Society

Alex Massie

Obama: Better than a Mere Messiah

A friend in San Francisco sent me an article that, I suspect, has to be the best thing written about Barack Obama yet. Mark Morford, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist writes: Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher ina new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this

What do CoffeeHousers think about a Manchester congestion charge?

What do CoffeeHousers – and particularly those based in Manchester – make of Ruth Kelly’s plans to impose congestion charges in cities other than London?  You see, there are two factors making me reluctant to comment myself: 1) I don’t own a car, and 2) I don’t live in Manchester.  As far as the London C-charge is concerned, I think it seems expensive and I’m dubious about how “green” it turned out to be under the Ken regime.  At least, then, the Manchester charge is less costly and it’s primarily being sold under a “growth” banner, rather than an environmental one.  But is it necessary in the first place?  Should these

James Forsyth

Dealing with knife crime

Knife crime is a serious problem—those who claim that the current concern over it is all a result of media fear-mongering are being far too flippant. But I do wish the government would concentrate on using the tools already available to it rather than coming up with yet more eye catching initiatives. As Stephen wrote the other week only a handful of those convicted of knife offences are punished to the full extent of the law. Today, Charlotte Leslie, a Tory candidate down in Bristol, notes in her Guardian blog another way in which the scourge of knife crime could be tackled without any additional legislation: “When we got back

Dorries takes on the Beeb

Nadine Dorries’ latest blog post is a classic piece of telling-it-like-it-is.  Here’s how she kicks off: “The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and left wing press become.” And she continues: “The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay, the BBC has to be the biggest.” It’s a view that I’m sure many CoffeeHousers would agree with.

Fraser Nelson

The Taliban’s suicide bombing campaign

If you ever wondered what a Taliban suicide bomber looks like, examine the boy on the left.  Aged 14, Rafiqullah was caught with a suicide vest but pardoned by President Karzai.  However, this did not dent the suicide bombing campaign which yesterday claimed the lives of another three British servicemen. The suicide bombers intercepted are invariably Pakistanti – which is why an increasing number of Afghans regard this not as an insurgency but an Afghan-Pakistan war. The bombers are plucked from orphanages or madrasahs in al-Qaeda’s new bolthole, the quasi-autonomous northwest tribal areas of Pakistan. Referred to as FATA (federally administered tribal areas) this is the source of the IEDs, the Taleban agents

Do the professionals want 42-day detention?

One of the Government’s loudest defences for 42-day detention is that it will help the intelligence services and the police catch more terrorists. Problem is, the professionals aren’t exactly backing this claim up. CoffeeHousers who caught Jacqui Smith being interviewed yesterday will have heard her admit that MI5 haven’t asked for an extension from 28 days. And, today, the Guardian reveals that certain senior policemen are set against the Government’s proposals. Their worries deserve quoting:  [42-day detention will incur] Damage to relations with Muslim communities from whom intelligence to counter terrorism is needed;  Fears that detectives will face pressure to find, even manufacture evidence, against those held for 42 days; 

Saffron studies

Recently I enticed my niece to a gastronome’s dinner during the London Food Festival. She is about to enter university, and I thought it was about time she learnt to taste. The evening proved a disaster; after a lengthy discussion of saffron she turned to me and asked, with quiet rage, ‘How can they carry on about an expensive spice when people are starving?’ How young she is, and how deeply am I sunk in the last sensual pleasure remaining to the elderly bourgeois. In one way of course my niece is quite right. In 40 years, when she is my age, the world will probably be afflicted by food

Cosmic codes

Iam a great one for omens. So the arrival in my inbox of two emails, completely unconnected, from two different people called Dirk had to be interpreted as a sign. The chances of two people in Britain being called Dirk outside the pages of comedy science fiction are pretty slim. The chances of them both emailing me within minutes of each other are remote to the point of being science fictional. Now, here’s what is even weirder. Both Dirks sent their emails twice. So my inbox had four Dirks lined up one after the other between the hours of 4.38 and 5.08 p.m. The usual nonstop flow of spam halted

Tree talk

All my life I’ve tried to acquaint myself with trees by learning which ones are which, but the task seems beyond me. Wouldn’t it be praiseworthy, for example, to be able to recognise the 32 native species of broad-leafed tree — willow, oak, lime, ash, wych elm, and so forth — and the three conifer species — juniper, Scots pine and yew — that were growing here 7,000 years ago when the ice melted and Britain became an island. But when I go out with a field guide, I can hardly differentiate between a tree and a shrub, let alone between one species of tree and the next. There are

Umbrian idyll

Città di Castello, Umbria A few years before the end of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium summoned his favourite banker, Baron Lambert, for an intimate chat over lunch. ‘My dream is to have a little place in the sun,’ said the monarch to the banker. ‘Somewhere down south, where everyone runs around without clothes on so I can relax a bit.’ ‘I understand and will see what I can do,’ said the loyal baron, and then they proceeded to talk about more pressing matters. The little place in the sun turned out to be called Congo, a piece of real estate much larger than Europe and, I believe,

Diary – 7 June 2008

Venetia Thompson contends with a broken Blackberry, teeth-whitening kits and cyclists Last weekend I discovered what it is like to be a small furry animal in its burrow, when in an effort to catch up on some sleep and do some work, I had refused to go out and instead sat steadfast in my living-room. I was subsequently hissed at through the window and then smoked out when a tramp decided to set fire to himself and my rubbish under the building late one night while banging maniacally on my bedroom window. Whether it was that same mischievous Romanian tramp Sarah Standing was troubled by last week I do not know,

Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 7 June 2008

‘See that pot plant?’ said Jeremy Clarkson. ‘I could get a column out of that.’ We were at a supper party in Hay and indulging in that parlour game often played by newspaper columnists whereby we try to outdo each other when it comes to the ingenuity with which we can transform any subject, no matter how threadbare, into a column. At the time, I couldn’t think of anything less promising than a pot plant so I kept quiet, but now I can: a column about another columnist claiming he can get a column out of a pot plant. As a confirmed petrolhead who prides himself on being politically incorrect,

Mind Your Language | 7 June 2008

Dot Wordswoth on pens and puns ‘Why,’ asked my husband, looking up from his book, ‘is Joseph Gillott a very bad man?’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘Because,’ he replied, as if I had acknowledged defeat, ‘he wishes to accustom the public to steel pens and then tries to persuade them that they do write.’ By the way that he was slapping his thigh and spilling his glass of whisky, I could see that he thought this was a joke. There was, it appeared, a double play on words: steel and steal, and do write and do right. Who Joseph Gillott was, perhaps I should have known, but didn’t. He was, it

Dear Mary | 7 June 2008

Q. During a lavish lunch party last month, our host was insulting about my new boyfriend, whom I had brought along with his permission. His actual words were, ‘He’s not my particular cup of tea, darling.’ He said this privately to me, not to the whole table. At the time I laughed it off and changed the subject because I did not want to create a bad atmosphere and he, our host, was slightly drunk (but only slightly). I am a stickler for writing to thank and have picked up pen and paper many times since that day but have been unable to bring myself to present the usual fulsome

Alex Massie

Annals of Punditry | 7 June 2008

Euro 2008 starts today and happily we’re spared the agony of watching Scotland play. The BBC are doing their best to persuade us that even a tournament “without England” might be worth watching even though most sentient people appreciate that England’s failure to qualify actually enhances the tournament, especially for the TV viewer who might have an increased chance of intelligent, astute, imaginative, perceptive TV coverage. Not so fast my friends! Here’s the BBC’s Gary Lineker explaining why he thinks Spain can win the tournament: It is open, but I am going for those perennial underachievers in Spain…the feeling is that [the] team chokes, but they have done well in

Words and weapons

In Competition No 2547 you were invited to write a poem or some prose ending with ‘The pen [or pun] is mightier than the sword’. The tag comes from a play, Richelieu, by Lord Lytton, the 19th-century politician and writer remembered today, if at all, for The Last Days of Pompeii. The idea for the pun bit came when I read of a proposal to remove a statue in central London of General Charles Napier, the Victorian conqueror of Sind, who is remembered today, if at all, not for his feats of arms but for the one-word telegram ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned) that he allegedly sent to his London masters.

Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 7 June 2008

As hard luck stories go, it might not be up there with Oliver Twist, but dammit last weekend my Sky went down. In that pathetic, fat-arsed nerdy way I had been planning the ideal weekend: bouncing happily from the climax to the 20/20 Indian Premier League, to Wasps and Leicester in the Rugby Premiership final, then the mid-point of the French Open on Eurosport, and thrumming along nicely in the background the second Test between Australia and West Indies. So what I was left with last weekend was a rugby league quarter-final, and even my life’s not that sad, and some halfway decent racing with the effortlessly brilliant Ryan Moore

McCain is in for a terrible shock if he wins

Reihan Salam says that most Republicans have no idea how much the American social landscape has changed. They should learn from Obama’s Google-like appeal Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the illusion that America remains the yeoman