Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Peter Oborne: We have a duty to protect Zimbabwe

With the EU having just threatened further sanctions against Zimbabwe, I’d recommend you read Peter Oborne’s powerful article in this week’s magazine.  In it, he describes the terrible civil strife experienced under Robert Mugabe, and suggests that the UN, in particular, has failed to act accordingly.  Here’s the bottom line: “Zimbabwe is a perfect test case for the new United Nations doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect’. There should be peacekeepers, international monitors, a roar of urgent condemnation. The United Nations, led by its feeble Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has made its choice. It has gone down the path of collaboration with Robert Mugabe’s illegal government as it launches war on its own people.” So, is

Andrew Neil

Exclusive: Martha Stewart banned from Britain! Her loss — or ours?

I was scheduled to have dinner with Martha Stewart, America’s very own domestic goddess, in London next week — but not any more. She was due to arrive for an extended visit to the UK this weekend. But the Home Office has refused her application for a visa, presumably because of the time she spent in the slammer in America for a cover up over insider dealing.   The Home Office tells me that the government “opposes the entry of individuals to the UK where their presence is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offences abroad.”   Obviously, this American

James Forsyth James Forsyth

We stand with Mandelson

I know this might not come naturally to Coffeee Housers but we all really should rally to Peter Mandelson’s defence. Nicolas Sazkozy is attacking Mandelson because he is a free trader, or at least more of one than the French president. Sarko also worries that Mandelson might be about to put the skids under Europe’s absurd system of out relief to farmers at the WTO talks. Protectionism is on the march at the moment, it offers false comfort to workers made nervous by the global economy. Unscrupulous politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are happy to peddle this snake oil despite knowing that more protectionism would actually restrict global

Peter Hoskin

Ed Balls’ salvo against grammar schools

Although he hasn’t quite stepped out and declared that he hates all existing grammar schools, Ed Balls’ latest speech contains the strongest clue yet that that’s how he feels. Here’s the relevant passage: “I accept that selection is a local decision for parents and local authorities. But I do not accept that children in secondary moderns should be left to fall behind. Overall, secondary moderns are around twice as likely to be below the 30 per cent benchmark than the average school. I’ve heard first-hand how some of the young people starting in these schools feel on day one that they have already failed.” So, in other words, grammar schools

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator Live | 19 June 2008

Just a reminder about latest feature on the site – Spectator Live.  You can access it via the ‘Live’ tab at the top of the page, or by going to new.spectator.co.uk/live.  It’s a roundup of all the latest blog posts from across Spectator.co.uk, and the best place to keep up-to-date with all the views and analysis from our writers. You don’t even need to visit the page to view the latest content on Spectator Live. If you have an RSS reader on your computer (see here for details), you can subscribe to Spectator Live’s RSS feed and have updates automatically delivered to you. You can subscribe to the Spectator Live RSS feed here.

Peter Hoskin

Kelvin MacKenzie: I won’t contest Haltemprice & Howden

Kelvin MacKenzie confirms in his Sun column today that he won’t stand in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election: “…the clincher for me was the money. Clearly The Sun couldn’t put up the cash — so I was going to have to rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct my campaign as candidate for the Red Mist Party… …Right now, with a divorce behind me and a couple of poor investments — I’m sure the C5 will catch on one day — a hundred grand looks more attractive in my wallet than being spent on the good folk of East Riding. And, more importantly, there is the issue of my personal

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Employment: Jobs Scots won’t do?

Looming crisis in the countryside requires immediate action: Efforts are being made to reverse a decline in sheep shearers in Scotland. The workforce is ageing, with fewer young people entering what is considered one of the most labour-intensive jobs in farming… “There aren’t enough young shearers doing the job. Because it is a physical job and involves travel, it is really a young person’s job. “We are also competing with other jobs, some of them less physical than ours.” He added: “There are an awful lot of us heading into our 40s and the average age of shearers must be in the 30s.” More details here, including claims that shearers

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Muslim women moved out of camera shot at Obama rally

The absurd accusation that Barack Obama is some kind of Muslim Manchurian candidate has caused his campaign some political discomfort. But it is still disappointing in the extreme to read in The Politico that two women wearing headscarves were moved from behind the podium at an Obama rally in Detroit so that they would be out of camera shot.   Volunteers moved the women and the campaign has moved quickly to apologise for their behaviour. “This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” an  Obama spokesman told

The Spectator

Spectator Live

Just a reminder about latest feature on the site – Spectator Live.  You can access it via the ‘Live’ tab at the top of the page, or by going to new.spectator.co.uk/live.  It’s a roundup of all the latest blog posts from across Spectator.co.uk, and the best place to keep up-to-date with all the views and analysis from our writers. You don’t even need to visit the page to view the latest content on Spectator Live. If you have an RSS reader on your computer (see here for details), you can subscribe to Spectator Live’s RSS feed and have updates automatically delivered to you. You can subscribe to the Spectator Live RSS feed here.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Progress in Iraq

Perhaps the most under reported story of recent years is the turn around in Iraq. In this country, there is no constituency for charting the progress there—both main political parties and most of the media just wish Iraq would go away. But the news from there is too important to ignore. I’d urge everyone to read this tour d’horizon from Robert Reid, the AP bureau chief in Baghdad who has been reporting from Iraq since 2003. His judgement is that “Iraq is by almost any measure safer today than at any time in the past three years” and that “Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence

Elliot Wilson

Business as usual with the Burmese generals

Elliot Wilson explains why international condemnation of Burma’s brutal military leaders is so ineffectual: because many other countries are eager to do deals with them The satirist P.J. O’Rourke once noted that the more references to democracy a country has in its official title, the greater the chance it is run by a grubby totalitarian regime. Hence the People’s Republic of China and the Kim dynasty’s heroically misleading ‘Democratic People’s Republic’ of North Korea. Burma — or Myanmar, as its leaders prefer — has its equivalent in the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). This is essentially a rebadged version of the less fluffy-sounding State Law and Order Restoration Council,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An innocent at Home

Dominic Grieve, the new shadow home secretary, tells James Forsyth that he won’t ‘resort to soundbites’. But is this a sensible approach for a modern-day politician? Dominic Grieve’s office answerphone is struggling to keep up with events – the caller has reached ‘the office of the shadow attorney general and the Conservative spokesman on community cohesion,’ it says. No mention of his new role as shadow home secretary. Some Conservatives wish the answerphone was right. Even normally loyal Cameroons struggle to envisage going into the next election with Grieve as shadow home secretary. They’d rather he was a stopgap measure. Certainly, few would have named Grieve as part of the Tory’s

Peter Oborne

We have a duty to protect Zimbabwe

Ten years ago the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan set out a new international doctrine. Annan declared that the world was looking forward to what he called ‘a new century of human rights’. For the United Nations, declared Annan, this meant an entirely new way of doing things. ‘No government,’ he declared, ‘has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples. ‘Whether a person belongs to the minority or the majority, that person’s human rights and fundamental freedoms are sacred.’ This statement was revolutionary. Inter-national relations, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, have been conducted on the basis

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Is the Catholic Church sliding towards civil war?

Damian Thompson on the bitter feud between the new young defenders of the recently reinstated Latin Mass, and Britain’s ‘magic circle’ of liberal bishops While Church of England bishops recoil from the prospect of gay ‘weddings’ with no precedent in Christian history, their Catholic counterparts are wringing their hands at the growing popularity of services that are too traditional for their tastes. On Saturday 14 June Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, one of the most senior figures in the Roman Curia and an ally of the Holy Father, celebrated a Pontifical High Mass at Westminster Cathedral. The bishop of the diocese, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, did not attend; nor did any of

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

‘I hope the entire tribunal becomes infested with lice’

Rod Liddle on the case of Bushra Noah, the headscarf-wearing Muslim who has just won £4,000 from the Wedge hair salon I used to dye my hair — Midnight Auburn, from Clairol. Yes, because I’m worth it. I did it myself, once every three or four months or so, always ruining several perfectly good towels in the process. I don’t dye it any more because my girlfriend says that if I do, she’ll bin me. This is because a man dyeing his hair is both undignified and vain, she says: however, I think her opposition stems from the fact that if I got rid of all the grey, I would

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cricket Notes: West Indies

The ICC (that’s the International Cricket Council) and the authorities in England keep banging on about how they want to ensure that test cricket remains the pinnacle of the game. Then they keep announcing additional one day and 20/20 competitions. You tell me how that adds up. Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire backer of the new England vs West Indies 20/20 challenge matches (for $5m each game) says he finds test cricket “boring”. Virgil was right: timeo Danaos et dona ferentes… Stanford sees 20/20 as a way to “crack” the American market. Now I think he is almost certainly mistaken in thinking this is possible but I’m not prepared to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Polly’s Britian

A faithful correspondent emails: “I know it rightly pains you to contemplate the existence of Polly Toynbee, but is she actually saying that the worst thing about New Labour was that it wasn’t authoritarian, expedient, or intrusive enough?” I suspect readers know the answer to this but, to give Mrs Toynbee the benefit of the doubt, I thought it only fair to read the column in question. And, why, yes! She does seem to be of the view that now the government’s days are numbered it should cast off its feeble moderation and do more – much more! – to tell people how they may, or more probably, may not,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

So good that someone had to ban them

Andy Burnham is quite right to dismiss Scotland’s planned ban on alcohol advertising as “a bit silly”. Simply because the lager adverts have for years been the most amusing and intelligent thing on Scottish television. For the uninitiated, I’ve embedded my favourite Tennent’s Lager advert above – it’s a spoof of the immortal Ealing film Whisky Galore. And if you have time, do look at the others – Caledonia is one massive repatriation advert. This McEwans advert is the lager version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. And then there are later efforts, like the Masochist – the list goes on. So good, that somebody obviously had to ban them.

Peter Hoskin

The fight against ratification continues

According to a new YouGov / Open Europe poll: 54% [of respondents] agreed with the statement that “The government should drop the Lisbon Treaty and not try and ratify it”. Just 14% agreed that “The government should carry on and ratify the Lisbon Treaty in the UK”.That’s pretty emphatic, I’d say.  For full results, click here (excel file). And the anti-ratification petition submitted to Downing Street by Neil O’Brien and Richard North continues apace.  At the time of writing, it’s picked up some 6,854 signatories.  You can add your name here.

The Spectator

Introducing Spectator Live

We’ve added a new feature to the site – Spectator Live.  You can access it via the ‘Live’ tab at the top of the page, or by going to new.spectator.co.uk/live.  It’s a roundup of all the latest blog posts from across Spectator.co.uk, and the best place to keep up-to-date with all the views and analysis from our writers. You don’t even need to visit the page to view the latest content on Spectator Live. If you have an RSS reader on your computer (see here for details), you can subscribe to Spectator Live’s RSS feed and have updates automatically delivered to you. You can subscribe to the Spectator Live RSS feed here.