Society

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Bureaucratic Bungling Corporation

Life is full of little ironies. I am just off to the BBC’s Millbank studios to do some recording for The Week in Westminster. Meanwhile, I have spent much of the afternoon having acrimonious conversations with senior BBC management. The cause? The Corporation has decided to withdraw permission from Emily Maitlis, star Newsnight and News 24 presenter, to be a Contributing Editor at The Spectator. Readers of the magazine will know what a gifted writer Emily is – see last week’s Diary – and I was thrilled when she agreed to become a Contributing Editor and pleasantly surprised when Peter Horrocks, the head off BBC TV news, gave her permission

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Where Bill and Hillary disagree

New York magazine has a piece that is well worth reading on the one issue where Hillary is busy distancing herself from the record of the Clinton presidency: trade. Free trade always takes a hammering during the Democratic primaries thanks to the influence of the labour unions, but there does seem to be something more going on this cycle with not one candidate prepared to offer even the most hesitant defence of future trade agreements. Indeed considering that America still has a sizable manufacturing base to lose, we can expect little impetus for a new trade agreement from Washington in the next few years.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Can John McCain recover?

The former Republican frontrunner has just let his three most senior campaign aides go. These three departures signify the deep trouble that McCain’s campaign is in; he is now third or fourth in the polls and trails the fringe libertarian candidate Ron Paul in the money stakes. But he could still recover. He’s the candidate on the Republican side who is most qualified to be president from day one, not an unimportant qualification considering the state that George W. Bush will leave the country in. He ‘gets’ the nature of the fight we’re in better than any candidate on either side and is also the only Republican candidate to have been

The Spectator

Why social breakdown is so difficult for government to deal with

“All of the work that we have done has reinforced the importance of the first three years on a child’s cognitive and emotional development. The emotional brain is largely created in the first 18 months of life and its auditory map is formed even earlier, by 12 months. Furthermore, it has also been shown, alarmingly, that a child’s education developmental score at 22 months can accurately predict educational outcomes at the age of 26.” This stat in Iain Duncan Smith’s report illustrates the difficulty for public policy in dealing with the whole problem of social breakdown. You can have the best schools in the world but if social advantage is

The Spectator

Bush will change Britain’s politics more than America’s

While the Republicans in America are quietly burying George W. Bush’s legacy in domestic policy, the Tories are embracing it. Iain Duncan Smith’s report on social policy, a labour of love if ever there was one, is animated by the same spirit of compassionate conservatism that underpinned George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign. IDS’s description of the philosophical underpinnings of the report couldn’t have been put better by Bush, or Karen Hughes: “Our approach is based on the belief that people must take responsibility for their own choices but that government has a responsibility to help people make the right choices. Government must therefore value and support positive life choices.” When you

The Spectator

We spend far too much on science

A brilliant topic on the Today programme – the scandal of the government science budget. A staggering £3.4bn of our money is spent on science – thus socialising what should be a completely liberalised form of human endeavour. This partly explains why so many scientists are on call to add to the chorus of global warming alarmism: this is where the research funds lie. All this diverts scientific attention from cutting-edge science which runs against the grain of government priorities. We have a world class Foreign Office, yet are closing down embassies because its £1.8bn budget is deemed excessive. Scandalously, a school teaching Farsi and Arabic to GCHQ staff was

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How close is the Bush administration to giving up on Iraq?

This New York Times story about the Bush administration considering abandoning the surge far more quickly than anyone is expecting is well worth reading. Also, take a look at this impassioned Bill Kristol piece urging the White House not to back down. While we’re on the other side of the Atlantic, this blog from the Aspen Ideas Festival – a kind of Hay on Wye on steroids – is well worth reading if you want to take the intellectual temperature of the American political class. Do note Bill Clinton’s comments about Iraq.

The Spectator

Mo Mowlam, not as useful as she was popular

August 17th, 1998 on how useless Mo Mowlam was in drafting a statement after the Omagh bomb: “We then had the ludicrous situation of TB having to ask Mo for her fax number, and her shouting out ‘Anyone out there who knows the fax number?’ and then saying the officials had disappeared. It was the Mo manner that was fine when things didn’t matter, but deeply irritating when they did. She sounded more and more exasperated. ‘I’ll say whatever you want, Tony,’ she said, at which point he exploded at her… she then lost the plot completely… Mo was getting near hysterical. TB said to her if you went out

The Spectator

The Dodgy Dossier

Sunday 21st June 2003, on demands that he should resign over the “dodgy dossier” on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “I hadn’t slept well. I was avoiding answering the phone other than to the office because by now all the broadcasters and half the Sundays were trying to ask me if I was going. Now was probably not the right time. It would be seen as bad for TB and bad for me if I went under a cloud.” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published

The Spectator

No WMD

June 2nd 2003, on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “TB was still in ‘it’s ridiculous’ mode and getting more and more irritated by what was essentially a media-driven thing. The main problem of course was that there were no WMD discoveries beyond the two labs, and no matter how much we said that there were other priorities now, the public were being told as a matter of fact that we had done wrong. We had Clare Short, Robin Cook and a lot of backbenchers on the rampage now. So it was difficult.” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the

The Spectator

‘Two families with the same woman’

July 11th, 2002 on TB telling him that Cherie was pregnant: “He then walked over to the wall, leaned against it, laughed and said ‘There’s another complication I need to tell you about.’ He said: ‘I think Cherie is pregnant.’ He said they were both absolutely gobsmacked about the whole thing. But it did mean it was forcing him to think about the future. ‘I’ve effectively got two families with the same woman.’” Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published Alastair Campbell diaries for Coffee House.

The Spectator

Campbell considered suicide

August 10th, 2003 on being told while on holiday in France that the Hutton Inquiry wanted to read his diaries: “I had received the request for my diary on Thursday and now, finally, this year’s was being flown out by Peter Howes [duty clerk]. As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona, I did actually wonder momentarily whether it would be the last time I saw her, whether what I discovered on reading my own diary would be so awful that I would want to top myself. It was only a passing thought, but it was there, and it came back several times as I drove down to

The Spectator

Snuffing away

Marvellous to read James Delingpole on snuff in this week’s issue and the very next day to go out to lunch and encounter two people both enthusiastically snuffling away. They managed to do so quite neatly, without sneezing volcanically into voluminous tobacco-stained handkerchiefs. One of them favoured a slightly mentholated mix, while the other’s was mustier, with notes of sandalwood and cinnamon. Their supplies came in small tins like miniature jerry cans, which was a little disappointing – I had hoped for exquisite enamelled snuffboxes and more of a flourish about the sniffing. Still, it’s early days.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Where the UK terror cells are

The News of the World (where yours truly is a columnist) is not only top for celebrity news (they had the Wills/Kate reunion last week) but its news stories are often ahead of the competition by weeks. So I’m struck by their story that there now 219 terror cells on MI5’s map, plus a fascinating geographical breakdown (12 in Scotland, 80 in the Midlands, 35 in London). The message MI5 seems to want to put out is that one of these guys will succeed, and soon. Emphatically not the time to stop talking about the “war on terror”, in my view. PS I’m a fan of Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 7 July 2007

‘What’s this?’ exclaimed my husband as we came round the corner between the Foreign Office and the Treasury on the edge of St James’s Park. ‘What’s this?’ exclaimed my husband as we came round the corner between the Foreign Office and the Treasury on the edge of St James’s Park. It was the memorial to the 202 people killed in the Bali bombing in 2002. London has acquired a sprinkling of memorials recently — to the women of the second world war in Whitehall, to animals in war in Park Lane, to the Battle of Britain on the Embankment. The Bali memorial has been there since last autumn, although my

The Spectator

Letters | 7 July 2007

Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. Brown-nosing Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. When Tony Blair came to office ten years ago he was new and fresh and merited a honeymoon period, though seven years of it was outrageous. Ditto David Cameron 18 months ago, whose media honeymoon just ended in roadkill. But Gordon Brown has been co-premier for the past decade and is co-equally responsible for every shoddy aspect of the worst ten

Interconnect

Your problems solved | 7 July 2007

Q. Everyone over 40 in my office has been let go. I assume I have been spared the axe because Human Resources has never had a record of my date of birth. Now a mountain of paperwork has arrived from the school at which my son will take up a place in September. We, his parents, are asked to supply all manner of personal detail about ourselves including our ages. My husband is happy to give his age. I do not wish to lie about mine but if I failed to fill in the box at all, or wrote ‘N/A’, it might draw more attention because we have moved into

Emily Maitlis

Diary – 7 July 2007

Washington High tea with George Bush in the Oval Office. Polite but tough questioning on my book. He tells me how much he’s enjoyed reading it. Next stop, the wonderfully counter-counter-cultural bowling alley with Dick Cheney, flanked by Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History. They tell me how much they’ve enjoyed my book. Paris Croque monsieur for 70 at the Elysée Palace with Nicolas Sarkozy. Nico tells me he’s only just put down my book. I tell him how much I’m enjoying his presidency. We part amicably. Afghanistan To the Tora Bora caves for mint tea with Bin Laden, author of 9/11, then off kite-flying with his deputy

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 7 July 2007

Could do without the sort of nonsense I had to deal with this evening. Phone rang in middle of the big announcement and the operator said: ‘Call from Newcastle. Will you accept the charges?’ Monday Could do without the sort of nonsense I had to deal with this evening. Phone rang in middle of the big announcement and the operator said: ‘Call from Newcastle. Will you accept the charges?’ Not so much as a thank-you when Bev from Labour came on the line. Just one insult after another about our ‘sad little reshuffle. Caroline Spelman to rally the grassroots? I don’t think so! George Osborne, election supremo? Oo, we’re scared

Robin Oakley

Much missed

We had been through so much together. Racing not just on the domestic scene but also in Melbourne, Mauritius and Maisons-Lafitte. Together over 15 years we had been bird-watching in Venezuela, Costa Rica and the Gambia, Madagascar and the Isle of Mull. But at Newmarket last Saturday somebody relieved me of my long-cherished Zeiss binoculars. Bombed out perhaps by too many 18-hour days lately in the television job, I either left them on the roof of the car as I retrieved an umbrella from the boot or I put them down when writing out a bet. Either way, somebody chose to help themselves. One should not become attached to inanimate