Society

Friday

Philip Hensher

A worthy winner

Most of the media seemed determined to turn Doris Lessing into a sweet old lady who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, as it were, in a fit of absence of mind. Almost all of them said, on no evidence at all, that she’d been “shopping” at the time of the announcement. She has never been one to waste anyone’s time, least of all her own, and was absolutely clear about this prize; she’d won every other literary prize by now, she said, so she might as well have this one. As indeed she might. When you start your literary career, nearly sixty years ago, by writing an absolutely

Matthew Dancona

From Oscar to Nobel

I think I am right that Al Gore and George Bernard Shaw are the only two people ever to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. Can Coffee Housers confirm this?

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who remembers the Armenians?

I’d been quietly, if feebly, sympathetic towards some of the realpolitik concerns about the forthcoming Congressional vote on recognising the Armenian genocide. Then the Washington Post came out fighting. Apparently the resolution is “Worse than Irrelevant” The Post chuntered that Congressman Adam Schiff, the driving force behind the resolution thanks to the vociferous lobbying of US-Armenians in his California district (mere parochialism according to the Post because of course it’s stupid to listen to one’s constituents…) is up to no good. Worse still, the paper sneered: How many House members can be expected to carefully weigh Mr. Schiff’s one-sided “findings” about long-ago events in Anatolia? Apparently given: the high risk

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Blood Sports

Toby set tongues wagging with his post about whether David Cameron was Muhammed Ali to Gordon Brown’s George Foreman. (Do see Clive’s post on why Gordon is really Sonny Liston) So, here–at Toby’s suggestion–is yesterday’s encounter between Cameron and Brown and the combination of punches from the Rumble in the Jungle that Toby thought that Cameron threw the verbal equivalent of yesterday. Which was more brutal?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What Darling really did with Inheritance Tax

I was too harsh on the Treasury. I derided their inheritance tax con, saying it may fool TV news but would be shredded by the press. This was not the case. Most newspapers, having two hours to digest the whole budget, jumped the wrong way on IHT, reporting that the threshold was doubled to £600,000. So mission accomplished: the public has been successfully misled. How so? I pass you over to a Coffee Houser, DaveyB, who is an inheritance tax specialist. He left a comment earlier on, and has kindly agreed to expand it. I suspect you may not read this in the press… Now, some of you may think:

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Lady Wasn’t For Turning (Thank God).

Tyler Cowen takes a look at Paul Krugman’s book and says Krugman isn’t prepared to think broadly on the question of why conservatism triumphed in the 1980s: Conservatism rose in the 1980s in large part because the mid to late 1970s were such an economic mess and because American had lost so much relative status internationally.  Krugman won’t face up to that; instead he blames the Republican manipulation of “the race card,” even though at the time racial tensions arguably were lower than ever before.  Of course in a relatively close election any single factor can be called decisive but I found this discussion well below the standards of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Get ready for a row over Europe

After being pummelled at PMQs today, the last thing Gordon Brown wants is an escalation of the row over the so-called EU Reform Treaty, what used to be called the constitution, and Labour’s broken promise to hold a referendum on it. But that’s what he is going to get. During an appearance in front of the Foreign Affairs select committee today, David Miliband promised to produce a letter setting out precisely where Britain’s red lines are protected. This will set off a row over whether these protections are worth the paper they’re written on and highlight just how similar the new treaty is to the old constitution. So, Brown will

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown disappoints his own supporters while Cameron cheers his

Columns by two of Britain’s most astute political commentators will not improve Gordon Brown’s mood this morning. In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland bemoans how Brown doesn’t get the vision thing. He starts by saying, “For those who held high hopes for the premiership of Gordon Brown, who endured the long wait through the Blair years nurturing the belief that something better beckoned, these are testing times”. Freedland goes onto berate Brown’s team for being more interested in politicking than governing and for a conference speech that was long on populist measures but short on argument. He also makes the crucial point that Brown’s stumble has reinvigorated his internal critics: all those

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Reasons to elect Mitt Romney, cont…

Nonetheless, have a gander and tell me if Mitt Romney looks presidential in this clip? It’s not just the rather unfortunate – from Romney’s point of view that is, since it makes him seem a heartless jackass – encounter with a medical marijuana activist (who is, it should be said, commendably restrained and temperate), it’s the whole thing: the ghastly, aw-shucks-thanks-for-coming-out-on-the-weekend false modesty, the terrible, cliched waffling about how the kids are “the future” and eradication-of-freedom agenda everyone else in the world is hell-bent upon pursuing. Now, of course it is ghastly to be subjected to the endless miseries and humiliations of the campaign trail. But since it requires such

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Ugly American Abroad: Animal Version

DT Max had an entertaining piece in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday, exploring the Great British Squirrel Wars. Short story: its the worst sort of Squirrel Imperialism. American greys are driving out the smaller, but cuter, British red. Sadly the pair cannot coexist and it is always the red that succumbs – often killed by the mysterious Squirrelpox carried by the greys to which the American interlopers are irritatingly immune. The greys, already rampant across most of England are now targetting the Lake District and Southern Scotland. Something must be done! Happily the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is on the case. I speak, of course, of the House

Rachel Johnson

Cracking Stuff

This morning’s Guardian hailed the fresh brilliance of the new Unilever Turbine Hall project at Tate Modern by Doris Salcedo.  It shows: “a laudable unwillingness to compromise, wanting to make a work about absolute indifference, and to address desolation and destitution…Shibboleth begins with a hairline crack in the concrete floor by the entrance. As insignificant as a flaw in a teacup, as telling as the build-up scenes of a disaster movie, the crack soon widens and deepens, a jagged crevasse making its jagged way the length of the Turbine Hall, 167 metres away, jabbing a fork of lightning and deepening as it goes. You can never quite see the bottom

Rachel Johnson

INSERT A HEADLINE

This morning’s Guardian hailed the fresh brilliance of the new Unilever Turbine Hall project at Tate Modern by Doris Salcedo. It shows “a laudable unwillingness to compromise, wanting to make a work about absolute indifference, and to address desolation and destitution…Shibboleth begins with a hairline crack in the concrete floor by the entrance. As insignificant as a flaw in a teacup, as telling as the build-up scenes of a disaster movie, the crack soon widens and deepens, a jagged crevasse making its jagged way the length of the Turbine Hall, 167 metres away, jabbing a fork of lightning and deepening as it goes. You can never quite see the bottom

The Spectator

The inheritance tax con

By Fraser Nelson Here’s the weasel. The Inheritance Tax “reduction” is a canard. Anyone with financial acumen (or a lawyer) will not benefit at all. KPMG have just been on the phone explaining it all to me and explain it here. “This change, although likely to grab headlines, is in practice only giving to most people what they already have,” says Carolyn Steppler, its tax director. Why? At present, couples can take out a zero-rate Discretionary Trust which in practise pools their inheritance tax allowances. Only those who have not availed themselves of this would be helped by today’s announcement. Yet Brown estimates this will cost him £1.4 billion –

The Spectator

A tax raising report | 9 October 2007

By Fraser Nelson I now have the costings. This is indeed a tax raising budget. By 2010-11 they plan to net £1.4 billion extra in tax. Highlights are: £440m a year by “state second pension white paper reforms”…. Sounds dodgy…. Raise £500m from non doms, lose £1.4 billion on inheritance tax (nb Tory proposal would have cost £3.5bn) and £900m from the raid on venture capitalists plus £500m on the new airline tax. In the first two years this would be a net loss to the Exchequer, but overall taxes are up.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A tax raising report

I now have the costings. This is indeed a tax raising budget. By 2010-11 they plan to net £1.4 billion extra in tax. Highlights are: £440m a year by “state second pension white paper reforms”…. Sounds dodgy…. Raise £500m from non doms, lose £1.4 billion on inheritance tax (nb Tory proposal would have cost £3.5bn) and £900m from the raid on venture capitalists plus £500m on the new airline tax. In the first two years this would be a net loss to the Exchequer, but overall taxes are up.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The scene is set for Darling

This is a posthumous Brown budget. Let’s not forget he finished the Spending Review last year, but held it over to now updating it now and again. So you may see Darling’s lips move, but we will be hearing Brown’s voice. We will be blogging live on this, but we’re aware of the pit-falls. Here are the ingredients of a Brown budget… 1. The speech. Normally a ploy to wrong-foot the Opposition and set the press on the wrong scent. The real story will only come out once we have seen the documents (made available when he sits down) and studied the footnotes. Remember the 2p on tax cut that never

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Olympic Fever

From today’s Guardian: London Olympic organisers have been forced to abandon their original plans for the canoe slalom venue after the original site in Spitalbrook, Hertfordshire was found to be severely contaminated.

Matthew Dancona

A taxing friendship

At the risk of infuriating Coffee Housers (and Polly), I rather like Polly Toynbee. She’s good company and we chatted happily before appearing on Marr on Sunday. It’s just that she’s wrong, and particularly wrong about tax. See her article in today’s Guardian, calling on Gordon to open up clear red water between himself and the Tories, and to explain “what tax is for, why it is a public good and not a burden, how it is the agent of social justice.” Tax is a necessary evil to most people, especially the least affluent. They accept it as the membership fee of society, and the price they pay for common

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown faces the press pack

Every time I’ve stood in a queue waiting for these No10 press conferences, the chat is usually “he’s really screwed now.” We’re usually disappointed. Same this time. This was neither the triumph nor the crucifixion many had predicted. Here’s my summary. 1) No speech: Blair would always start his hour-long press conferences with a little speech – using the focus of 24-hour News. Brown didn’t. A reminder of how unsure he still is on TV. 2) Whodunnit?? “My first instinct, if I were honest with you, was that I wanted to get on with putting my vision of the country across… but I did listen to people”. Ah, the dastardly

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Society v. the state

It’s always a pleasure to hear Will Hutton on the radio, the perfect antidote to the idea that the battle in politics is over. He justified inheritance tax on the basis that “society” deserves a slice of other people’s savings: of course, he meant the government. To me, the dividing line is between society and the government. On the one hand, communities – people doing the best for their families and neighbours: on the other, the looters – mistrustful of the public and hungry for the fruits of their labour. David Cameron stood up for society last week and it shook Labour to the core. As he says, there is