Society

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Biden’s son to serve in Iraq

From the AP: The son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is preparing for deployment to Iraq next year. Capt. Beau Biden, a Judge Advocate General in the Delaware National Guard and the state’s attorney general, is part of the 261st Signal Brigade that has been told to prepare for duty in Iraq in 2008. They have not been given a date of deployment yet. “I don’t want him going,” Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. “But I tell you what, I don’t want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

We should take lessons from the Swedes in education

Greetings from Sweden, where the newspapers today report that huge demand for Chinese has now made it one of the top three languages taught in schools here. Sweden has the voucher system, so the curriculum responds to parental demand rather than ministerial diktat. Imagine that. In Britain, just 4,000 of our 3.3 million state pupils study Chinese, and nearly all of them are Chinese. But don’t worry. A government adviser has instructed the country’s 250 specialist language schools to put Chinese on the curriculum as “the language of tomorrow”. Yes, it seems these language schools needed to be told. Moral: you can’t rely on mandarins to learn mandarin. PS I

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barack Obama, narcissist?

By which I mean only this: is Barack Obama more of a narcissist than the average egotist running for the Presidency? Ryan Lizza’s interesting GQ piece on Obama prompted Daniel Larison to suspect that “In other words, underneath the megalomaniac is a con-man, and underneath the con-man is the guy with the delusions of grandeur. Sounds like a great combination.” I was struck by the conclusion to Ryan’s thoughtful piece: It always comes back to this, Obama struggling not to let the campaign change who he is. He has a way of reflecting on his own campaign as an outside observer. “We’ll joke,” his wife told me, “when we’re sitting

Alex Massie Alex Massie

White House does best to undermine public confidence in own strategy

I’m quite prepared to believe there has been some military progress in Iraq and that it might be possible for the US to move some troops from some areas to others where they could be more profitably engaged. But I’d be much more comfortable taking General David Petraeus’s report at face value if the Los Angeles Times were not reporting that: Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

The Spectator

Are Beckham and Bush related?

David Beckham’s attempt to crack America continues apace. Last week, The New York Daily News reports, Beckham was given a private tour of the White House. His presence sparked confusion amongst those staff members not familiar with Brand Beckham, with the president’s private secretary asking him if he was a relative of Bush’s or a staffer; he’d certainly be an interesting replacement for Karl Rove. Meanwhile back on the West Coast, Posh Spice is continuing with her attempt to single-handedly restore US consumer spending. The gossip magazines are claiming that she has been offered a $5 million credit line at Neiman Marcus while apparently on a trip to the LA branch of

The Spectator

India sixty years on

 Do read this excellent essay in the IHT about why India and Pakistan’s fortunes have diverged so much since partition. While the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, is as good an excuse as any to re-read Nehru’s wonderful “tryst with destiny” speech.  

The Spectator

Did the BBC play fair with the Redwood report?

The BBC’s coverage of the Redwood report has come in for much criticism, notably from The Sun and Iain Dale. Helen Boaden, the director of BBC  News, has now responded, conceding that the BBC’s use of footage of Redwood failing to sing the Welsh national anthem was inappropriate but defending the substance of the reporting. Boaden lists the intros to each of the BBC’s news bulletins in the Corporation’s defence. Some of them do give the audience a good sense of the story but others do seem to put the cart before the horse, especially this one from Five Live at 11 am: “Labour has condemned the latest review of policy carried

The Spectator

The next step in the US-Iran showdown

Tensions between Tehran and Washington will reach new levels with the news that the US intends to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. This allows the US to disrupt the organisation’s funding and take steps against those companies that do business with it. The Revolutionary Guard is the first governmental entity that the US has attempted to confront using these tactics. Considering the Guard’s role in key sectors of the Iranian economy, the moves challenges foreign firms who do business with Iran to decide between continuing to work there or falling foul of the US government.

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A view to a kill in the morning*

Ah, August. Season of twits and sillyness. How else would the papers ever be filled? Even so, I confess to being mildly startled to discover that a story headlined “‘Chav Chasing’ public schoolboys criticised” concerned my own dear old alma mater. But yes, as this video demonstrates, it seems some public spirited members of the college community been spending their time clearing vermin from the woods (home of many a fondly remembered smoking den back in the day). This will appeal most to the decent working class and the smugger elements of the state-educated middle classes who can have the pleasure of scoffing at the toffs and chavs alike… (Clive?

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Polly: adrift on a sea of ignorance. Who knew?

Sigh. I know we don’t expect much from Polly Toynbee. But perhaps she should read some Irving Kristol before she starts referring to John Redwood as a neocon throwback to the Thatcher era. If she added some other books to her reading list she might remember that the Thatcherites were, to some extent at least, inspired by FA Hayek – a man not generally considered a neoconservative luminary. It’s too delicious, of course, that in terms of policy towards work and families and other social matters La Toynbee deeply cares about, she has rather more in common with neoconservatives than she seems to understand. They, after all, are the proponents

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Watch out, Moonbat about…

Elsewhere in today’s Guardian, George Monbiot admits that it’s awful that he’s profting from the unfortunate fact that newspapers continue to run advertisements paid for by awful car companies and airlines who are – as you know – hellbent on destroying the planet. Happily he has an ingenious solution: But some lines seem clear. Why could the newspapers not ban ads for cars which produce more than 150g of CO2 per kilometre? Why could they not drop all direct advertisements for flights? The reason is that newspapers derive around three quarters of their income from advertising, and most of them are struggling. The media companies will not volunteer to lower

Alex Massie Alex Massie

For Gerson is an honourable man, yes?

I must say I haven’t enjoyed a hatchet job as much as this one in, well, far too long. It is deliciously, extravagantly spiteful. I have no idea  – and frankly care not – if Matthew Scully’s hilarious assault on the reputation, person and character of Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson is at all accurate. It doesn’t matter a jot. The piece, published by The Atlantic (who seem to be on a roll right now), is so unexpectedly and refreshingly vindictive that I’m almost surprised it was published. A taster: Without fear of contradiction—because it’s all in the presidential records—I can report here that Michael Gerson never wrote a single speech

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Late night sillyness: Sniping at neighbours edition.

Norm alerts me to the concept of the googlenope (similar to the googlewhack, just less common). So I’m delighted that (until now I suppose), the phrase “Happiness in Galashiels” has been beyond google’s reach. This will come as no surprise to residents of Selkirk, Hawick, Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh… etc ad infinitum.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Days When the Composers Took on England’s Finest.. And Other Halcyon Times of Yore

Americans or, for that matter, anyone unfortunate enough to know little about – and worse, care nothing – for cricket may be advised to pass by this post. You’ve had your warning. As a kid I used to spend rather more time playing imaginary games of cricket than might have been considered wholly healthy. Actually, to say I was playing is inaccurate. I was selecting teams that would do battle for hours on end in my own modified – and more complicated – version of Dice Cricket (modified in part to take account of different ground conditions: thus a test at Headingley would take place with a grid more thinly

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Not everyone gets a prize…

A by-god-he’s-right post from Julian Sanchez: A little while back, I heard a band that introduced me to a new and particularly tragic category of artistic badness: They were exactly good enough to suck…  Read on, dear friends, read on…

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Cheney’s anti-war argument…

Cheney makes the anti-war case rather convincingly (in the light of recent events). Of course he’s speaking in 1994, explaining why the first Bush administration declined to press for regime change in Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait (or, rather, after restoring Kuwait to its own less than liberal regime): Now, sure, this clip is doubtless amusing many people. But perhaps Cheney was wrong twice? Wrong not to have pressed on to Baghdad in 1991 and wrong to have supported doing so in 2003. Perhaps all he predicts in this exchange would have come to pass. On the other hand, perhaps the George HW Bush administration would have managed any

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Heathrow’s 3rd runway won’t tip the earth into the balance

Alice Miles argues in her Times column on the climate change protests at Heathrow  that, “Pretty much anyone without shares in BAA would not wish another runway on that particular part of England (if, indeed, upon any of it).” I really don’t think this is true, even if some people won’t admit to wanting another runway in green company. I’d wager that the vast majority of those who have been delayed taking off or landing at that airport would welcome something that would cut down on these delays. While everyone I know who flies out of there regualrly is positively clamouring for it. The idea that somehow this third runway at Heathrow

The Spectator

Vlad on holiday

Why do photos of world leaders on holiday hold such fascination for us? The shots of Vladimir Putin fishing seem to be everywhere today, I’ve spared you the one of him topless, while the New York Times has an entire collection of vacationing politicians snaps up on its site. Anne Applebaum has an entertaining column in today’s Washington Post attempting to explain why we care so much about where these folk go for the summer. Her theory is that as we now all have so many more vacation choices than before, we take far more notice of where leaders go than we would have previously. Indeed, I think an element

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Part of the problem, not part of the solution

The BBC website is currently running a piece fretting that we all get too many emails. The story opens with the line: “Today’s e-mail glut is a constant worry for many office workers, with a third saying they get stressed by the volume of messages, according to a report.” But guess which story is currently the most emailed on BBC News?