Society

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Darling announces 10p tax compensation

Alistair Darling’s just delivered a statment to the Commons, outlining measures to help those hit by the abolition of the 10p tax band.  In short: the personal tax allowance will be increased by £600 to £6,035, and this will be paid for by increased borrowing.  This is, says Darling, “the simplest and most effective” course of action. Of course, it’s the economics of a mad-house – announcing a tax policy in one Budget, only to run up more debt nullifying its effects just one year later.  But as Nick Robinson points out, Darling’s move could be the first bit of good news that Labour have had in weeks.  After all, it should draw

Peter Hoskin

Gaffe Central

Is anything going right for this Government at the moment?  The latest gaffe: Caroline Flint revealing the front page of an internal Cabinet memo on housing to waiting photographers.  They dutifully snapped an image, and now we know the Government thinks house prices will drop by around 10 percent this year.  As the Sun quite rightly points out, this could trigger a price crash all by itself.  Anyway, thanks to Flint, you can read it for yourselves:

Peter Hoskin

A bleak outlook

Gloomy reading on the cover of the FT this morning – apparently, our economy’s heading ever more swiftly to stagnation and slowdown. New data reveals that confidence in the housing market has hit “rock bottom”; retail spending is dropping; and inflation is sky-rocketing. A dangerous, fiscal cocktail, indeed. Of course, it’s far from good news for the Prime Minister. On a straightforward level, it makes his job more difficult – it’s so much easier to reign when the economy’s booming – but it may also make it untenable. As Fraser noted the other day – and as Peter Riddell writes in today’s Times – people are turning against Brown over

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When the ASBO generation go to chokey, do they get to keep their hooded robes?

Elsewhere in Britain, it’s good to see a much-hounded, misunderstood minority finally getting their due: Hundreds of Pagan worshippers locked up in British jails have been given the right to take twigs into their cells to use as magic wands. The ruling, which also allows hoodless robes and rune stones, was made to ensure the 300 or so Pagans currently serving sentences have the same rights as other religions. The permission to use the “religious artefacts” was agreed after consultation with the Pagan Federation which advised the prison service on what equipment its members needed. This, via Political Umpire whose choice of prison reading is, as you might expect, impeccable.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Most Over-Rated US Presidents

Here’s the core finding of our quest to discover the Most Over-Rated and Most Under-Rated Presidents in US history: history has pegged Herbert Hoover absolutely right. Hoover was the only 20th century president who did not receive a single vote in either category. Uniquely amongst modern presidents, Hoover draws no controversy. He is the rock* upon which our survey can be built, the constant, universal dividing line between those who are over-rated and those whom history has foolishly frowned upon. There was, I’m pleased to say, a healthy response. Equally happily the voting sample was reasonably evenly divided between conservatives and liberals with a fair sprinkling of libertarians and non-Americans

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Most Under-Rated US Presidents

If the race to be considered the Most Over-Rated President in American history was won at a canter by Ronald Wilson Reagan, there was a much keener contest to earn the title Most Under-Rated president. No fewer than 36 of the 42 men to have held the post received votes in this ballot. As before, ballots were scored on a 3,2,1 points system (three for most under-rated etc). If no order of preference was specified, each nominee was awarded 2 points. The results are given thus: total number of points collected, followed, in brackets, by each man’s ranking in the Wall Street Journal’s 2005 survey of historians. THE MOST UNDER-RATED

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Do taxes save lives?

I was taken aback the other day to see a Christian Aid poster about poverty, rather than their usual agenda of climate change and anti-capitalism. Then it dawned on me: it’s Christian Aid week, where they put collection boxes in churches. But they could not resist a report today entitled “death and taxes” in which they say that companies reducing their tax liability – “legally or illegally” – are actually killing people in so doing. High tax, apparently, saves lives. ‘We predict that illegal, trade-related tax evasion alone will be responsible for the deaths of some 5.6m children under the age of five between 2000 and 2015,’ says Christian Aid

The Spectator

More misery ahead for consumers

Head over to Trading Floor for an update on consumer prospects.  As Fraser reports, food inflation’s getting worse, whilst Pete picks up on a similar story for energy prices. And – on a different note – what do Russians think they need for making a fortune?  According to a new survey – highlighted by James – the answer’s criminal and political connections.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A city transformed

Today’s New York Times details just how much progress has been made in Basra since Iraqi government forces launched a push to restore order in the city. It is hard to over-state the importance of the apparent success of this southern surge. Basra has 40 percent of the country’s oil reserves and stability there is a necessary condition for the country’s economic reconstruction. Equally, the internecine Shiite strife there threatened the political future of Iraq.  The success of the surge in Basra does, though, highlight just how flawed British military strategy there has been. The British approach failed to prevent the descent of the city into lawlessness and in many

James Forsyth James Forsyth

1.2 trillion reasons Brown deserves to lose the next election

Trevor Kavanagh’s column in The Sun today brilliantly details the way that £1.229 trillion has been added to the public’s tab over the last ten years—an astonishing £20,500 extra per person. 87 percent and 90 percent increases in health and education spending respectively have not resulted in the transformation of these services. Indeed, all it has done is test to destruction the idea that all these services needed was more money. (Kavanagh’s figures come from this new book) The great tragedy of the last decade is how little the country has to show for a decade of phenomenally benign economic conditions. Much of, if not most of, the blame for

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Most Preposterous Thing I’ve Read All Week…

And amazingly, it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. No, it’s Rangers’ Christian Dailly who, having seen the referee keep the Ibrox club’s SPL title ambitions alive yesterday had the effrontery, the gall, the unmitigated audacity to claim: that since arriving at Ibrox in January he has formed the impression that Rangers are more often on the wrong end of decisions. “There have been lots of decisions not given that should have been given in our favour,” he said. “It looks like a couple went our way today, but that is not the norm.” Words fail me. American readers may consider that this is akin to Michael Jordan complaining

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Irn Bru For Me And You

Irn Bru – the fabled amber nectar of the glens, the monarch of the fizzy pop world – has always been distinguished by the quality of its advertisements. Happily, this latest one, a take on Kipling’s If, is just as quirky and oddly charming as we’ve come to expect. Top stuff. It used to be said – with pride! – that Scotland was one of the few countries in the world in which both Coca-Cola and Pepsi had to give way to a market-leading indigenous pop. If memory serves this disconcerted the bosses in Atlanta, stinging them into setting up a scottish task force to topple Irn Bru. Clearly, this

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 10 May 2008

Israel and Palestine Sir: Melanie Phillips (‘Happy 60th birthday, Israel’, 3 May) denies Israel one of its greatest successes over the last 60 years by deliberately ignoring its status as a regional military and economic superpower. The image of Israel as a David to an Arab Goliath is massively outdated. Arab states have long since given up any notion of trying to defeat a US-backed, nuclear-armed Israel, but have offered Israel a full withdrawal for full peace option. Another blind spot is Phillips’s routine denial of Palestinian identity. This is as idiotic as denying an Israeli identity. Even Israel’s leaders have begrudgingly accepted this. In addition, she continually condones all

Jeremy Clarke

Train strain

Bank holiday Saturday afternoon and I’m standing in a jam-packed railway carriage bound for Cardiff in Wales. If I lift my head, my face is in my nearest neighbour’s face, so I’m contemplating my feet. A Welsh woman somewhere is holding a long and intimate telephone conversation in a voice loud enough for all in the carriage to follow it. ‘My little one-stop shop? Is that what he called me? I’ll kill him. If I’m his little one-stop shop, then he’s Kwik Fit — and you can tell him I said that.’ I’m going to Cardiff to look at a Citroën Picasso. I’ve just looked over one at Southampton, but

Melissa Kite

A snag or two

Once a year, usually at the beginning of summer, it suddenly occurs to me that the entire house is about to fall down. The realisation that every job I’ve allowed to accumulate is about to visit disaster on me — my DIY judgment day — usually occurs around the May bank holiday when the air is filled with the sound of good people drilling. This year I knew the day of reckoning had come as soon as I opened my eyes. I looked to the left and my giant black rabbit BB was sitting on the bed chewing through my mobile-phone headset, his mouth full of wires disappearing upwards like

Taki

Make or break

I am heartbroken but for once it is not over a girl. I have to stay in the Bagel, hence missing The Spectator’s 180th anniversary party, Pug’s club’s first annual meeting in our new digs, Countess Bismarck’s dinner, Nick Scott’s shindig, and so on. Not having set foot in London in months, I was looking forward to it, but it’s not to be. I should be celebrating because one of the reasons I didn’t like living in London any more was Ken Livingstone. Now he’s voted out, Taki can come back in — it’s as simple as that. One thing is for sure. London could do with a makeover. Better

Frances Osborne

Diary – 10 May 2008

On Monday morning I am outwitted by my four-year-old daughter, who manages to leave for school in a light cotton dress on a phenomenally cold and wet spring day. That night I therefore take myself to Chelsea Town Hall for the launch of The Seven Secrets of Parenting: Or How to Achieve the Almost Impossible. I pick up a copy and read ‘Ditch the guilt’. Sold. On to the Getty Images Gallery for a campaign to find adoptive parents for thousands of British children. The photographer Cambridge Jones, himself adopted at the age of two, has joined forces with Barnardo’s and a host of celebrities to put together portraits of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 10 May 2008

The growing power of Islam in Britain has forced the British public to learn more about its component parts — Sunnis and Shiites, Deobandis and Barelwis, and so on. By the same token, I feel it is time for a more thorough understanding of Etonians as they start their reconquista of our country. They divide into two groups — Collegers and Oppidans. At any one time, there are only 70 Collegers and more than 1,200 Oppidans, but Collegers are scholars and represent the original purpose of the foundation, so they have an importance beyond their numbers. Collegers tend to live off their wits, Oppidans off their inheritance. Oppidans are more

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 10 May 2008

Monday Hooray! Britain is going Conservative crazy!! The sun is shining and all over the country people are waking up to the exciting new force in British politics!!! Actually, I haven’t really woken up. Am still hungover from the Boris victory party. Have champagne headache, cigar sore throat and strange blotches all over my left leg which I seem to remember involved an accident with an ice sculpture. Also think may have had row later in the evening at after-party party with horrid lefty columnist (why does Dave insist on inviting them?) who dared to claim we were ‘The Same Old Tories’. Assured him there was nothing ‘the same’ about

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 10 May 2008

Q. Please advise me. I have a friend whose mobile has no signal when she is at home. When I ring her landline her father always says he will pass the message on that I have rung but he often forgets. She does not call me back and I do not like to annoy her father by ringing again in case she is still not in. He always says, ‘No problem. I’ll make sure she gets the message,’ but he always seems to forget. P.W., Wiltshire A. Say ‘Would it be all right if I call back in a bit? I’m going somewhere where there is no signal so she