St Stephen’s Day Trivia
Jane Austen fans should run on over to Norm’s place to tackle his Boxing Day quiz. This blog may yet have a few New Year teasers for you all.
Society
Wednesday
Just here for the job: Question of the Day
Part of Megan McArdle’s response to Kerry Howley’s excellent guest-worker article: But mostly, I worry about having a large number of people in the country who are, definitionally, not planning to stay here. There’s something corrosive about transience: witness the way college students treat their neighborhoods. (And don’t tell me they’re young; they’re prime guest-worker age.) Civic bonds can withstand culture clash, but I’m not sure they can withstand pockets of people who are just there for the job. To what extent – if any – does life in Washington DC support Megan’s theory? What lessons, if any, might be extrapolated from Washington’s experience with what amounts to a sort-of-kind-of
Things worth reading
David Brooks, perhaps the most perceptive commentator in America, picked out the year’s best American magazine pieces in The New York Times the other day. They are all well worth taking a look at.
Monday
Whither the American dramatist?
The New York Times’ Ben Brantley says this was a year in which drama reasserted itself on (and off) Broadway. If so then that’s a splendid thing. It’s notable, though, that just two American plays make his list of the top ten* dramas to have played in New York this past year. No fewer than seven are the work of British and Irish playwrights (with only two of the productions Brantley hails being revivals of, respectively, Pinter and Sherriff). I draw no broader point from this than to suggest that if five of the best ten dramas presented in New York this year – according to New York’s most influential
Christmas Quote of the Year
More from Helmand province where Sergeant Kraig Whalley of the Royal Military Police says: “We were thinking of challenging the Taliban to a game of football on Christmas Day, but I’m not sure they’d get the joke.” [Hat-tip, Ben Brogan]
Happy Christmas
Coffee House will be quiet over Christmas itself. We’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas and thank you for reading and contributing. If you want a political giggle over the next few days, click here.
Sunday
Lock up your daughters: the libertarian carnival is in town
Good lord. further evidence that, despite improvements in recent years, Washington still has work to do. Today’s WaPo runs a piece noting that the free minds and free markets crowd at Reason are insidiously recruiting innocent young Washingtonians to the libertarian cult by, yup, throwing a couple of parties a month. The horror! To wit: Four minutes into Reason magazine’s monthly bash at the Big Hunt lounge, and every Libertarian-as-Bacchus fantasy you’ve entertained plays out before your widening eyes. Nick Gillespie, the leather-jacketed, Mama-said-you’re-dangerous editor of the political rag peers at you intently. “What do you need?” he asks. “Do you need a drink? A cigarette?” Favourite bit, however? This:
The forgotten victims of winter
This winter, at least 15,000 British pensioners over the age of 75 will die from the cold. Their death is a normal, recurring fact of British life – since 1991 the figures have oscillated between 17,000 and 37,600. For reasons passing my understanding, it attracts minimal media attention and zero political outrage even though much of this is avoidable (the excess winter mortality rates in Norway for the elderly are about half ours). As I say in my News of the World column today, it issues like the lives of foxes that whip our MPs into a frenzy. There’s something deeply unfashionable about the welfare of the pensioners (who
Friday
Slow brewing
The Coffee House team are scattering to the four winds for Christmas so posting will be less regular than usual. You can keep up to date with all the latest news at The Telegraph. Have a very happy Christmas and thank you for helping to make Coffee House what it is.
Thursday
Can we outlaw genes instead?
While we’re talking about smoking, this study points out something that, intuitively, I’ve long considered obvious: Heart attacks among cigarette smokers may have less to do with tobacco than genetics. A common defect in a gene controlling cholesterol metabolism boosts smokers’ risk of an early heart attack, according to a new study. The findings also show that smokers without the defect normally have heart attacks no sooner than their non-smoking peers.
Taking the Reductio ad Hitlerum to absurd lengths?
A shocking teaser from Arts & Letters Daily: Hitler, Stalin…and Abdul Qadeer? Who is he and why might anyone want to talk about him in such monstrous company?… more» Quite. I was, as you might imagine, taken aback. I always liked and admired this man who, more than anyone else, kept the flame alive through the dark days when a hyperpower destroyed everything in its path, forcing the argument that There Was No Alternative to their way of doing things…
Christmas Cooking
I’m fascinated by the history and mythology of Christmas. Up until the 1890’s, most English families if they were lucky, ate goose; turkey was a luxury only enjoyed by the few. The Anglo-American Christmas, as we know and love it today, is really a Victorian invention: influenced by the sentiment of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, Prince Albert’s cosy family celebrations at Windsor; and in the last century, the schmaltz of Hollywood movies such as Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. One of the most appealing things about the traditional British Christmas is an old-fashioned York Ham- dry cured with salt, saltpetre, juniper berries and pepper, and then matured for
Why it is not healthy for democracy to have Brussels fix the NHS
This business with the EU and the NHS has been very disorientating. My conscience is pricked by MatthewT, who commented on my previous post: “So you guys are against the EU interfering with UK policies except where you agree with their impact. I didn’t realise Euroscepticism was so nuanced.” Well, m’lud, guilty. My side has failed to make the argument for NHS liberalisation in Britain (and has even failed to convince the Tories) but today I have an option. Why not become all pro-European, and have it forced on Britain by Brussels? This is what the EU is all about: circumventing democratic debate. Most of the time, it does
Wednesday
Postcards from the Edge
Via Tyler Cowen, here’s today’s eBay ploy. The current winning bid is a startling very reasonable $190: You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.Here is the arrangement:I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee.
The scale of Petraeus’s achievement
If you want to get an idea of how great General Petraeus’s achievement have been in Iraq, consider this revelation from Time’s profile of him: “At a Pentagon meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 2006, President Bush asked the Chiefs how many supported the idea of a surge — the deployment of more troops (which Petraeus would command) into Baghdad to secure the city and create the conditions necessary for a reconciliation of the various Iraqi political factions. The Chiefs were unanimously opposed.” There is no purely military solution in Iraq but without security there is no hope of a solution and there are encouraging signs that
Has Lansley seen the light?
I wouldn’t have put it past Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to side with the unions in today’s great health debate – and ConservativeHome wasn’t sure he wouldn’t either. But for once he is (the next words are hard for me to type) doing the right thing and backing Brussels. “What is the government so frightened about? Are they afraid of choice?,” he asks. Mind you, the same could be asked of him. What didn’t he like about IDS/Howard patient passport system? Is he afraid of choice? If Lansley isn’t being entirely opportunistic, there is a welcome shift of principle here. In the early Cameron days, he said giving
Brussels to the rescue
It is days like this that remind you why so many on the right were in the “yes” campaign during the Euro referendum of 1975. It was then to the right of Britain on many issues and still is on the issue of healthcare provision. The European Commission will today propose to give Brits the right to escape NHS waiting lists by going anywhere in Europe – and then have the NHS repay their bill and expenses. So lo, from Brussels, a massive threat to the ‘socialism in one country’ approach of the NHS. Its “business” model has always depended on there being no competition. The Labour left is
Tuesday
A Brit’s-Eye View
American readers wondering how this cazy election caper seems to foreigners could do much worse than check out Toby Harnden’s blog. Toby is The Daily Telegraph’s US Editor (a fancy term for Chief American Correpondent) and his blog is consistently spiky and entertaining. Also never knowingly under-opinionated… It’s also fair to say that he is not Hillary Clinton’s greatest fan. Here’s how he starts his piece on Magic Johnson campaigning with Bill Clinton in Iowa today: Lock up your daughters, Iowans. Two of the world’s most famous philanderers are being let loose together in the state today as “surrogates” for Hillary Clinton.
When the law is an ass it will make an ass of you…
Of course there are plenty of sound reasons for not wanting a prudish scold such as Hillary Clinton back in the White House. But National Journal’s Athena Jones gives us a new one: In a funny moment on the way out of the store, a woman asked Bill [Clinton] to sign a greenback. Bill obliged, while pointing out “this isn’t legal” to the amusement of folks standing nearby. A few minutes later, the same request was made to the senator, who said that she couldn’t do it. “I can’t sign money. That’s illegal. I’m so sorry,” she said. Jesus wept, as the good book says. This would score well on
