Society

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Teflon Dave?

In the latest post on his excellent blog, Benedict Brogan characterises Cameron as “Teflon Dave” – the man to whom no slurs will stick.  Brogan’s claim relates to the media’s apparent reluctance to report an inconsistency in Cameron’s PMQs performance this week.  As Brogan writes: “If IDS had been caught out like this, we would have had a field day. But Dave is on the up. He has the wind in his sails. He’s wearing Teflon. Just as no one is troubled by his odd refusal to give a straight answer on the smoking question, so this memory lapse/poor briefing episode (I’m sure it’s no more than that) is not finding a willing audience. The World Tonight might

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What remains to be done in Iraq

The war in Iraq has dropped down the news agenda in recent weeks with all but the most determined opponents of the war recognising that the surge has worked militarily. Huge challenges, though, remain as Max Boot argues in the Weekly Standard. The surge has created the opportunity for success but it has certainly not guaranteed it. As Boot notes northern Iraq now needs the same kind of security effort that there has been in Baghdad in the past year. With 61 percent of the violence coming from this region, its problems need to be dealt with before it endangers progress in the rest of Iraq. There also needs to be

Peter Hoskin

A failure of oversight

Robert Winnett – the Telegraph journalist who first broke the Derek Conway scandal – is thankfully not retracting his claws just yet.  His latest, essential post over at Three Line Whip attacks the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) which audits MPs’ pay and allowances:  “Earlier this month, the latest SSRB tome was published – an 83 page study costing well over £100,000 to complete. It concludes: “We take this opportunity to emphasis that we have received no direct evidence to suggest that there is currently abuse by MPs of the allowances system. We commend the clarity and rigour of the rules and guidance.” Excellent – the general public can sleep safely knowing

Peter Hoskin

Taxed-and-spent into a corner

In today’s Times, Peter Riddell looks ahead to the Budget in March.  He hits the fiscal nail on its rusty head: “The economic outlook for the next few years is worse than for some time and Mr Darling has no freedom for manoeuvre on taxes and spending. Not only is there no room for preelection giveaways, but spending plans are insufficient to achieve existing goals on health, education and reducing child poverty. The Government blames international factors, notably the sub-prime banking crisis in the US. At the same time, ministers highlight low levels of inflation and of interest rates compared with the early 1990s. Both points are true up to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Republicans debate

We’re live-blogging the Republican debate over at Americano. If Mitt Romney doesn’t land a serious blow on John McCain tonight, then McCain will be the nominee.

Wednesday

The Spectator

John McCain wins Florida

John McCain has won Florida and is now the overwhelming favourite to win the Republican nomination. McCain has been further boosted by the news that Rudy Giuliani will likely endorse him in the next day or two. More on McCain’s victory at Americano.

Christopher Booker

No better way to turn 70 than in the Darjeeling hills

Forty years ago I met a leading industrialist who had just returned from a visit to India, very depressed. He could see no future for a people who seemed to him fatalistically resigned to antimaterialism, mass poverty and the backward, corrupt, bureaucratically hamstrung state of their economy. ‘The problem with India,’ he said despairingly, ‘is the problem of want creation.’ If he could return to India today, he would rub his eyes in disbelief. From the ubiquitous roadside hoardings proclaiming ‘Making a billion dreams come true’ to the shiny new shopping malls and business parks springing up round every city, the world has rarely seen such an explosion of ‘want

Marianne Macdonald

The wages of beauty are loneliness

I am always struck, interviewing the planet’s most beautiful women, by the disconnection between their difficult love lives and dazzling looks. Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Elle Macpherson, Helena Christensen, Emmanuelle Béart, Inés Sastre, Diane Kruger, Sienna Miller — in my decade as an interviewer I have met dozens of these stars and supermodels, and almost invariably they are single or struggling with divorce or some dubious relationship. These women can often seem to have everything — stunning looks, amazing figures, to-die-for wardrobes, killer charm, fame, money — except happiness with men. It is a small, unacknowledged tragedy that I discussed with the supermodel Helena Christensen, who knew all about it.

Jervoise Andreyev

A very vicious circle

This book is startling, original, enormously disturbing, horribly unscientific but compelling. Did you know that Dachau housed the world’s first and largest organic garden, established to produce various foods, including honey, for the German elite? Or that to find a ‘healthier cigarette’, 12 billion were manufactured using asbestos filters? Production stopped because the filters removed too much of the taste, not because of increased delivery of cancer-causing agents to the body. And who says history doesn’t repeat itself? In the UK, the care of the elderly infirm has long been dumped on local authorities and this government now plans to restrict specialist help for patients with chronic diseases. It is

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The heart of Obama’s appeal: symbolism

As Jason Zengerle says, this sort of thing trumps anything the “Wife of a Man from Hope” can produce. Even cynics and Kennedy-haters are permitted to smile at this. Speaking at Ted Kennedy’s endorsement palooza yesterday Obama told this story: It’s about whether we’re going to seize this moment to write the next great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we healed our nation. This was the time when we repaired our world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity, and liberty, and

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Unfortunate Friends

An endorsement Obama could have done without. He better hope McCain wins the GOP nomination because any other Republican candidate will be happy to use this to argue that Obama is the terrorists’ friend. More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid. The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration’s detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to “restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community.” The attorneys are representing the detainees in habeas corpus

Peter Hoskin

Bomb plots & snail mail

I’ve been tipped off to the following Press Association story, and figured it would make for a perfect end-of-the-working-day respite from MPs and their expenses.  Do make sure to read to the last paragraph – that’s where the punch-line is, so to speak: Man jailed for Tesco blackmail plot Press Association Monday January 28, 2008 12:48 PM A former tax inspector has been jailed for six years for a £1 million blackmail plot against supermarket chain Tesco. Philip McHugh, of Milton Avenue, Clitheroe, Lancashire, sent 76 letters threatening to bomb Tesco stores across Britain last summer. The 52-year-old also threatened to contaminate Tesco products if they refused to comply with his demand for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The State of Bush’s legacy

There could be no keener testament to George W. Bush’s lame duck status than the fact that the morning shows here in America this morning are more interested in the Florida primary than the State of the Union. When not even the president’s annual address to both branches of Congress can drive the news agenda then the president has lost even the power of the bully pulpit. It is to Bush’s credit that he did not attempt to assert his relevance through a series of dramatic statements. Instead, he concentrated on inching his agenda forward. He also deserves praise for his defence of free trade despite the increasingly protectionist mood

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No dithering Dave – axe Conway

We know that Team Cameron are keen readers of CoffeeHouse – and if so, our comment board has some free advice for them. Sack Conway. Remove the whip. De-select him. Give him the Howard Flight treatment. Flog him to the LibDems.  His “unreserved” apology was for “administrative oversight”. As Quentin Letts says, is that what they call it nowadays? Sure, some of this punishment can’t be meted out from the centre – but there are ways and means. This is an issue with deep resonance with the public. Hain’s declarations may be a bit complex, but the public recognise a nose in the trough when they see one.  I praised Cameron for his

Matthew Dancona

Amis dissects the modern order

There is an important interview with Martin Amis by Johann Hari in today’s Independent. Read it and make your own mind up: it is a serious piece, and Johann has the intellectual firepower to take on the great novelist. They spar over demographic change, the proper limits of state retaliation to terrorist atrocity and the origins of al Qaeda (US foreign policy, or subterranean psychosis?). Unlike most interviews, it is a proper conversation, edgy without being confrontational. Not surprisingly, I agree with Amis on the elemental scale of the Islamist threat, and applaud his refusal to explain it away as the product of Western policy errors. But I am dismayed

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Adam Gilchrist

So farewell, Adam Gilchrist. Norm marks his retirement with all the right links: You may not know him from Adam, but I have to mark the retirement from Test cricket of one of the greats of the game. In the Adelaide Test, just concluded, he passed Mark Boucher to go to the top of the table for the most Test dismissals by a wicket-keeper. Soon afterwards he annouced that he was calling it a day. What a day it has been. Two of its highlights I saw with my own eyes: his 152 at Edgbaston in 2001 – during this innings he shared a partnership of 63 with Glenn McGrath,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Have the Tories lost the moral high ground?

This Derek Conway expenses scam is one of the most outrageous I’ve heard in some time. He bunged his son £1,000-a-month of taxpayers’ money on the basis that he was doing research. And as the Standards and Privileges Committee said, there was zero independent evidence of any work done – or any commissioned. A total of £40,000 of our money beefed up the Conway family finances as young Freddie Conway studied full-time at Newcastle University doing his “research”. His stash included “four one-off bonuses” (wonderful oxymoron) totalling £10,000 and he’s been ordered to repay £13,200. Now, this isn’t the same as £103,000 of Peter Hain’s undeclared donations. But something tells

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The speech of 2008

It has been called the speech of the 2008 – and it’s only January. But here on YouTube is William Hague at the Lisbon Treaty debate last Monday. People pay £25,000 to hear Hague on such form. Yours for free – click below:

Peter Hoskin

A decade of disappointment over welfare reform

On the day that Gordon Brown’s set to back a raft of new welfare proposals, Melanie Phillips launches an incisive attack on the Government’s past attempts at reform in this area: “Today is supposed to prove that the pure flame of Blairism has been re-lit in Downing Street with the publication of the Government’s latest wheeze for reforming welfare According to some breathless advance spinning, this will resurrect a “radical” Blairite plan produced last year by the banker David Freud for contracting out welfare delivery to the private and voluntary sectors, proposals that were reputedly squashed by the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown … … But delivery is merely the end of the process.