Society Archives

Thursday

4 Sep 2008

Sean Martin

Global warming opens up Northwest Passage

The Northwest Passage has been a focal point for both environmentalists and shipping companies for years. The sea route along the North American coast has been blocked for hundreds of years by a pack of Arctic ice. But through climate change the pack is melting away and the waters may soon be available for maritime use in 2009. This new route could chop thousands of nautical miles off journeys from Europe to Asia. But the melting of the ice pack shows worrying trends in global warming. The ice pack blocking the route has reached its smallest size since records began. The pack’s disappearance has been exacerbated by its melting rate speeding

James Forsyth

Things keep getting worse for Labour | 4 September 2008

Martin Bright’s politics column in The New Statesman this week is absolutely essential reading. He points out that Miliband has to challenge soon or he too will be seen as a bottler, that Labour still can’t agree on how to challenge Cameron and that the Cabinet simply aren’t use to operating in such tough times—none of them have governed during a recession. But I think it is this point which is perhaps most important: “The Labour Party is in an unprecedented crisis. If it carries on as it is, it will lose the next election by a landslide. The consequences could be worse even than those that followed the election

Fraser Nelson

Waiting for Palin

I’m now in the BBC suite in St Paul stadium with my former Spectator colleague Emily Maitlis. She’s off air and we’re all waiting for Sarah Palin – I’m due to do a Five Live phone-in on whether her personal life is fair game but the tennis may displace us. Both CNN and Fox are running Cape Canaveral-style countdowns to Palin’s big speech – which must surely rate as the most important at an American convention for years. It will have none of the theatre of Obama’s stadium speech, which everyone knew would be good. More is at stake now because if she fluffs it could well be terminal. Delegates

Wednesday

3 Sep 2008

Alex Massie

What does Sarah Palin need to do tonight?

One by-product of the Sarah Palin affair is that her speech tonight is vastly more eagerly anticipated than the address John McCain will give on Thursday night. As any Broadway producer can tell you, it’s quite something when the understudy takes top billing from the headline star. That’s not always a good thing. Then again, she’s the new kid on the block, whereas McCain’s been around for decades. No-one in their right mind queued up to see John Edwards in 2004 or Lieberman and Cheney in 2000 did they? Sarah Palin is already ahead of them, then… So what does she need to do tonight? For what little it’s worth:

James Forsyth

Will the Brown-Miliband truce hold until after conference?

There are a couple of excellent articles in the Evening Standard today. Joe Murphy has done a great piece on how Gordon Brown has left Stephen Carter high and dry. Brown gave Carter a big title, promised him authority and then backed off as soon as the old guard began to kick up fuss and it now appears that Carter is on the outs. Murphy quotes one ‘Labour insider’ as saying that “Gordon can hardly bear to look at him anymore.” The real scoop, though, comes in Anne McElvoy’s column. She reveals that: “Miliband has privately assured the PM that he will not speak further on New Labour woes until

Fraser Nelson

McCain to use the Democrat-supporting blogs against Obama

The stature of the blogs is a striking feature of the American elections. There are more of them, and some of the best journalists now working exclusively online (which means there are several news cycles in a day, and newspapers are outdated by 9am). Sites like Politico have done a talent swoop; the Drudge Report is checked several times a day by most American journalists, used as a radar. Now there are attack dog sites: scores of them, eager to tear into the other side. The Daily Kos – described as “extreme left” by Fox – is one. But others, less well-known, go even further. But in going after Palin’s

Peter Hoskin

What chance a lasting Olympic legacy?

One of the major factors behind London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games was the promise to create a lasting “Olympics legacy” – to rejuvenate some of the poorer areas of London; to get more people participating in sport; to create a set of sporting facilities which will promise future success for British athletes, and so on. But – as the Standard reports today – there are signs that the Government might fail to deliver on (at least some of) that promise. The figures they’ve got their hands on show that, whilst London as a whole met the Government’s 2002 target to get 85 percent of schools providing their

James Forsyth

Primetime for Palin

The press are always declaring speeches ‘the most important of the campaign so far’ but Sarah Palin’s tonight really is. John McCain took a huge gamble in picking the first-term governor of Alaska as his running mate and even without the revelations of the past few days tonight would be important for her given that she has to both introduce herself to the nation and show that she is a credible second in line for the presidency. But with parts of the media trying, disgustingly, to turn her family into a Jerry Springer special and some serious and generally worrying revelations about the vetting process that led to her selection

James Forsyth

The dysfunctional Brown court

Sue Cameron delivers up another great mix of scoops and quotes in her FT column this morning—it is worth paying £1.50 for this quote from Peter Hennessy alone: “If you think this lot have a Baldrick-style cunning plan you are flattering them”. But the more serious point comes from an anonymous insider: “Downing Street is a court… It’s about individual power and you mustn’t go thinking it’s logical” The Brown court has been even more dysfunctional than his harshest critics predicted, it has been a brutal reflection of the Prime Minister’s own flaws. The scene Cameron paints of an irate Brown striding the halls, demanding to know how on earth

Fraser Nelson

The Republican convention gets under way

As Gustav fades, the first real night of the real convention has started. The signs, funny hats, even hesitant dancing (to Johnny B Goode). Guests were there: George HW Bush, his wife and Cindy McCain, to whom the cameras kept going back. She sat there looking like she’s escaped from a Stepford Wives remake. She will, I suspect, compare badly to Michelle Obama (whom I’m completely sold on). First up tonight was Laura Bush, who was a smash hit. One forgets what an asset she’s been for him – pretty, graceful and not Teresa Heinz Kerry. She listed his greatest hits – “The most important education reform in a generation”

Jane Ridley

A chilly professional

The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby, by Angus Hawkins Who was the 14th Earl of Derby? He was three times Conservative prime minister, but few people have heard of him today. He became leader of the Tory rump after Peel smashed the Conservative party in 1846, and he remained leader until ill health forced him to resign some 22 years later. He was immensely rich, with estates in Lancashire yielding a princely income of £100,000. He was clever and a swashbuckling orator — the ‘Rupert of debate’, Bulwer-Lytton called him. He was also a gifted classical scholar. Confined to his bed by an attack of gout, he

Judi Bevan

Nice pork, pity about the pizza

Judi Bevan finds her local Lidl discount store full of bargains — but not Boden-clad middle-class shoppers Intrigued by reports that the middle classes are shopping at the German discount stores Aldi and Lidl — and even stuffing their purchases in Waitrose bags — I set off to track them down. My nearest Lidl is a couple of miles from my house at the northern end of Cricklewood Broadway — not exactly an area known for yummy-mummy sightings, and without a Starbucks or Caffè Nero for miles. Yet the statistics say that sales at both Aldi and Lidl have been growing strongly since householders have been hit by higher petrol

Neil Barnett

King coal prepares for a comeback

Neil Barnett says the miners’ union that took on Margaret Thatcher and lost is now talking surprisingly good sense about Britain’s future energy security The National Union of Mineworkers’ headquarters in Barnsley has a splendid retro feel. In the assembly hall hang banners celebrating the struggles of the working class: from one of them, Arthur Scargill, Shredded Wheat comb-over to the fore, stares into the middle distance; another from Kellingley Colliery shows a miner wearing only trousers and a helmet, throttling a huge python labelled ‘Capitalism’. The script below declares ‘Only the strong survive’, while behind him an optimist has written ‘Socialism Leads to Prosperity’. The result is an original

Mary Wakefield

A pilgrim’s progress for the 21st century

Because I spoke to him on the phone, not in person, you’ll have to share my mental picture of William P. Young. There he is in a hotel room in Texas: 53, balding, with bright eyes and a greying goatee. He’s ironing as he talks (he says so), his sleeves rolled up (I reckon), with a snowy pile of pressed shirts beside him. On the table beside his bed is a photo of his wife, Kim, and the six young Youngs back home in Gresham, Oregon. On the floor: piles of his extraordinary book The Shack. It’s extraordinary because of the subject matter — a man called Mack meets God

Robert Hardman

Never mind the Olympics — get set for the Jubilee

Free and open to everyone, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 will eclipse the London Games, says Robert Hardman — an unforgettable tribute to the monarch Millions gathered on the streets; people of every generation from every background joining in the fun; all the corners of the kingdom united in one thoroughly British occasion… 2012 really is going to see one hell of a party. In fact, buy your Union flags now because there won’t be any left by then. And hang on to them. Because you might just need them for the follow-on event — the supporting gig otherwise known as the London Olympics. Yes, the Games will produce

Tuesday

2 Sep 2008

Alex Massie

When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied…

Radley Balko is right. Faced with the prospect of a global financial meltdown (perhaps!) this is the sort of cheery story we need. If this doesn’t restore your faith in the United States of America, what can? State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church. But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel’s Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of “laying on of hands.” … LaVoie is now citing constitutional guarantees

Alex Massie

Brooks on McCain

Is it just me, or has David Brooks written a column this morning explaining that John McCain is fundamentally, irredeemably ill-suited to being President of the United States? My worry about [Sarah] Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy. There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government. But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health

Alex Massie

Cooking Bullwinkle

In the light of all the Sarah Palin entertainment, Matt Yglesias asks a good question: how should you cook moose anyway? He links to some recipes (Moose nose in jelly??) some of which confirm my suspicion that you should treat moose as though it were venison or, even, at a pinch, wild boar. Slow and low is almost certainly the way to go. So I’d hazard that this would be a pretty good moose feast: Marinade your hunk of moosemeat (leg? Loin? Does it matter?) for at least 24 hours in a bottle of country red wine, with plenty of garlic, juniper berries, salt, pepper, thyme, marjoram, bayleaves etc. Rosemary

Alex Massie

Star Quality

So the Republican convention gets back on track tonight though not quite as initially planned. George W Bush for instance will address the convention via satellite, not in person. One thing that has changed since 2004: back then it was the GOP convention that had star quality. In addition to the President, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted a convention that dwarfed anything the Democrats could offer. This time around? Not so much. Who else is speaking tonight? Fred Dalton Thompson and Joe Lieberman. Hold me back! Whatever one may say abut Lieberman – and there’s lots one could, little of it polite – when it comes to

James Forsyth

The Anbar achievement

The transfer of Anbar province to Iraqi control marks another step forward in Iraq. The transformation in Anbar has been quite incredible. Two years ago, no one sane would have predicted that the then heartland of the Sunni insurgency would be peacefully and voluntarily handed over by the United States at the end of August 2008 with the occasion marked by a parade featuring unarmed US troops. To be sure, there is still much work to be done in Iraq. The situation there is fragile and there appear to be some new problems to confront but there has been a remarkable amount of progress made there in the past year and a