Society

Wednesday

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. 

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Quote for the day

Via Samizdata, this from Barry Goldwater: I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Tattoos would be cheaper…

Hmmm. Just how would this work, Rudy? EVERY foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Giuliani is hoping to cement his status as the Republican favourite by promising to enforce immigration and border controls, drawing on expertise in combating crime from his time as mayor of New York. He announced last week that all foreigners, including holiday-makers, would be obliged to carry a “tamper-proof” biometric card, which could be issued at ports of entry. “If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 18 August 2007

EU vs US Sir: Irwin Stelzer can’t have it both ways (‘Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist’, 11 August). If Gordon Brown is going to have to give up his independent foreign policy when the EU reform treaty comes into force, so too will Nicolas Sarkozy. So neither a British nor a French special relationship with the US will count for much. The truth of course is that neither proud nation will give up its independent foreign policy. What the reform treaty does ensure, however, is that there will in future be a more coherent EU foreign policy, which will remove some of the exasperation that

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 18 August 2007

I was reading in bed (quietly for a change, since my husband was off on some drug-sponsored jamboree in Tallinn) the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation (£14.99) — a work of the BBC Pronunciation Unit — that someone had given me for my birthday. I was reading in bed (quietly for a change, since my husband was off on some drug-sponsored jamboree in Tallinn) the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation (£14.99) — a work of the BBC Pronunciation Unit — that someone had given me for my birthday. It did not bring sleep, for on page 80 I stumbled across ‘Top ten complaints about pronunciations’, from viewers and listeners that

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 August 2007

Q. When staying with a friend some months ago, I foolishly dropped a small Clarice Cliff dish which broke into several pieces. Knowing his penurious state, one in which as a pensioner I share, I offered to pay for it. He accepted, telling me that he had paid $500 (approximately £200) for it. During a recent telephone conversation he casually mentioned that he’d been able to repair the dish with little evidence of the accident. Am I being unreasonable in wondering why he has neither given me the dish for which, after all, I’d paid, nor offered to refund at least part of the $500? M.H., NSW, Australia A. Even

Robin Oakley

Matters of trust

It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables. Trainer Jamie Osborne is on his own but brews fresh coffee from a cafetière, served in matching mugs. Jamie, who always had style as well as courage in the saddle, does things properly as a trainer, too. The huge flat cap and toothy grin give him the air of a charming ragamuffin who will never grow up. When he began in 2000 he was just another former jump jockey trying his hand at training. And since he had been a class act in the saddle, riding

Jeff Randall

Diary – 18 August 2007

It was the call that never came. For three hours last week, I sat with my hand hovering over the phone. I had been told that Bill Kenwright would be getting in touch between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Yes, the Bill Kenwright, theatreland big shot and chairman of Everton FC. This was exciting. Was I about to be hired for a cameo role in his West End production of Cabaret? Better still, perhaps, he fancied my prospects as a burly striker, playing at Goodison alongside Andy Johnson? Sadly not. The reason I had been put on red alert was that Kenwright and his inamorata, Jenny Seagrove, were panellists on

Taki

Plans for peace

Here, at last, is the Taki plan to save George W. Bush’s presidency from the disaster it has been turned into by his neocon advisers. Yes, the Iraq war is a failure, but pulling out now will turn it into a geopolitical catastrophe of incalculable consequences. What Dubya needs is a great big fat win which will overshadow Iraq, hog the headlines and catapult him in the polls. The operative word is Palestine. Let’s take it from the top: His latest call for an international conference, one that is supposed to give birth to a contiguous Palestinian state, is a good start. The trouble is that throughout the past 40