Society

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Drudge Breaks Media Silence on Princes Mission

A defence* of Royalty: Prince Harry in Afghanistan. Oddly stirring stuff, actually. Good for him and, amazingly, good for the MoD and the media for ensuring that the Prince’s comrades were not endangered by his presence on the front line becoming a matter of public knowledge until now. UPDATE: Fraser says some of the most prominent British bloggers knew of Harry’s deployment and kept the news to themselves too. This ain’t a new media vs old media tussle, it’s common sense and, in this instance, a certain courtesy to a young soldier who wants to serve his country without imperiling his comrades. Nothing significant is gained by “breaking” an agreed

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lessons from the Tomb Raider

It’s easy, of course, to mock actors and pop stars and their worthy pretensions to saving the planet. But whatever else one may say of her, I think it’s true that Angelina Jolie takes her role as a UNHCR “ambassador” more seriously than most. Anyway, she has an interesting and persuasive op-ed in the Washington Post today: My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis. Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United

Johan Wennstrm

Swedish lessons

As one of the many conservatives who cast his vote for Sweden’s centre-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in September 2006, I found it uplifting to read the speech he gave at the LSE on Tuesday night. It included a number of controversial but important statements. He said the root of Sweden’s problems, economic and educational, is the radical ‘socialist’ policies which ‘swept over Swedish society’ in the 1970’s; policies that were about ‘questioning free enterprise’ and ‘sharp tax rises’. Unfortunately, Reinfeldt has never dared to say this in front a Swedish audience. His government has put the brakes on the rising unemployment figures by making it more profitable to work,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Depositing pain

The decision by Lloyds TSB to stop offering mortgages to anyone who has a deposit of less the 10% opens up what could be a striking divergence in fortunes.  Those with enough equity will not really notice the impact of the credit crunch. First Direct, for example, was recently offering a 4.75% fix to those with more than 25% equity. It is to the poorer that loan rates will shoot skywards.  So Middle England may not notice the crunch, or any slide in its property prices. The pain will be felt, and repossessions visited, on those without a parental nest egg to deposit. And this pain may well not be picked

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Thinking of Afghanistan

Prince Harry’s brave service in Afghanistan should make us all think more about that country, the forgotten front in the war on terror. As Roger Cohen points out in The New York Times, Europe’s commitment to it has been pitiful. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO secretary general, concedes that the alliance is 10 percent short of its requirement. While the febrile nature of the political situation is summed up by the fact that,  “Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been getting daily calls from Afghan politicians urging him to run for president next year.”

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tiger vs Roger?

Ah, the great Tiger Woods vs Roger Federer debate continues. Muttblog suggests most scribblers taking part in this Slam-Fest plump for Woods as, comparatively speaking, the greater of the two. He highlights this Steve Sailor post which makes some salient points. The fact that each sport contains four majors each year allows for superficial but misleading comparisons. Take this Michael Wilbon column for instance: Excuse me, but Roger Federer’s recent stretch of dominance, impressive by any historical standard for tennis, doesn’t come close to Tiger’s. Winning a tennis tournament requires beating six opponents, not the field. Tiger doesn’t ever have the luxury of having another opponent take out, say, Mickelson

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

520 abortions every day

I would have missed this ONS study had it not been to the very last line in the Guardian’s story about the number of over-40s giving birth. “In other findings, conceptions outside marriage increased from 47% to 56%,” it said.  Now, I’ve blogged before about most births (amongst non-immigrants) being outside marriage this year for the first time, but it turns out it has long been true for conceptions. One figure too grim for newspapers to print: of the 866,000 conceived in Britain in 2006, just 78% made it to the maternity ward. Our abortion rate is 22%.  The ONS study doesn’t include miscarriages or illegal abortions, thus magnifying the

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Klansmen for Barack?

Mike Crowley has a very droll piece in this week’s TNR on how white supremacists seem a) resigned to a President Obama and b) relatively OK with that. It’s a testament of sorts to Hillary Clinton that, by virtue of her cartoonish image as a leftist man-hating shrew, she manages to arouse more vitriol among white supremacists than a black man. Meanwhile, white racists absolutely despise John McCain for his support of George W. Bush’s immigration reform plan, which they view as a dire threat to America’s European-based culture. “I don’t think Obama will be any more negative for the United States than Hillary or John McCain,” explains [David] Duke.

Peter Hoskin

A blessing in disguise

The Today Programme’s interview with Hector Sants – the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority – is well-worth listening to. His message is that the credit crunch will change banking “forever”, and that never again will money be available so cheaply. At first, the words seem doom-laden, but Sants puts a positive spin on them.  Yes, there will be short-term difficulties – he says – but eventually people will adjust to the long-term unavailability of easy money and fast credit.  The result?  Excessive borrowing will become a thing-of-the-past, and the UK can finally leap from the swamp of debt it’s currently mired in.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Made in Sweden: the new Tory education revolution

Fraser Nelson reports on the radical Swedish system of independent state schools, financed by vouchers, that has transformed the country’s education performance and is now inspiring the Conservative party’s dramatic blueprint for British schools: to set them free This summer, at least 25,000 children will drop out of English schools without a single qualification to show for their years of compulsory education. Some 240,000 will graduate from primary school unable to read or write properly. By autumn, some 250 schools judged to be failing will welcome an intake of new pupils. Youth unemployment will probably hit an 11-year high. It will, tragically, be just another year in one of the

George Trefgarne

Darling has offered an incentive for chicanery

Imagine the scene at around 10 p.m. last Thursday night in the private apartments at Buckingham Palace. It could well have been past normal bedtime for the Queen and Prince Philip, but they were sitting up — perhaps aided by a scotch and water or some camomile tea — waiting so that Her Majesty could give gracious assent to the Banking (Special Provisions) Bill, then being rushed through the Commons. The Queen no longer actually signs Acts of Parliament. Instead she puts her ‘sign manual’ on Letters Patent, which serves the same legal purpose of transforming a Bill into law. Even so, one cannot help feeling that this truncated ceremony

Paul Johnson

And Another Thing | 27 February 2008

It is said that when the British public is asked, ‘What is your favourite poem?’, the one chosen by most people is Kipling’s ‘If’. Is there any evidence for this? And is it still true? And what would the Americans choose? Walt Whitman’s ‘Captain’? No, obviously not. But then what? Longfellow’s ‘The Ship’, I hope. Musing on these things, I decided to compile a list of the best ten short poems in English. That is, my favourite ten: I stake no claims to canonical authority. Here is the result, in no strict chronological order, but according to whim. First I would pick Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, because it illustrates perfectly the

Matthew Dancona

Charlie does surf. Meet the new wizard of the web

Charles Leadbeater tells Matthew d’Ancona about the riches to be mined from online collaboration — and says that the Conservatives have a chance to launch a new form of politics The man who brought you Bridget Jones is, you might think, an unlikely guide to the deeper philosophical and cultural meaning of the web. But, as he sips his tea in the kitchen of his Highbury mews home, Charles Leadbeater makes an extremely convincing magus of the online revolution and the new world of Web 2.0. ‘The thing that interests me is not the technology, but what people try to do with it,’ he says, ‘and why they want to

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Not all roads lead to London

Megan notes that there are now more than three million Britons living abroad and argues: I assume this has something to do with the fact that it is very easy for Britons to go to wealthy, English-speaking countries, and also that there’s a relative lack of migration opportunities in Britain. If you’re American or Australian, you can always pick up and try another city, but in Britain, you mostly move to London or you . . . move to London. This is an exaggeration, of course, but there’s nothing like the ability to say, “You know what, things aren’t going so well in Boston, so I’m moving to LA.” If

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Country for Old Men?

Looking at Americans’ desire to elect a 72-year old John McCain president, David Harsanyi digs up the story of William Henry Harrison – the President who one may fairly say obeyed the First, Do No Harm principle. True, Harrison neglected to look after himself but his administration did less damage than any other in American history: At 68, William Henry Harrison was the country’s second-oldest president. A war hero, “Granny Harrison,” as his opponents called him, was a tough cat. After winning the presidency, he stood outside on a miserably frigid and damp Washington day to deliver the longest inaugural address — more than 8,400 words — in American history.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Fidel: Forever In Our Hearts…

Commenting on this post about Fidel Castro’s welcome retirement, a reader wrote, quoting part of my argument: “If conservatives – on both sides of the North Atlantic – were too ready to turn a blind eye to Pinochet’s crimes, left-wingers have been equally credulous with regard to Castro’s Cuban dictatorship.” When Pinochet died, Jonah Goldberg and I had an email back-and-forth about this very claim. I dispute that the level of admiration for Castro on the left is anything approaching the right’s support for Pinochet. Only among the most extreme, throwback lefties would you find a good word for man. Compare with Pinochet, who received so many kind words from

The Spectator

Intelligence Squared debate: All schools, state as well as private, should be allowed to select their own pupils

Just a reminder that the latest Spectator/Intelligence Squared debate – “All schools, state as well as private should be allowed to select their own pupils” – begins at 18:45 tonight. The speakers for the motion are Professor Chris Woodhead, the former Chief Inspector of Schools; Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul’s School; and the Rt Hon Lord Tebbit.  Whilst those against it include the renowned journalist Fiona Millar; William Atkinson, the Headteacher of Phoenix High School; and the Rt Hon David Blunkett MP The debate will be chaired by the broadcaster Joan Bakewell.  Spectator.co.uk visitors will be able to listen to live audio of the event.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Splitting Brownies

We’re on the last couple of days for collecting entries for the Gordon Brown’s book of fibs, but we haven’t quite decided what to call his embellishments. Many of you say he lies, and we should call a lie by its name. But Brown normally operates by the misleading presentation of a real fact. Unemployment is at a 30-year low, for example, if you just look at claimant count and forget the 5m languishing on other benefits. (This is Brown’s “false proxy” technique, where he gives claimant count as a proxy for joblessness when this long ago ceased to be the case.) So are we talking about Fibs? Brownies? Porkies?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Building Down

There’s a fascinating piece in The Times today arguing that rather than building ever upwards in London we should bore down. Certainly, the idea of putting some of London’s hideously congested roads, the slowest in Europe, underground is appealing.  Kit Malthouse points out that if the Hyde Park interchange was to go below ground then “the three great parks of Central London could be united. You could walk from Parliament Square to Queensway, about three miles, without crossing a road. Park Lane would be freed up for redevelopment, and a grand new public square could be created at Marble Arch.” My reservation is that we don’t do big projects particularly