Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Rod Liddle takes on green taxes

In this week’s magazine, Rod Liddle provides a brilliantly acerbic take on the Government’s green agenda.  Here’s the bottom line: “The truth is, I suspect, that you can ‘prove’ almost any old rubbish to be environmentally sound or otherwise — the science is so inexact and so open to manipulation. This isn’t an excuse for doing nothing, but it is a good reason for suspecting the motives of any and all politicians when they use the word ‘green’. It is beginning to be seen as a gigantic con perpetrated against the very people who can least afford it.”. You can read, and comment on, the full article here.

Matthew Dancona

10 years after the US embassy attacks, al Qaeda is winning

Nothing on God’s Earth would persuade me to wish al Qaeda a “Happy Anniversary”, ten years to the day since its simultaneous attacks on US Embassies in the East African capital cities of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, at the cost of more than 200 lives, most of them African civilians. Are they winning? Sadly, I think they are. The operational strength of AQ and its affiliates ebbs and flows – that is in the nature of a global franchise that has moved beyond the old-fashioned IRA cellular structure to something much looser and more organic. But the West has undoubtedly marched into the elephant trap dug by Osama bin Laden.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Paris Hilton’s Energy Policy

Give her publicist a medal. Seriously. Did the entire campaign just jump the shark? See Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad and more funny videos on FunnyOrDie.com See more funny videos at Funny or Die I think it may have. (Thanks for the tip, via Facebook, GFR)

Brian Cullen

Is French reconciliation with Rwanda possible?

Yesterday Iain Dale wrote that the only French response to a new report on the Rwandan genocide – which implicates former president Francois Mitterand and ex-prime minister Dominique de Villepin – would be for Nicolas Sarkozy to fly to Kigali to apologise. He shouldn’t hold his breath.  Ever since the event, France has been wholly reluctant to acknowledge any role in the tragedy – or make any sort of apology.  This has been true regardless of the administration in power, and there’s no reason to think Sarkozy would behave much differently.  The 1994 genocide shames all the western nations who could have wielded influence to end it – regardless of

Peter Hoskin

Riddled with vermin

There are few blunter indictments of this Government’s mismanagement of the health service than the news that numerous hospitals are ‘infested with vermin’. Over £90 billion of public money has been splashed on the health service in the past year alone – in real terms, that’s double what was spent on it in 1999. For all that so-called investment, you’d think we’d get cleanliness and hygiene in our hospitals. Instead, we’ve had rats, maggots and superbugs. The NHS is 60 this year. As a birthday present, Labour’s dragged it through the muck.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

All these green taxes and rules are just witless nods to fashion

The measures on ‘gas-guzzling’ cars, policing of wheelie bins and surcharges on plastic bags are based on scientific fads and, often, the government’s greed for taxpayers’ money, says Rod Liddle. The Third World won’t pay the price, and nor will big business — but we will For one weekend each year every beach in this peaceful part of the world is taken over by gypsies, and the locals (and the handful of Western tourists) steer well clear and lock up their possessions, daughters, etc. I wandered along the shoreline of one previously idyllic cove just as the pikeys were packing up to leave on Sunday evening. And I had a

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 6 August 2008

Splendours and miseries of the Queen’s English in the 21st century The wonderful thing about language, and especially English, with its enormous vocabulary, is the existence of groups of words with broadly similar meanings but each of which conveys something slightly different. Such subtle distinctions add to the richness of meaning, in speech and writing, and to the pleasure of using words. And the sense changes over time, as historic events add moral overtones or undertones to particular words. Take, for instance, the group of words meaning ‘friend’, of which there are about 30 or 40. None is exactly interchangeable. Many have undergone osmosis even in our own lifetime. Some

Martin Rowson

‘I’m not an ambassador for New Labour, I’m an MP’

When I came to play back the recording of my recent interview with Bob Marshall-Andrews, the serially rebellious Labour MP for Medway, for a second or two my blood ran cold. As I remembered it, while I’d been drawing him we’d had a wide-ranging conversation about Blair, Brown, socialism, globalisation, MPs’ allowances, the constitution, the judiciary, the media and society at large. But instead of all that my tape started halfway through a long, rambling and very funny anecdote about a hotel where Marshall-Andrews had once stayed in Wales. My contributions, meanwhile, seemed to consist solely of monosyllabic grunts, occasional barks of laughter and increasingly frequent protestations that I must

M R-D-Foot

Letters from the Front

A wide gap has opened up between British military historians who work on the world war of 1914-18 and the mass of British schoolteachers who take it in school history classes. The teachers, impressed by the poetry of Sassoon and Owen, follow what may be called the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ school of Alan Clark, and regard the war as a colossal waste of men and effort. More and more of the military historians, led by Brian Bond, now appreciate that British commanders in those years contended well with the unprecedented difficulties of industrial war, and deserve credit rather than contempt. Peter Hart, who has soaked himself for a decade

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The West Indian Draft

Readers awaiting the announcement of my M XI of test cricketers should fret not. It will appear. And soon. In the meantime the estimable Norm has challenged me to a game of fantasy cricket. As he explains, the idea is that we shall each select a side, playground style and then see how the XIs may match up against one another in a subsequent, enjoyably imaginary, series. You can follow – as I imagine you’ll want to – the game here and at Norm’s place.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why is the race so close?

It’s August and there are still acres of newsprint and hours of newstime to be filled. Something has to be published or aired. And in any case everyone agrees that we need a new storyline, right? So what’s it to be? The obvious answer – and the one selected by thirsty hacks desperate for any refreshment during the dog days of summer – is Why isn’t Barack Obama Doing Better? Happily a couple of national tracking polls have popped up that show McCain and Obama more or less tied. Juicy stuff that will furnish at least a week’s worth of breathless commentary… And nor is it just conservatives who are

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Markets

The US Army is proposing to pay Arabic-speaking recruits bonuses of $150,000. James Joyner explains how this situation is largely one of the Army’s own-making, dating back more than a dozen years.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

FBK Kaunas 2 Rangers 1

There’s no need for the Scottish football league to kick-off on Saturday. Cancel it. The season can’t* get better or more more amusing than this. *OK, it can. It would be too perfect, even too much to hope for, if Celtic were also turfed out of europe in their first match. Ah, sweet, sweet schadenfreude how I love you so…

Peter Hoskin

Has Harman got it right?

Harriet Harman’s spotted the obvious answer to the problem of MPs employing their children, Derek Conway-style – her consultation document recommends banning the practice altogether.  Of course, any effort to slow the gravy train should be welcomed, but Harman’s proposal is only the smallest of speed bumps.  MPs would still be able to employ their spouses and partners.  And that’s before the honourable members start thinking creatively.  How long, I wonder, before they’d hit on the idea of employing each other’s kids?

Sean Martin

There’s more to it than lads’ mags

Michael Gove got a whole lot of coverage – much of it less than enthusiastic – about his proclamations on lads’ mags, such as Nuts and Zoo, yesterday. And that’s escalated today with Recess Monkey’s embarrassing discovery that Gove received funding from a company involved in the production of Nuts TV. It’s a shame that’s been the focus. After all, the rest of his speech was yet another excellent attack on the Government’s centralising education policy, and expertly set out the Cameroonian alternative. I’d recommend you read the whole thing – there’s plenty of good stuff in there. Not that I’m suggesting we feel sorry for Gove in this case. Surely, he must have

Peter Hoskin

Does “improvement” mean improvement?

The Sats results have finally been released, and – as the BBC puts it – there has been “a slight improvement” in level 4 results – the level that will be used in creating the school league tables later this year. Meanwhile, here are some findings from a survey of teachers by the think-tank Civitas, released today: — Just 10% of teachers think that Year 7 pupil levels this last school year have been consistent with their Key Stage 2 Sats test results.  — 79% of teachers surveyed think that up to a third of Year 7 pupils’ abilities this last school year have been either ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ lower than their

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

KP replaces MV vs SA

So, as expected, Kevin Pietersen will captain England against South Africa at the Oval. A dubious gamble in my view, given the potential for the captaincy to adversely impact impair (thanks mystery commenter!) his batting, just as it did Michael Vaughan. Then again the selectors ensured that they had very few options, thanks to their criteria. As Geoff Miller said today: “In choosing a new captain, we were keen to identify a player who could lead the team in all three forms of cricket and bring fresh enthusiasm and ideas to the role of captain.” In other words slap and tickle 20/20 cricket helped determine the choice of a captain

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lessons in Punditry

Ross Douthat makes an excellent suggestion: I think it would be an excellent discipline for pundits deeply invested in the ideal of the “independent” politician to attempt, at least once a year, a column praising a public figure for taking an independent, maverick position with which they disagree. Obviously this applies to the blogosphere as well as to the talking heads on TV and newspaper columnists. I don’t think I’d actually agree with all that many of Senator Jim Webb’s positions, for instance, but I admire his willingness to state his mind, free from the cant and humbug in which politicians customarily swaddle their pronouncements.

The Spectator

Spectator.co.uk statistics: July 2008

Here are the July monthly traffic figures for Spectator.co.uk: Unique Users — 197,403 Page Views — 1,886,333 These figures represent an impressive year of growth across the site, and include your favourites: Coffee House, Melanie Phillips’ blog, Stephen Pollard’s blog, Clive Davis’s blog and, of course, the weekly magazine content. Thank you to all of our users for making it possible. Keep an eye out for the exciting new features we will be adding to Spectator.co.uk over the coming months.