Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Polls say Brown should go

UK Polling Report points us to the details of the YouGov poll for the News of the World which put the Tories 46-26 ahead of Labour. What should worry Brown more than the headline figures is that voters of all parties would be more likely to vote Labour if Brown was not leader. Among the electorate as a whole 21 percent say they’d be more to likely to do so if Brown went while 7 percent say they would be less likely to do so. The net figures among Tory supporters is plus 14, plus 16 for Lib Dems and plus eight even amongst the 26 per cent who currently

Brian Cullen

Boom then bust leaves Labour no leg to stand on

There’s something funny in Gordon Brown’s (and the Labour Party’s generally) political response to the economic crisis – which Larry Elliott picks up on in today’s Guardian.  Elliott points out  – rightly – that the “bust” we’re currently experiencing, accompanied by reckless behaviour in the City, should be prime political real estate for Brown et al.:  “this is a time made for a party of the left prepared to intervene to tame the wild excesses of deregulated financial markets and to use the full armoury of the state to help all its citizens through troubled times.” While I don’t think the solution to the current woes is excessive government meddling

Peter Hoskin

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 11 August – 17 August

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall.  For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – provided your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Peter Hoskin

A debate on accountability is long overdue

Ed Balls’ article in today’s Independent is yet more of the same accountability-dodging over the recent Sats scandal.  Rather than apologising, he returns to the tired “I share your frustration” mantra, as though that absolves him of any blame.  He does, though, let us know what we can hold him accountable for: “So when this newspaper calls for me to be held account, as it did last week, and demanded to know my plans to improve children’s education, I say that test results are crucial to my accountability – as well as that of local authorities and individual governing bodies.” Does anyone think we can actually hold Balls to this?  Rightly or wrongly, there are numerous ways to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Russia’s distortions of the truth

This report from the Moscow Times gives a flavour for how Russian television is covering the crisis: “Russian television is flush with footage of misery left by the Georgian assault in the separatist district of South Ossetia, but few, if any, reports mention Russia’s bombing of Georgia. William Dunbar, a correspondent in Georgia for English-language state channel Russia Today, mentioned the bombing in a report Saturday, and he has not gone on air for the station since. ‘I had a series of live, video satellite links scheduled for later that day, and they were canceled by Russia Today,’ he said by telephone from Tbilisi on Sunday. ‘The real news, the

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 11 August 2008

…here are some of the posts made over the weekend on Spectator.co.uk: Tim Hedges, in the first ever Sunday Essay, explores the state of Italy today.  Kaz Mochlinski looks beyond the façade in his eyewitness analysis of the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing.  Peter Hoskin reveals what Polly Toynbee doesn’t get, and wonders whether Gordon Brown intends to use “Britishness” as a rallying call.  And James Forsyth warns against accepting Russia’s attempts to exert suzerainty over its neighbours.  

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

More Trouble in the Caucasus

Clumsy. Stupid. Counter-productive. Russian policy in Georgia has moved into a new phase. As I suggested yesterday, the Russians now seem determined to answer a Georgian miscalculation with one of their own. Yes, Russia is projecting “strength” by moving into indisputably Georgian territory, but at what cost? It may be that the Russians don’t give a fig about what the West thinks, but in the longer run it seems that toppling Sakaashvili is an unnecessary over-reaction. Once the Georgians had offered their ceasefire (or been driven out of South Ossetia) a more prudent Russian response might have been to accept this. There’s much to be said for quitting while you’re

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Georgia should not be forced to accept Russian suzerainty

Russian ground forces are now moving on Gori, a Georgian city outside of South Osseti. This marks a major escalation in this conflict. Russia’s behaviour in the past few days—most notably, the bombing of Georgian energy pipelines far away from either South Ossetia or Abkhazia and its lack of interest in a proposed ceasefire—have demonstrated that Russia’s actions are not really about South Ossetia but about an attempt to force countries in its ‘near abroad’ to accept Russian hegemony. It would be an error both strategically and morally to accept that Russia is entitled to exercise this kind of suzerainty over its neighbours. The disputes over South Ossetia and Abkhazia

Tim Hedges

The Sunday Essay: The state of Italy

Many thanks – and congratulations – to Tim Hedges for providing the first Sunday Essay.  Thanks also to every other CoffeeHouser who sent in a submission.  If the various authors don’t mind, we’ll consider some of those submissions for future Sundays.  If any other CoffeeHousers would like to submit an essay, please click here for further information – Pete Hoskin  Italy has had more written about it in the European and American press this year than at any time since 1994 (the year of the ‘mani pulite’ clear out of the old political order and emergence of Berlusconi as a political figure). The reason is Berlusconi’s third government, elected in April with a working majority: the foreign media

Kaz Mochlinski

The Olympic Games get under way

Beijing looks so much better at night. The smog that has been enveloping the city by day is far less visible after the heavens darken. Street lights penetrate the gloom and the rainbow colours of innumerable neon advertising signs along the skyline are reflected in the glass-dominated structures of newly-built skyscrapers. The National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, glows red after dusk. And the Water Cube aquatics venue, across the Olympic Green, turns a brilliant blue. But there has probably never been a light show like the one that illuminated Beijing to mark the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games. Fireworks from the Great Wall outside the city through Tiananmen

Saturday

Alex James

Slow Life | 9 August 2008

Colin wanted to meet me in Aldsworth. I’d never heard of it but it was only about five miles away, between where I got married and where the reception was. Colin was the guy behind the British Mars shot a few years back — Colin Pillinger, the man who, given half a chance, could do for science what Damien Hirst has done for art: popularise, subvert and sophisticate at a stroke. You may remember his spacecraft Beagle 2 crash-landed on Mars on Christmas Day 2003. Space science is the great adventure of the 21st century. The first man on Mars has been born, no doubt about it. Colin knows that.

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 9 August 2008

As we went in, our hostess mentioned that the restaurant had three Michelin stars, but at 78 years of age the chef felt he would rather live without the daily pressure of living up to three stars and had requested Michelin to reduce it to two. We were shown to our table and I chose to sit with my back to the large picture window, through which could be seen half a dozen mountains and a couple of lakes, and faced instead a blank wall. I thought I’d let others enjoy the view as we ate. But virtue has its own rewards, and after a few moments this blank wall

Taki

High Life | 9 August 2008

On board S/Y Bushido Sailing into Athens, renamed ‘cemento-polis’ by green-loving Athenians, can be a traumatic experience, for one’s crew, that is. Coming in from the west, crossing Pireaus, my German cook Daniel could not believe his eyes. ‘Was ist das? Das ist furchtbar, abscheulich!’ Daniel is young, a very good cook and as good a pick-up artist as I have come across in my travels. His specialities are English and Dutch girls. ‘I know you will not like me because I’m German but you will come on board for a drink…ja?’ Piraeus now looks like the Albanian coast, without a single tree or bush to relieve the eye from

Robin Oakley

The Turf | 9 August 2008

Where there’s a will . . . Observing a short-eared owl beating over the marshes like a huge, predatory moth, an osprey finishing off the fish meal he had snatched a few minutes before from Loch Don, an otter carrying home his supper across a rippling inlet were highlights of a few days on the Isle of Mull this week. But the most illuminating moment was watching a kestrel twisting and diving in aerial combat with a buzzard. The buzzard was three times his size but it was the smaller raptor who performed the aerobatic equivalent of kicking sand in the big fella’s face. Finally the buzzard flapped off with

The Spectator

Letters | 9 August 2008

Part-time heroes Sir: I noted with interest the article about ‘lazy firemen’ (‘Britain’s firefighters are underworked and inflexible’, 26 July). I am Lincolnshire’s Chief Fire Officer with more than 35 years’ service, and though there was much truth in what Leo McKinstry said, what he failed to address was the progress made by many fire authorities with part-time staff who are not represented in the unions castigated in your article. More than half of my fire stations employ part-time staff who respond to the most urgent medical emergencies either in a car or in a fire engine and provide immediate life-saving intervention while the professionally qualified paramedics are en route.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 9 August 2008

Q. My daughter has left her appalling husband and come to live with me while her new house is being made ready. Today a parcel arrived with the usual sort of impenetrable wrapping which needs to be cut through with secateurs. I attacked the packaging with gusto and threw it on to the fire. Only then did I see the delivery note which showed that the parcel was not for me but for my daughter. Inside was a battery-driven ‘erotic aid’. Clearly I cannot mortify my daughter by handing her the device, but nor can I repackage it and put it through the post again as it would then be

Clemency Burtonhill

Diary – 9 August 2008

One of the great adventures of being an actor is filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city’s fabric rather than floating along its surface. This, then, comes to you from glorious, sweltering Rome, or more precisely from the Cavalieri Hilton, whose view over this ancient, unreal city, is quite breathtaking. I’m here doing costume fittings for The Red Priest, a movie shooting later this summer. Luca, my tailor at Farani, the historical costumiers, is clearly a genius but has perhaps something of the demonic about him. As he laces my 18th-century corset,

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 9 August 2008

Those Miliband boys are clever. I was trying to discover what they stood for, and I thought I’d found something interesting in a speech by Ed Miliband. Then I realised I was mistaken. ‘I want a society where there is intergenerational equity,’ he said in a speech to Compass (not the investor and analyst group of that name but the ‘membership organisation promoting left-wing debate in modern Britain’). Perhaps the investment red herring made me think that ‘intergenerational equity’ meant leaving property to one’s children, without having it confiscated by death duties. No such luck. To Ed’s interlocutors, ‘intergenerational equity’ is to do with ‘sustainable development’, global warming and all

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 9 August 2008

At first, I thought the reason the British Consul General in Los Angeles had agreed to have lunch with me was because he knew who I was. Before setting off on my annual pilgrimage to Hollywood, I had emailed Bob Peirce to see if he might be able to squeeze in a quick drink. I was interested in chatting to him about BritWeek, an annual celebration of the Old Country that he inaugurated last year. To my astonishment, he suggested we have lunch at the Four Seasons, the grandest hotel in Beverly Hills. ‘Perhaps he’s read one of my books,’ I thought. It didn’t take long for the scales to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 9 August 2008

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been rather belittled on his death. Not knowing any Russian, I cannot judge his prose style, but when people complain that he was unrelentingly serious, they are applying the wrong criteria. Solzhenitsyn was prophetic, and obsessed with truth-telling in a world of lies. His mission led him to believe that no time must be wasted, no compromises made. This made him difficult in some ways, in literature and in life, but what of it? His compassion consisted of what the word really means — a suffering with others — rather than an easy friendliness. No doubt Isaiah and Ezekiel were potentially tricky dinner companions, but then they