Society

Saturday

Lucy Vickery

Blond ambition

In Competition No. 2508 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem in support of Boris Johnson’s bid to become Mayor of London, in which the first letters of each line spell out BORIS FOR MAYOR. In Competition No. 2508 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem in support of Boris Johnson’s bid to become Mayor of London, in which the first letters of each line spell out BORIS FOR MAYOR. There was an avalanche of entries of a variable standard. Predictably, Boris’s flaxen locks featured strongly — as did his mighty intellect. Equally celebrated were his plain speaking and joie de vivre, many of you echoing D.J. Taylor,

Friday

The Spectator

An opportunity to fix the broken society

When trying to understand the impact of events like the shooting of Rhys Jones, turn to the tabloids. Their readers are the ones who suffer from the “broken society” and are most at risk from the violent crime epidemic and think “it could be my son next”. The Sun is at its best today. It declares in a superb page long editorial that this is the time for a fundamental rethink. In the Daily Mail, Iain Duncan Smith provides a compelling analysis. Social breakdown, the putrid oases of deprivation in a booming Britain, has been nurtured by Labour policies. The Sun is using David Cameron’s phrase “anarchy in the UK” to

The Spectator

Hamas’s mask of moderation slips

Osama Hamdan is the supposeldy moderate face of Hamas. The organisation’s representative in Beirut, he has met with Michael Ancram and is viewed as the kind of man we can—and should—do business with. Alastair Crooke, formerly the EU’s fixer in the Middle East who now runs an influential think tank advocating engagement with groups like Hamas, wrote a very positive piece about Hamdan for Prospect last year. After talking to him, Crooke concluded that Hamas “will be pragmatic in signalling that it seeks a state on land occupied in 1967 and is not pursuing any destruction of Israel.” Yet, this was not the message that Hamdan was giving out in an interview with

Thursday

The Spectator

The MCB is back in with the government

This morning, Coffee House heard that the government’s policy of freezing out the Muslim Council of Britain was over and that Hazel Blears had met with representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain at a roundtable on the 8th of August. In response to an inquiry from Coffee House, the Department of Communities and Local Government said that they “don’t give details of private meetings.” However, it will confirm that Hazel Blears met with representatives of a dozen Muslim organisations on that date and will not deny that the MCB was one of those groups. The official line from its spokeswoman is that: “There has been no change in our

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Modern Life

Clive Davis returns from holiday: As we came in to land, we put our watches back to March to take account of the weather. Then we faced the interminable midnight wait at passport control as members of the secret service sifted the terrorists and arms smugglers from among the long line of tired families clutching their holiday souvenirs. Then we tried to make our way to the long-stay car park, unaware that the shuttle buses had been temporarily moved to a different part of the airport. (No one seems to have bothered putting up a sign announcing this inside the terminal.) Ninety minutes after our flight touched down, we finally

The Spectator

What Bush is up to

At first glance it seems bizarre that Bush invoked Vietnam in defence of his Iraq policy. After all, for years the Bush administration has argued that any parallel to Vietnam is nonsense. But there’s logic to what Bush is doing. By mentioning Vietnam and Iraq in the same breath, Bush has guaranteed that his speech is getting plenty of attention. The hope is that this coverage will allow the message that the surge is making military progress to be communicated to the public. The other thing he is doing is more subtle, he’s trying to evoke the consequences of defeat not only in Iraq but at home. Americans, whatever their opinion

The Spectator

Where the Iraq debate now stands in the US

This brief Time magazine article is as good a summation as any of the current situation in Iraq and how the US feels about it. Essentially, the surge has made military progress—something that an increasing number of Democrats are prepared to recognise—but the Maliki government has yet to take advantage of this window of opportunity, much to the frustration of the Bush administration.  Overall, the situation in Iraq is more hopeful than it was before the surge started but the Iraqis need to start making political progress soon if this momentum is not to be squandered.

The Spectator

Your taxes paying for taxis

The Pandora column in today’s Independent report on just how much the Department of Health spent on transport last year, and the sums are quite staggering:   £310,754 on taxis  £463,723 on business-class plane fares  £3.1 million on first-class train tickets  As Pandora notes that’s, “£1,195 a working day on taxis and almost £12,000 a day on first-class train travel.” Or to put it another way, the Department of Health spends on taxis and first-class train tickets each day what it would cost to give 5,000 patients the daily Alzheimer’s drugs that they need.

The Spectator

Fighting the bureaucratic enemy, not the real one

Perhaps, the most damning thing about the CIA Inspector General’s report into the Agency’s performance into the run up to 9/11 is that even after George Tent concluded that the United States was at war with terrorist organisations petty turf wars between the intelligence agencies continued. Take this dispute between the CIA and the National Security Agency, which the Washington Post reports on this morning:  “the NSA had long refused to share raw transcripts of intercepted al-Qaeda communications with the CIA but finally relented and allowed one CIA officer to review the intercepts at the NSA for a brief period in 2000.” When we debate the whole question about whether

Tuesday

The Spectator

Updating Our Island Story

John Lloyd has a typically thoughtful op-ed in the FT today about how we should teach history in schools and how we can create a sense of nationhood that fits this post-devolution, multi-ethnic country. Lloyd argues that the problem with Gordon Brown’s belief that an emphasis on liberty, equity and democracy can unite the country is that they are universal ideals not solely British ones.  Lloyd suggests that the way these values could tie the country together is if they are rooted in a sense history. To that end, he thinks we need a new version of the kind of popular, narrative history embodied by Our Island Story. He says that it should start something like this, “Once upon a time, people

The Spectator

The consequences of having a small army

The FT’s look at how the British deployment in Basra got to where it is today is well worth reading. As the FT notes, the reason the British force in Iraq was reduced so quickly after the invasion from 45,000 to 26,000 is that the military is simply not big enough to support such a large deployment for any substantial period of time. How small the army has become is illustrated by the fact that: “At just under 100,000 men and women, Britain’s regular army is now smaller than at any time since the early 1840s. It would fit into Manchester’s two Premier League football stadiums, while the 24,000 spare

The Spectator

How the Monarchy restored public affection for it

If you’re planning to listen to a Royal Recovery on Radio 4 this morning at nine, repeated this evening at half nine, about how the Royal family came back from the death of Diana do read Matthew d’Ancona’s account of making the programme in this week’s Spectator. Matt concludes that the monarchy has surived because”the public were not rebels at all, but complicit with the monarchy in this process of selective amnesia and quiet restoration.” As Matt says, “The deeper lesson of the past ten years is that our national genius for memory is matched by a genius for forgetting.”

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

I will roll my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help…

Jesus Wept Department. A viewer’s question during this morning’s ABC Democratic candidates’ forum: My question is to understand each candidate’s view of a personal God. Do they believe that through the power of prayer disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened? Gotta love that “lessened” don’t you, as though the questioner suddenly doubted their own understanding of their personal god’s powers of intercession? Charity demands that I observe that the candidates all gave respectable answers to this nonsense. Video here (you may have to endure a 30 second ad). [Hat tip: Isaac Chotiner]

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Today’s menace to society: smoking in cars

Will Saletan has a reasonable column today pointing out just how absurd the War on Smoking has become. Saletan hits some of the right notes, observing, for instance, that alcohol has greater social costs than tobacco etc etc. Fair enough. But this is a lost – or at least doomed – battle. You want to see the future? Well, according to this Newsday story there’s currently a bill coming before New York City Council that would prohibit smoking in cars if anyone under the age of 18 was present. Never mind the fact that (even in NYC traffic) cars come equipped with a remarkably efficient ventilation system – windows –

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Monday Trivia!

Yeah, so it’s been a long time since I posted any trivia questions. Rather than wait for the weekend, here’s something to distract your attention on a Monday afternoon. As always, no googling, no prizes – it’s just for fun. Email me your answers or leave them in the comments: 1. Can you connect a once busy arrival point with a writer who began with less than nothing but became a poster-boy for a generation and a boy who picked it up and ran? 2. Why might a Washington Wizard, an Anglo-Irish essayist, and a man first encountered at Twelve Oaks all have been eligible to join the Ganymede club?

The Spectator

Restoring the compact between the military and society

One of the things that has been strained to an intolerable extent since 9/11 is the compact between the British people, represented by their government, and the armed forces. We are now in a situation where the military is fighting two wars on a peacetime budget. When injured servicemen and women return home they are not being treated in military only hospitals but instead forced to share their treatment space with those of us who have not served and thus can not understand what they have experienced. While society seems generally uninterested in the efforts of British troops. One of the more damning condemnations of our culture is that the troops’

The Spectator

Government spends like a WAG on a shopping trip

If you want an example of how government comes up with ways to waste our money, just consider the story in The Sun today of ‘The WAG’s Guide to Travel’ penned for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by Jermain Defoe’s girlfriend Charlotte Meares. A quick call to the FCO confirms that Ms. Meares was paid for putting her name to the guide. The FCO won’t reveal how much but merely say that the money came out of the £1.8 million budget for the ‘Know Before You Go campaign.’ Now, consider that not only was Ms. Meares paid for her work but that a bunch of people were paid for coming

The Spectator

The FCO fritters away money like a WAG

If you want an example of how government comes up with ways to waste our money, just consider the story in The Sun today of ‘The WAG’s Guide to Travel’ penned for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by Jermain Defoe’s girlfriend Charlotte Meares. A quick call to the FCO confirms that Ms. Meares was paid for putting her name to the guide. The FCO won’t reveal how much but merely say that the money came out of the £1.8 million budget for the ‘Know Before You Go campaign.’  Now, consider that not only was Ms. Meares paid for her work but that a bunch of people were paid for coming

James Forsyth James Forsyth

42% of people don’t feel it is safe to go out at night

This YouGov poll in the Daily Mirror makes for depressing reading. 42% of people don’t believe that it is safe to go out at night, while 11% don’t ever feel secure in their neighbourhood. 50% say they are less safe than when Labour came to power. The poll also shows that 89% of the public think that parents should be held responsible for the behaviour of their children. 62% say that poor parenting is most responsible for loutish behaviour and, despite all the attention given to the issue, only 5% argue that the biggest problem is the availability of alcohol.