Society

Saturday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Will the property market cause the next savings disaster?

‘How’s business?’ I asked the Mr Big of commercial property in a city somewhere north of Watford Gap last week. I won’t say which city, because this Mr Big is so big there – his logo is on office block after office block – that he would be instantly identifiable. ‘I’m a buyer for the first time in 18 months,’ he replied, rather to my surprise. ‘Prices have been at silly levels, but now they’re anywhere between 10 and 30 per cent off and we can see value. And before all this credit-crunch business the banks gave us a £400 million credit line at 20 basis points [that’s 0.2 per

Kit Wright

Metal

Metal A steelmill town, a ridge of pine, The taste of snow upon the tongue, Meant all the world was black and white At Christmastime when he was young. In softened angle, muted line, The harshnesses became oblique. The keening lathes were pacified: All quiet on the frozen creek. And it was Christmas when he died Far off, no place on earth to go, But fresh as in his childhood came The scent of metal and of snow.

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

More on Hillary, Obama, and “Surprises”

My pal Mike Crowley has a fine post on Hillary’s determination to play the At Least I Was Never A Drug Dealer card herself: “I’ve been tested, I’ve been vetted,” she said. “There are no surprises. There’s not going to be anybody saying, ‘I didn’t think of that, my goodness, what’s that going to mean?'” “I’m a known quantity,” she added at the press conference, at which she received the endorsement of Iowa Democratic Congressman Leonard Boswell. “We need to nominate a candidate who can win.” This threw the media into a low-grade frenzy. Hillary smiled with the patience of a grandmother stuck babysitting bratty kids as reporters barraged her

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nick Robinson is not happy

Nick Robinson has an interesting post up about how the Home Office spun him about the number of illegal immigrants who had been allowed to become security guards. Robinson was given the steer that it was likely to be about 5,000 and in the worst case scenario around 8,000. The actual number? 11,000.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Changed dynamics

In every Democratic presidential debate up to now, Barack Obama has seemed rather intimidated by Hillary Clinton. In her presence, he has backed off from real criticism of her. But this moment from yesterday’s debate, the last before the Iowa caucuses, shows just how much more confident Obama is now. With one of Clinton New Hampshire co-chairs having to step down for raising questions about whether Obama had ever dealt drugs and talk of a planned coup by Bill’s advisors, it is the Clinton campaign that has all the problems right now. Considering how the holidays will pause the campaign, the Clintons don’t have long to turn it around.

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

It’s all in the way you tell them…

According to the Adam Smith Institute’s blog, this was recently voted the funniest joke in Belgium: Why do ducks have webbed feet? To stamp out fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stamp out burning ducks. Who says foreigners aren’t funny?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

For how long has legitimacy been the rule?

When was the last time that most kids were born outside marriage, as they will be this year? Decades, centuries or millennia? This was the fact I couldn’t nail down for my post yesterday (which Philip Johnston has done a vg story on in the Telegraph today). I am excluding immigrants, who flatter most economic and social indictors in Britain, and I think I may have to concede defeat unless any CoffeeHousers out there know. The left has a tradition of arguing that the nuclear family is a bourgeoisie innovation. Engels wrote a whole book on it and some academics see the family as a “transient phase in our society” 

Matthew Dancona

This inquest has gone too far

The word “disgrace” is used too liberally, not least by journalists. But no other word will do justice to the cross-examination today of Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, the Duke of Edinburgh’s private secretary, at the Diana Inquest. As Martyn Gregory’s admirable despatches in The Spectator have shown, the whole circus is an embarrassment, giving airtime to Mohammed Fayed’s lurid claims about the death of his son, Dodi, and the Princess a decade ago. It is bad enough that Diana’s family and friends have had to wait so long for a procedure that ought to have been no more than a formality, concluded years ago. But the calling of Sir Miles, a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The shameful state of social mobility in Britain

Today’s report from the Sutton Trust on social mobility in Britain makes for depressing reading. Their tracking of the Millennium cohort of children suggests that by the age of seven, even the least able children from rich households have drawn level with the very smartest children from the poorest fifth of households. Social mobility has, shockingly, remained static for 30 years. This lack of social mobility in Britain will not be reversed while the current situation where only 10 percent of people from the poorest fifth of households get a degree compared to 44 percent from the richest twenty percent of homes persists. Making Britain a more a meritocratic place

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Des Moines Register Debate: Random Thoughts

A plea: could Presidential candidates please cease using the term “bully pulpit” as though it meant anything other than “terrific” or “splendid”. Also: could someone please rid us of both Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney?  The others, of course, are pretty awful but their dreadfulness is insignificant compared to the hideousness of Romnabee. Plus: Why hasn’t Alan Keyes been permitted to take part in the other Presidential debates? He’s a magnificent loon who a) fits right in with this motley crew and b) enlivens the debate no end with his special brand of madness. At least John McCain comes out against the absurd ethanol boondoggle so beloved of Iowans. Good

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Exceptions don’t prove the rule

Marty Peretz writes: Torture is a repugnant practice, and especially so if it becomes a habit.  It may have become that, although I don’t know.  No one outside the alleged practitioners does.  But, believe me, I’m not trying to shrug the matter off.  Andrew Sullivan has persuaded me of its centrality to a humane society. So far so sort of good. Then, alas, he concludes: One last point.  The two prisoners the tapes of whose questioning were destroyed by the C.I.A. were certifiable monsters: Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda planner of the 9/11 atrocity, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the Aden bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. 

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A local government classic

Residents of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea received this message from their local council this morning, which begins:  “Dear Resident(s),  Recycling and Refuse Collections Days are changing in the Royal Borough  I am writing to let you know that the days of refuse and recycling collections in the Royal Borough are changing. As from Monday 7 January 2008, most resident’s recycling and refuse will be collected on:  Monday and Thursday  OR  Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. As they say, you couldn’t make it up.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Fabio the man to bring an end to forty years of hurt?

The most encouraging thing about the news that Fabio Capello is set to become England manager is his refusal to accept egos in his team. One of the problems that has so blighted England in recent years is our obsession with star players at the expense of the team itself; exhibit a is how long the Lampard–Gerrard partnership was kept going despite the fact it was evident the two of them could not play together. Equally, the England team is blighted by mediocre players whose huge wage packets persuade them that they’ve made it. Just look at how many of them swan around in white or red boots—which really should

The Spectator

Listen to last night’s Iraq debate

We now have the full audio of last night’s Spectator / Intelligence Squared Iraq debate available. Whatever your opinion on Iraq, it really is worth listening to, the speakers were eloquent exponents of their positions and the questions from the floor were in the finest, robust traditions of British public debate. Also, do read Lloyd Evans’s excellent review of the event.

The Spectator

An illegitimate argument

Today’s headlines about how one in five kids is born to a foreign mother overlooks a rather interesting fact. In London, it’s one in two. And these newcomers conform better than natives to what we like to call “traditional” British values – in that far more of them are born inside marriage. When researching my political column for tomorrow’s treble issue (our biggest ever, don’t miss it) I found that if you stripped out immigrants then 2007 will prove to be the first year in recorded British history that most kids would be born outside marriage. So this year we have passed a true social landmark: what we used to

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Trouble At Mill

My friend Toby Harnden finds John Edwards doing his best Monty Python in Iowa: Remember the “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch, which ended with Eric Idle describing how during his childhood he had to “drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah”? Edwards can top that. Well, almost. “I grew up in a family where my grandmother walked to work at the mill every day wearing her apron,” he said. “My grandfather, who was partially paralysed,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The little white rose of Scotland which smells sharp and sweet and breaks the heart

As part of its rather odd Call Yourself British campaign The Daily Telegraph has sent the novelist Andrew O’Hagan to tour the country and take its temperature. There’ll be plenty to say about this over the next few days. But, beginning in Edinburgh, O’Hagan writes: Despite the work of centuries, an intellectual Enlightenment, an Industrial Revolution, the formation and decline of Empire, and two world wars, Scotland still feels nervous of its relationship with England, the same nervousness that Defoe objected to and hoped might     have come to an end as he walked up the High Street in the 1720s. But to make that journey today is to