Morris commissioned research which found that the smoking ban in England & Wales, a year old today, had been a dismal failure many, perhaps even most, people would dismiss said research, considering it partial. Well they would say that wouldn’t they? So why are figures* from anti-smoking organisations such as ASH or Cancer Research UK accepted uncritically? Maybe they are indeed sound but I see no great reason for ignoring the vested interests at play on their side of the dispute while pointing out those that might influence more tobacco-friendly findings. *I should say that while I do indeed view the figures cited by Cancer Research with some

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t…

Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online: The front page of the Washington Post (yes, I sometimes read paper newspapers) has the headline “Obama Fiercely Defends His Patriotism.” Isn’t there a problem when a candidate has to “fiercely defend” something so fundamental? Shouldn’t a candidate for president and his advisers and supporters exude such a thing? And perhaps there’s also a problem when conservatives declare  – or presume to assume – that they have a monopoly on patriotism, casting their opponents as un-American and demanding that Obama make a grand speech to prove that, you know, he is comfortable being an American citizen… Not that the GOP, alas, is the

Maurice Gerard

What will happen now?

Harare, Zimbabwe Post-election drama, Harare thrives once more. Market women back to selling vegetables on the street; businessmen in second-hand suits talking loudly into their mobile phones. Queues stretching round the block to use the cashpoint. The earnest business of survival begins for Zimbabweans once more. A Zanu-PF source informed me earlier today that Mugabe allies are negotiating informally with the opposition MDC over a unity government. The sticking point, as always, is Mugabe. “When will the Old Man go?” chorus the urban masses. The South Africans are pressing hard for official negotiations. But is hard to see the MDC agreeing until violence against their supporters stops. “It is about leverage,” said the source,