Lindsay Lohan and William Jennings Bryan?
Someone arrived at this blog thanks to a search for: Angelina Jolie George Wallace. Readers are invited to suggest other, even more improbable, Hollywood-Politics couples in the comments section.
Society
Tuesday
Values: An Immensely Malleable Concept
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is visiting Britain this week. Fine. These are people we need to be able to do business with, however much one might wish it otherwise. But that’s no excuse for a minister of the crown to embarrass himself like this: On Monday, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells called for Britain and Saudi Arabia to work more closely together, despite their differences.He said the two states could unite around their “shared values”.
Question of the Day | 30 October 2007
Is there a specific word – or neologism – for wanting to write a blog post (or several in fact – and wanting to write them quite badly) but finding oneself utterly incapable of actually doing so?* *For reasons that have nothing to do with being too busy to actually, like, write. To the contrary, in fact. I mean, there’s no real reason for procrastinating writing that is just for fun. It’s not like work.
Who is right on immigration?
Steve Richards, one of the unmissable voices of the centre-Left, has an interesting column in today’s Indy in which he takes issue with Fraser over immigration. If those on the Right who welcome immigration concede that more and better public services will be required, asks Steve, surely we are conceding the Left’s point that more Government intervention and investment will be needed? His broader point is that the Right is in a muddle over the State (does it want more or less?) and immigration (does it want the labour market or the state to set its limits?) There is a confusion here between pure free market ideology – which has
Do the government’s numbers tell the whole story?
Have we had the full story about foreign workers? Peter Hain has admitted the figure of those arriving here since 1997 is 1.1 million, not 800,000, and Caroline Flint said on the radio she would like to “acknowledge” that this makes up 8% of the workforce. As many newspapers observe today, this means of the 2.7m “new jobs” created under Labour, some 40% have gone to foreigners. Embarrassing, yes, but surely that draws a line under the affair? Not quite. CoffeeHousers may remember a recent Home Office submission to the House of Lords which said (click here, p14) that foreigners make up 12.5% of the workforce. And as for the
Monday
But at least the trains ran on time…
Megan on the horrors of travelling in the United States these days: You know, I never really understood why making the trains run on time was so important for Mussolini, but after last week, I can understand how that became one of fascism’s main selling points. She kids, of course. I’ve always thought, however, that improvements to the reliability of the Italian train service improved after Mussolini came to power were as much due to changes in timetabling as actual efficiency gains. In other words, by officially giving the trains more time to reach their destination they had a better chance of actually getting there on time even if the
Cameron’s take on immigration
A very good speech on demography from Cameron, I thought. Perhaps, the clearest and widest-ranging one delivered by any frontbench politician so far. “Demographic change” is better than the I-word (as Jon Cruddas says). The “atomisation of society” is a major factor in housing pressure, and shows the relevance of his pro-family stance. It was filled with statistics, and had only a few weak spots—citing Layard is one step away from citing Polly, and he reprised his “general wellbeing” nonsense which I’d rather hoped was buried. Afterwards, I asked Cameron if he agrees with ministerial assessments that a third of immigration can be controlled. He said he thinks it’s “substantially
Private lives, public figures
Nicolas Sarkozy walking out of his interview with 60 Minutes when asked about relations with his then wife Cécilia is creating waves. It is tempting to see the incident as a classic example of the culture clash between the prying Anglo-Saxon media and the Gallic belief in a public figure’s right to privacy. But what it actually illustrates is something more subtle. If you watch the rest of the interview, you will see how Sarkozy—as is his wont—explains how his politics derive from his personal experience. Inevitably, this sparks and in some ways legitimises public interest in his private life. You see this tension with David Cameron too. It would be
America’s confessional cinema
Two big movies on release at the moment – Michael Moore’s Sicko and the thriller Rendition – have in common a deep strand of American self-loathing. Say what you like about Moore: his films are awesomely powerful and well-constructed. And who can doubt that his target this time – the US health system – is a soft one? But his travels to Britain to see the NHS, France, Canada and even Cuba – all to demonstrate the wickedness of America – are spectacularly credulous. In one scene, he interviews a British GP about how terrific his pay is, how brilliant the system is and (wait for it) how little the
Sunday
First CAMRA takes Manhattan?
This New York Times piece by Eric Asimov has, for British readers, a certain charm. It’s rather like seeing the world through alien eyes. My what strange yet wondrous habits you quaintly old-fashioned humans have: I WAS sitting at a noisy bar on a beautiful fall afternoon, watching the bartender work, and she was indeed working. She pulled down on the tap, then pushed back, pulled down and pushed up, in rhythmic repetition like a farmhand at a well. The ale poured slowly into a mug, at first all foam, then turning translucent before suddenly clarifying into a brilliant suds-topped amber. I touched the faceted glass, cool, but not cold.
The evil that the welfare system encourages
One of the benefits of doing Question Time is being taken to task on the blogosphere for days afterwards, and my comments on welfare and immigration have been reproduced and critiqued. Here’s my offending quote: “Right now we don’t really notice that we have 14% of the population on benefits, a huge figure. But if immigrants weren’t here then my God we’d notice. There’d be huge labour shortages everywhere, we would be forced to actually confront this huge joblessness.” Alex Hilton over at LabourHome, had this to say. “The Tory position seems to be that working class people should go and work in factories or call centres or bring in
Saturday
Black Hawk down
My friend Spud had an Agusta 109. That’s the best type of helicopter. They’re like super-fancy flying Ferraris, shiny, and all Louis Vuitton and shagpile inside, the closest thing to a magic carpet that you can get. For Spud, the 109 was a skeleton key to everything, as well as a magic carpet to everywhere. People always wanted to borrow it to go to swanky soirées and special occasions in. Those he hardly knew invited him to grands prix, garden parties, Glastonbury, Glyndebourne and for the short amount of time that he owned it he went to absolutely everything. He sold it for a couple of million more than he
Speed limit | 27 October 2007
I will never agree with the video referee in England’s World Cup final, even if he produces a certificate signed by every member of the Royal College of Opticians. Though the South Africans deserved their victory, for me Mark Cueto’s effort will always be a try. But officials are not always wrong. The Newmarket stewards who the same day gave the Irish jockey Kevin Manning five days’ suspension for improper riding on the Darley Dewhurst Stakes winner New Approach were absolutely right. Yes, it was a thrilling victory from a first-class field of the horses likely to contest next year’s Classics. But I don’t like to see success obtained by
Letters | 27 October 2007
Stolen seats Sir: On what evidence does Stephen Pollard (Politics, 20 October) base his contention that the ‘only possible reading of the past three decades’ is that the voters ‘turn to the Conservatives only when the Labour party presents itself as unelectable’? Since 1977, the Tories have been in power for 18 years (60 per cent of the time) and Labour for 12 years (40 per cent). Apparently, then, Labour spend most of the time being unelectable. Even in 1997, opinion polls were showing that on all manner of economic and social issues, the voters consistently preferred Tory policies, albeit they had become sick of Tory politicians. Tony Blair, of
The Spectator’s notes | 27 October 2007
This week, my family celebrated a century of continuous occupation of the house in Sussex where my sister now lives. The place came into the family in the 19th century, but was let to the Church of England Temperance Society as a home for 38 ‘adult male inebriates’ until my great-grandfather and his second wife reclaimed it. Their reoccupation is commemorated by a carved panel in the dining room which quotes the first line of the 127 Psalm — ‘Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it’ — in Latin. The couple’s initials are picked out from the rest of text in gilt and
Diary – 27 October 2007
Valhalla: Row H, Seat 9 It’s Wednesday, so it must be Rheingold. In an unlikely logistical triumph, I have managed to build my week around the second cycle of the Ring at the Royal Opera House — and quite something it is, too. As much as I might aspire to be George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Perfect Wagnerite’, I am still very much a novice in the world of neurotic gods, Niebelungs, giants, Walsungs, dragon music, stolen gold, sacred spears and Rhinemaidens. So the privilege of attending this amazing event — an unalloyed triumph for Tony Hall and his team at the ROH — feels all the greater (for expert opinion, see
Your problems solved | 27 October 2007
Q. This summer I spent a couple of nights in an hotel in France. The friend I had been staying with suddenly had rather a lot of people so I volunteered to go to the hotel — quite a good holiday trick if there are a lot of children about. Usually when I check into an hotel room I never make use of the drawers or the wardrobe. I just scatter my things about the room so that when I leave I need only glance around to make sure I have not forgotten anything. This was quite a nice little hotel, (a favourite of the late Auberon Waugh)*, and on
What bugs me is not identity fraud but who will be watchdog to BBC’s Watchdog
A couple of weeks ago I got a request from someone called Amba wanting to be my Facebook friend. Without thinking much about it, I said yes — I usually do when people ask to be friends with me on social networking sites. The upshot is that Amba now has access to my Facebook profile — she can see, for instance, that my favourite novelist is Charles Dickens — and can send messages to all my other Facebook friends. The following day I received an email from an assistant producer on Watchdog revealing that I’d been targeted as part of a story she was working on investigating social networking sites
Restaurants | 27 October 2007
St Alban, 4–12 Regent Street, London SW1 St Alban is the latest restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who have almost mythic status as restaurateurs, and rightly so. They are, after all, the team that at various times have been behind The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and The Wolseley but never Garfunkel’s, which is weird but, hey, if it ain’t broke why fix it? This newest opening is on Regent Street but not on the groovy bit. It’s on the sombre, shopless bit south of Piccadilly Circus, and on the ground floor of a block so dreary and anonymous I miss it several times. At one point I
Mind your language | 27 October 2007
‘Let your little tike show off their little trike with this trendy shirt’, read an advertisement for toddlers’ T-shirts that Veronica showed me. In British English, tyke means ‘bitch, cur’ or ‘Yorkshireman’. In American English it is often used innocently enough for ‘child’. But it was the slogan on the advertised T-shirts that struck me: pimp my ride. It sounded pretty rude to me, with unplumbed sexual connotations. Not suitable for toddlers. But Veronica explained that there is a popular programme on the MTV channel that goes by this name. It is all about tarting up cars. A trailer for Pimp My Ride says, ‘Once again, rap superstar and car