There’s a new feature on the Spectator website – Trading Post TV. It’s a weekly video slot, packed with business news, analysis and interviews. The first episode can be found here, although you can also watch it below. Future episodes will be available on the soon-to-be-revamped Business part of the site.
I summarised Radio Four’s “Thought For The Day” as being “Jesus was left-wing too”. Yet a CoffeeHouser says Jesus was the first socialist and has challenged me to find one passage in the Bible suggesting otherwise. My offering is a passage from the First Book of Samuel (okay, pre-Jesus) where God warned him against big government. If the people want a King, the Almighty says, “He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.” A tenth! If only. I suppose if the Almighty suggested the state would consume 41% of national income (Excel, table26) then His followers would not have taken Him seriously. Anyway, I am
The cover story of the international edition of Time is about “Britain’s mean streets”. The article presents a litany of depressing statistics about children in Britain and why we now have so much violent street crime. One of the reasons we have so much bothersome street crime is the police’s attitude to it. Revealingly, Time reports that when a group of central London residents talked to the police about how to deal with a spate of attacks in the neighbourhood they were told: “Don’t go out unless you have to”—which is hardly a solution to the problem. As Clive Davis writes–from personal experience–the attitude of the police to this kind
The opening day of Terminal 5 has been a PR disaster for British Airways. 34 flights have been cancelled and passengers can now only board if they do not check in any bags. In its defence BA is claiming that “We always knew the first day would represent a unique challenge because of the size and complexity of the move into Terminal 5.” But if they knew that problems were so likely, why didn’t they start off with fewer flights? It really is incredible that on the first day they have had such dire problems. One would have thought that BA would have properly stress-tested everything before opening the terminal
Daniel Finkelstein’s already flagged it up, but I thought I’d share this Transport for London ad with CoffeeHousers. It’s really quite good:
Has Times Online just scooped Media Guardian on a media story? Sam Coates has a one-liner in Red Box saying that Steve Richards (one of CoffeeHouse’s favourite columnists from the other side) of the Independent and GMTV is off to replace John Kampfner as editor of the New Statesman. It’s our opposite number in the magazine world, but not really our rival: not many people stand in front of WH Smith going “eeny meeny miny moe” with our two titles. Most folk are inclined one way or the other. So I can sincerely wish Steve good luck – if the rumours are true.
Here’s a short clip of Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to Parliament yesterday. For Matthew’s account of it all, click here.
I wish this surprised or even shocked me. True, this is Dundee, but even so… Six young brothers and sisters face being taken from their parents and put into care because they are overweight. Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months. The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June. The family have also been ordered to
Is this Glenn Reynolds post a plea for more coverage of Tibet or less of Palestine? GOOD QUESTION: Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans? But, just perhaps, the Israel-Palestine question receives lots of coverage because it’s a question, at root, of competing rights, not because the media has an incurably anti-Israeli bias or is, in this instance at any rate, acting in an especially hypocritical fashion. The other answer, of course, is that readers, are much more interested in the Middle East than they are in China and Tibet and, consequently, this is just market forces at work. Shocking!
It’s entirely possible that the research cited in this New York Times story has been corrupted by the fact that it seems to have been sponsored, in part or at “arm’s length” , by a tobacco company. That’s fine. But I would have thought a more useful article would have spent its time demonstrating that this researcher’s conclusions were, on the evidence, bunk rather than seeking to dismiss them on the grounds of where their funding came from. Or, to put it another way, can we expect the NYT, or any other newspaper, to treat smoking-related claims made by government or other branches of the health industry that have just
Nicolas Sarkozy’s address to both Houses of Parliament was a remarkable political performance, bristling with confident charm, and a reminder that, for all his travails, the French President is a politician of the first order. Flanked by his new wife, Carla Bruni, Sarkozy gave a speech that Jacques Chirac or, for that matter, Ségolène Royal would never have countenanced. Most of the content was predictable and unremarkable: homage to Britain’s role in the Second World War, encouragement to this country to be an active participant in the EU, the promise of more French troops for Afghanistan, conciliatory words on CAP reform, calls for cooperation on immigration. Yet the tone was
Over on Americano, I’ve just posted some thoughts on John McCain’s big speech setting out his foreign policy platform. Plus, there’s fascinating polling data on whether Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are too liberal to be president.
“£10 note is at the centre of a crossroads. To the north, there’s Santa Claus. To the west, the Tooth Fairy. To the east, a radical Muslim. To the south, a moderate Muslim. Who reaches the cash first? The radical Muslim, of course – the others don’t exist.” So runs one of the many gags in Mark Steyn’s America Alone. As ever, it makes a deadly serious point: very few moderate Muslims are identifiable and this makes it far easier for Bin Laden to convey his key argument: that there is a clash of civilisations, Islam v The Rest. Two news pieces yesterday threw this into focus: Dean Godson’s piece
I was recently upbraided in this magazine by your High Life columnist, a person I’ve liked and admired for many years, regarding a piece I’d written for Tatler on the ski resort of Gstaad. Taki can sometimes get painfully close to the bone, but he let me off lightly. His point was that I hadn’t understood what made the place tick because only the new-money arrivistes had spoken, as opposed to the chic old lot who had run for the hills. This was an interesting point. I’d assumed that we, not just as a nation but as human beings, had grown out of or at least softened our attitude to
Emily Maitlis reports from Libya on a land newly entranced by our brands — even M&S — where the West tolerates Gaddafi for fear of the insurgent alternative Strange things happen to countries hermetically sealed by their dictators. Under Hoxha, Albanians fell in love with Norman Wisdom. Under Lukashenko, the Belarusians have seen mandatory beauty contests nationwide, and as I arrive at the customs desk of Tripoli airport I realise that under Gaddafi, mirrored aviator sunglasses and big hair have become the de rigueur fashion statement among immigration officials. This is not the cool hand of viral marketing, but the unmistakable grip of a leader who believes imitation is the
On the floor of Alan Milburn’s office is a scroll signed by the Queen offering her ‘well-beloved councillor’ £2,000 to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is a souvenir of his battles in the Blair–Brown days. He was appointed to this position to co-ordinate the last general election campaign, and was briefly seen as the favoured candidate to succeed Tony Blair. This lasted a few weeks: he resigned on election night and has kept an almost suspiciously low profile ever since. ‘I thought the most helpful thing would be for me to keep quiet,’ he says, gazing at Big Ben out of the window of his rooftop office.
Adam Holloway says that Britain’s strategy in Afghanistan is misconceived. Nato’s military presence should be reduced and the battle for hearts and minds fought more imaginatively They do not like the F-word in Whitehall, but failure stares us in the face in southern Afghanistan. For three years we have deluded ourselves that we can defeat the insurgency in the Pashtun tribal belt through our much talked-about plan for a ‘comprehensive approach’ — security, governance and development. But in Helmand province and across the Pashtun lands, violence is greatly increased, governance is distinctly patchy and development is barely noticeable. The government tells us that we are there to stop it becoming
So I see this at The Corner: British Future “Muslims ‘to outnumber traditional churchgoers.’” Score one for Steyn. Interesting (well, sort of) if true! But it turns out that the Telegraph story reports that: The increasing influence of Islam on British culture is disclosed in research today that shows the number of Muslims worshipping at mosques in England and Wales will outstrip the numbers of Roman Catholics going to church in little more than a decade. Projections to be published next month estimate that, if trends continue, the number of Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass will fall to 679,000 by 2020. By that time, statisticians predict, the number of Muslims
One of Gordon Brown’s flunkies* writes in today’s Telegraph: More than a year ago I argued that a debate about the future of the United Kingdom was long overdue. I suggested that, unless we start to focus more on what unites us than we do on what divides us, there is a real risk that one day people will wake up and find that the benefits of the Union – which they had taken for granted for so long – had disappeared. I was accused of crying wolf. But when secessionist forces are loudly at work it is not the time for silence and passivity. We must be