Society

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,

Chris Dillow has a splendid post filleting the Scottish government’s plans to raise the age at which one may purchase alcohol at an off-license from 18 to 21. As he rightly says this is the usual mixture of paternalism, petty managerialism and soul-crushing illiberalism trussed up with a justification that there’s a problem so, rather than enforce existing laws, the public needs the protection of additional measures that, regardless of their likely effectiveness, demonstrate that the government is listening and doing something. Anything. It’s too much to suppose that our parliamentarians might be impressed by any philosophical or moral objection to their creation of yet more laws prohibiting or curtailing

The Atlantic has a very interesting, unintentionally hilarious Mark Bowden piece on Rupert Murdoch’s plans for the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the newsroom is very troubled by the new proprietor’s insistence that reporters uncover “scoops”. Heaven forbid! This also made me laugh: “I think he has enough sense not to trash what makes the newspaper so valuable,” said Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute. “He has owned The Times of London for more than 20 years, and it is still a serious newspaper.” Serious, perhaps, but few Londoners would argue that the newspaper is anything like what it once was. Robert Block, a veteran Journal reporter who now covers the