Latest from Coffee House

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local

Just to flag up to CoffeeHousers that we’ve launched a separate area to the website: Spectator Live. Going to new.spectator.co.uk/live will open up what we hope will be your bulletin board for Election 2010. It collects all election-related content from around the Spectator website – so posts from Coffee House, from our team of bloggers, and the like. But there are also a few new bells and whistles. Here’s a quick guide to what you’ll find there: The Spectator Panel We’ve gathered a great selection of commentators from across the political spectrum to give their views on the unfolding campaign. They are: the journalist Gaby Hinsliff, ConservativeHome’s Tim Montgomerie, Left

It’s always gratifying to see Coffee House posts followed up in the newspapers, and I almost admire the way the Daily Mail has just splashed the newspaper on one of our posts without mentioning the source. CoffeeHousers will recognise the story on the Mail’s front page (left) – some 99 percent of jobs created since 1997 are accounted for by immigration. But the reader is left wondering where this figure came from. Was it released by the ONS? Erm, no. The only source for these figures is an email I was kindly sent by the ONS after specifically requesting the data. I used it in a line from The Spectator’s

The small crowd of demonstrators from a group calling itself the Anti-Academies Alliance who gathered outside the Spectator conference on The Schools Revolution yesterday gave an indication of the opposition that Michael Gove and the Conservatives would face, were they to win the election and attempt the radical overhaul of which the British education system is so obviously in need. The thing that came across in our brief but passionate debate with the protestors was their opposition to independence, wherever it may raise its head in schools. Choice, to these people, is anathema. Undeterred, Gove’s speech majored on the virtues of independence. He criticised the present government for waging ‘a

The latest issue of the Spectator is out today, and here are my top four features: 1. Britain on the brink.  Allister Heath, the editor of City AM, blogged about his cover story earlier. But the full article really is a must-read: it explains just why hung parliaments don’t work in Britain and why the AAA rating is now a red herring. There is a real risk of Britain following Greece into the vortex. 2. Why do we let South Africans play cricket for England? Peter Oborne cares deeply about cricket – and has written an impassioned piece about what he sees as a  South African invasion of our national

This morning, I drove past one of the Cameron adverts – “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” – and that Bacacharch & David song came into my head: “What’s it all about, Alfie?” It’s been in my head, in fact, ever since his Oxford speech last weekend. Just what is the Big Idea? We seek to answer the question in this week’s magazine with four pieces. James Forsyth says that any hunt for Cameron’s ideology will be in vain, because he doesn’t really have one. He doesn’t like –isms and there will never be a Cameronism. David Selbourne, one of Britain’s leading political philosophers, has written a scathing piece.

Happy New Year – and have a drink! That’s the message from the new year issue of The Spectator, where Leah McLaren has written a superb piece answering the Liam Donaldsons of this world. Here she is, in full flow: “Almost all of this country’s most famous names been unapologetic boozers. From Kate Moss to Francis Bacon to Christopher Hitchens to the Queen Mum, Brits have a great tradition of not letting their functional alcoholism drag them down. Without it, arguably, we would not have punk rock, romantic poetry or basic democratic freedoms — for as Churchill urged us to remember, he ‘took more out of alcohol’ than alcohol took

Hogmanay is still a couple of days away, but it’s proving to be a very happy old year for us at 22 Old Queen St. The Spectator just been named political magazine of 2009 by readers of Iain Dale’s blog. Normally, we’d maintain a bashful silence: but I’d like to say a quick thanks to anyone out there who voted for us. Matthew Parris and myself also picked up gongs in the political writer category, and that other chap lurking around the building, Andrew Neil, was named broadcaster of the year, and This Week was voted no.2 political programme of the year. My question: how do we make The Spectator

Barring major political catastrophe, Coffee House will be falling silent over the next few days as we all celebrate Christmas.  Many thanks to CoffeeHousers for your contributions over the past year.  We hope you enjoy a happy holiday. If you’re looking to fill your time, then Paul Johnson’s and Lloyd Evans’ pieces from the Christmas issue of the magazine are well worth a read.  We’ll be uploading more magazine content over the next week.

It’s said that every newborn either looks like Winston Churchill or a pound of mince. But this gorgeous, wee creature, I’m sure you’ll agree, looks like neither. Born at 5.52am this morning, after a wait of what felt like an eternity, he weighed in at 9lbs 1 ounce. The staff at the hospital (Kingston-upon-Thames) were absolutely wonderful: we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Interestingly, the midwife said they are at their busiest here during a full moon or during a storm. So I won’t be blogging for a while. It’s time to lavish attention on our other son and persuade him that he has been presented with a