Society

Wednesday

Adam Holloway

To bring peace to the Afghans, talk to the Taleban

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

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Score one for common sense instead…

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

Alex Massie Alex Massie

There’s Romance in the Union

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

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Greatest Game of All

Today, being perhaps the best day of the year*, is a good moment to consider Ross Douthat’s assertion that John Rawls was right. We do not speak of philosophy, of course, but of something much more important: sport. More specifically, Rawls’ belief that “baseball is the best of all games.” There’s something to this, for sure, though really it would be better rendered as “Baseball is the best of all American games” – a sentiment with which it would be hard to quibble, much though I also admire and enjoy college football (Go Blue!). Ross elaborates: One could go on to note the perfect balance that baseball strikes between team

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Islington schools fail their pupils

Pete’s already posted on the thinking benhind Michael Gove’s speech on school reform, but reading it one statistic jumped out at me and struck me as worth noting: “In the whole of Islington in the school year of 2006-7 not a single child took a GCSE in one of those sciences.” The failure of any school in Islington to put a candidate forward for physics, biology or chemistry GCSE is a disgrace. It effectively bars all of these students from applying for a whole variety of science-based courses at our top universities. Next time you hear a government minister prattling on about how universities should do more to broaden access, think of

Adam Creighton

Getting it wrong on higher education

Dynamic New Labour always talks about the so-called “skills crisis”; the “need” for more funding for higher education. But we mustn’t forget that blunt spending increases for higher education may encourage an ever-larger proportion of the population to stagnate in courses that will neither teach them anything particularly useful nor improve their chances of finding employment. Worse, there may already be a tendency – even without government subsidy – for people to get too much education. I look at these concerns in a US context in a piece for the American Spectator. The issues, however, are universal. Last week the Brown government made a classic false economy with higher education spending.

Sarah Standing

A day at the beach

Ken Livingstone now proposes to close Victoria Embankment every August from 2010 and turn it into a “beach” as he feels Londoners and tourists would benefit from …. from what exactly? Drowning? I’m confused. We live in a city. Surely if one wanted to experience beach-life either as a tourist or as a Londoner one would simply leave the city and go to the sea-side? Or does Mr Livingstone anticipate Public Transport being in such a dire state by 2010 this will not be an option?

Peter Hoskin

A lenient system

The Times features an important interview with Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police. In it, he takes issue with the sentences meted out to those found guilty of gun possession. According to Home Office guidelines, there should be a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for those caught with a firearm. Yet the average sentence dished out by judges is 47 months, or just under 4 years. Of course, judges should share some of the blame for this situation, and they can play their part in remedying it. But I doubt they’ve been helped by the Government begging for lighter sentencing whenever our inadequate prisons get too full.

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Wouldn’t it be easier to just lock-up the kids?

The latest salvo in the War on People of Smoke: Displaying cigarettes in shops could be banned under government plans being considered in a bid to reduce smoking and discourage children from starting. Ministers are also considering tougher controls on vending machines in pubs and restaurants. A public consultation due to start within months will call for the public’s opinions on these issues. Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said it was “vital” to teach children that “smoking is bad”. “If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I’m willing to do that,” she said. Whatever next? I suppose there’s little point in arguing that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hillary Abroad

As I’ve argued here on several previous occasions, Hillary Clinton’s pretence that she was a serious foreign policy player during her husband’s administration is simply laughable. Now her White House schedules have been released, prompting the New York Times to publish a piece that demonstrates that she was an important player in precisely zero foreign policy areas. And the courageous, unintentionally hilarious, headline the NYT gives this? Clinton’s Schedules Offer Chance to Test Assertions. Well, yeah, that’s one way to put it.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

More on Iran’s role in Iraq

Many of those who advocate for an early withdrawal from Iraq argue that Iran can be persuaded to play a constructive role there. But all of Iran’s actions suggest that it wishes to keep peace from breaking out in its neighbouring state. As General Petraeus told the BBC today:   “The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example… were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets,” he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force. “All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts.”  Iran is a state with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The world must not forget Tibet

The New York Times has a great tick-tock on the riots in Tibet, it is the best thing I’ve read yet on what has gone on there these past few days. Intriguingly, the police initially backed away from confrontation with the protesters perhaps because of a desire to avoid reminding the world just what kind of regime China is ruled by so close to the Olympics. However, this Chinese passivity did not last long: “The Chinese authorities have also confirmed that army troops had arrived in Lhasa by March 15, saying their role was limited to traffic control and securing military property. But many people question if some of those

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Lord Ted’s XI

In the wake of Armstrong and Benaud and Constantine we come, as we must, to Dexter. THE D XI 1. Stewart Dempster (NZ)2. Ted Dexter (ENG) (Capt)3. Rahul Dravid (IND)4. KS Duleepsinhji (ENG)5. Martin Donnelly (NZ)6. Basil D’Oliveira (ENG) 7. Jeff Dujon (WI)  (Wkt) 8. Alan Davidson (AUS) 9. Bruce Dooland (AUS) 10. Allan Donald (SA) 11. Dilip Doshi (IND) This was a more difficult selection than some and a degree of ingenuity and no small measure of research were required before I could finalise the XI. A reminder of the criteria: the side must, as best as is possible, be balanced, however balance must not be fetishised to the

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 22 March 2008

Dot Wordsworth follows a hissing S with a nasal N. A musician, Alexander Faris, writes with a list of words beginning with hissing S and nasal N: snarl, snatch, sneak, sneer, sneeze, snicker, snigger, snip, snob, snore, snort, snot, snub, snuff and snout, all of them negative in connotation. He makes the point that they seem to share an onomatopoeic element. I can see that more than half of them have to do with the nose, an organ we treat with some caution. Although it is regarded as unclean (when it is someone else’s and gets too close to us), at the same time, we make enjoyable use of our own,

The Spectator

Letters | 22 March 2008

Key question Sir: Debt, debt everywhere. Britain really is in trouble if — as Fraser Nelson suggests (Politics, 15 March) — the Conservative opposition is shying away from the ‘obvious strategy’ of proposing to freeze public spending or cut taxes. There is a sensible ‘bottom up’ approach for our leaders to take, namely to start budgeting from a base of zero expenditure. Then prioritise and add the spending that really must be made (schools, hospitals, defence and the like), while checking value for money at every step. The key question is, ‘What is essential for Britain?’ rather than, ‘What is in the current budget?’ or ‘What did Gordon promise on

Ursula Buchan

Clematis heaven

Ursula Buchan does a spot of gardening If you are an assiduous buyer of plants, you will know that there are quite a number of foreign-bred plants for sale in our nurseries. This has become more obvious in recent years, since the nomenclature rules have changed. These days a plant should be sold under its original name — if it is in a language using Roman script, at least. Penstemon ‘Garnet’, for example, should now be labelled Penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’. It may not be as snappy, but it is right and proper, since this Penstemon was bred in Germany. If you are a keen grower of clematis, you will

Alex James

Forget the eggs

I’m a celebrity for hire. I do good causes for free — makes me feel good, dunnit? That’s the deal. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Be delighted to open a Fairtrade event in Witney. Be lovely.’ ‘You’re doing what?!’ said Mrs Neate James on Saturday morning. ‘You’re going to Witney? Well, that’s lovely for you. I’ll look after the kids as well as being pregnant and working full-time, shall I? Huh. So selfish.’ She’s had a rough week, started a new job in fashion. There is only one time zone in fashion and that is ‘right now’. Tattling twits from America have been calling her at two o’clock in the morning,

Jeremy Clarke

Nightmare in casualty

It’s half-past four in the morning and I’ve been sitting in the casualty department since two. I’m alone in the waiting room. Behind the glass partition two receptionists, one male, one female, are playing a video game on one of the computer screens.  Earlier, when I was on the verge of losing it because we’d had so long to wait, the bloke said, ‘Sir, I can understand that you don’t want to be here,’ as if he’s been taught to say it to defuse people’s anger. Then the woman had backed him up by saying that if I went and sat down for her, she’d bring me a cup of

Taki

Never on Sunday

It would take the greatest bloodhound reporter of all time to discover a person with a good word to say about Eliot Spitzer, the first man ever to bully Congress for an invite on bond insurance so he could meet with cutie-pie Ashley Alexandra Dupré in Room 871 the night before. When the  crumbum finally threw in the towel, the cheers could be heard all the way to Biloxi. Spitzer changed the law involving Johns, making it a federal crime punishable with a year in jail. Which means if life were fair he would have to do at least ten years. (He spent more than 80,000 greenbacks during the past