
Too good to be true?
The Guardian’s Backbencher column has a particularly delicious titbit this week: “Spotted at New College, Oxford, last weekend: Richard Dawkins, saying grace at dinner.” What’s next, Ian Paisley taking communion at the Vatican?
The Guardian’s Backbencher column has a particularly delicious titbit this week: “Spotted at New College, Oxford, last weekend: Richard Dawkins, saying grace at dinner.” What’s next, Ian Paisley taking communion at the Vatican?
The Los Angeles Times has an absolute must-read today on the escalating tensions between US and Iranian forces in Iraq and how in the near term this is more likely to spark a war between the two countries than the Iranian nuclear programme. Do read the whole thing.
Alan West, the retired Admiral (pictured left) drafted in by Gordon Brown to be security minister, has an interview in The Sun today. The two things that will make headlines are his statements that dealing with the current threat will take thirty years or so and that the security services have foiled 12 major plots since 2000. What should get more attention is his comments on the importance of English speaking Imams as they illustrate how the government has not yet fully grasped the essentially ideological nature of this struggle. West tells The Sun, “We need to go to the root of it. Having English-speaking Imams in this country is extremely important.
So, Fred Thompson is just a conservative good-old-boy from Tennessee whose folksy charm is his biggest selling point. OK, well then you might expect that Fred would be a champion of traditional Tennessee values. Not so! The Los Angeles Times reviews the 88 cases Thompson prosecuted as a US Attorney in Nashville between 1969 and 1972 and discovers that though: There were a few bank robbers and counterfeiters. But more than anything, Thompson took on the state’s moonshiners and a local culture, rooted in Tennessee’s hills and hollows, that celebrated the independent whiskey maker’s battle against the government’s revenue agents. Twenty-seven of his cases involved moonshining — more than any
American conservatives who seem to think that waterboarding is perfectly ok – and there are, shamefully, many such people including the two leading candidates for the Republican party’s presidential nomination and, judging from his equivocation on the subject, the nominee for attorney-general, should be required to read this detailed post from Malcolm Nance. Mr Nance is no hand-wringer. His bio states, inter alia, that he is: A 20-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s Combating Terrorism program and a six year veteran of the Global War on Terrorism he has extensive field and combat experience as an field intelligence collections operator, an Arabic speaking interrogator and a master Survival, Evasion,
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.
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”.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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