All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The latest issue of the Spectator is released today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online now. Five articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users: The idea of
Chairman of the Nimrod inquiry Charles Haddon Cave QC is convinced that the fire on board Nimrod XV230 would not have occurred had those tasked with ensuring airworthiness fulfilled their responsibilities. Haddon Cave lists Air Commodore George Baber, Wing Commander Michael Eagles and the leadership of BAE Systems among the chief culprits – the MoD
Brother Liddle is right to despair at the latest local government absurdity: banning parents from children’s playgrounds unless they’ve undergone a criminal background check to prove that they’re not paedophiles. There would appear to be no limit to local government lunacy. O tempora, O mores indeed. This sort of thing, however, also poses a problem
George Osborne’s speech on Monday calling for huge cash bonuses not to be paid this year drew an angry response from those hoping to receive huge cash bonuses – and various City and business pressure groups. A few years ago I would have felt deeply uncomfortable with what Obsorne proposed, but because nearly every bank
When the story of there being controversy over Liz Truss’s selection as the Tory candidate for South West Norfolk because she had once has an affair with a Tory MP arose last weekend, I dismissed it. My immediate reaction was that the media was just looking for a follow up story to the row over
Does Cameron fluff PMQs on purpose? Some theorists say he lets Brown off the hook in order to keep the weakling in his job. I don’t buy that. A politician’s natural instinct makes him want to win every session, every question. But Brown sometimes sneaks through intact because Dave rarely varies his tactics. He doesn’t
Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1159: Still waiting for the main event. You can watch it here, by the way. 1203: And we’re off. Brown starts by paying tribute to British troops in Afghanistan, as well as aid workers killed in Kabul 1204: First question from Stephen Hepburn on whether pleural plaque victims
So the details of Sir Christopher Kelly’s review into expenses are starting to leak ahead of their formal publication next week. The proposals will include an expected ban on employing family members, reductions in living allowances, and a ban on claming mortgage interest for a second home. Of all the measures, though, the most eye-catching
Over at his blog, Rod has a simple plea: “let’s start a mass campaign of disobedience”. The target: the type of council bureaucracy which stops parents taking their kids to a playground unless they’ve been CRB checked. The method: well, that’s where you come in. There’s a bottle of champagne for the best suggestion. Just
Try to take your child to a public playground in Watford and you will be denied entry on the grounds that you may well be a kiddie-fiddler. I don’t know why you’d want to take your child to a playground in Watford, even if you live there – but that’s another issue, I suppose. Parents
It’s been a while since we last checked in on Arnold Schwarzenegger and last time we looked California remained a basket-case (making it an awkward poster child for the Tories “let’s all be Californian” motif. But hey, that was in happier, more lucrative times. So fret not.) Still, it’s good to see that the Governator
After his superb work with the Centre for Social Justice, it’s encouraging that Iain Duncan Smith is being tasked by the Tory leadership to come up with “affordable policy solutions” to spring the traps which keep people stuck in worklessness. It’s thought that David Cameron rated the proposals of the CSJ’s recent report on this
Today’s Mac cartoon in the Daily Mail is, for me, a cut out and keep. It epitomises everything that has gone wrong with policing in Britain – a copper running past thieves to nick an old lady who has wrongly parked. And it touches on a wider theme: this is why regard for the police
This post on immigration prompted a pair of fine, Chestertonian (in the sense of we the quiet people of England stuff) responses to which I think it’s only proper that I reply. First, Carroll Barry-Walsh writes: Of course, it’s the type of people we let in because there is a difference between letting in people
At the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, there are no cardboard mockups of Iran’s nuclear sites that can be used for briefing the military on plans of attack. Instead, there is a very cool 3D map table that allows the viewer to fly into and through the many layers of
My old chum, and former boss, Iain Martin writes that time is, in fact, of the essence in Afghanistan and that Barack Obama needs to make a decision: We cannot go on like this indefinitely – making some progress but never winning, especially when money is so tight. We need to either commit more troops
David Aaronovitch’s column in the Times today is excellent. Worthy of three cheers. I should say here that the ONS begins every such report with the explicit warning that its projections are not forecasts, as Mr [Frank] Field claims, but projections forward of recent trends.[Empasis added] When I spoke to him yesterday Mr Field essentially
So, the expenses scandal may finally be coming towards a close. We can only hope so. The leaks emanating from the Kelly report suggest that MPs will only be able to claim for rent, not mortgages, on their second homes. This seems reasonable. Less sensible, however, is the proposal that MPs be banned from employing
There have been two polls today which are worth mentioning belatedly. The first is YouGov’s voting intention poll for Wales, which Anthony Wells has analysed here and here. It’s not often you see a Welsh voting poll – which is a shame – and the results of this one are striking. Labour are on 34
David Cameron was in confident form at his press conference this morning. Most of the questions were about the possibility of President Blair and Tory opposition to that. But three other things from the event were worth noting. First, Cameron’s announcement that the Tories will publish their top three or four priorities for each department
Last night in a speech at the IISS, David Milliband laid out the case against the Tories’ Europe policy. As he started off saying: “It is very strongly in the British national interest for the EU to develop a strong foreign policy; that to be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong;
One of the quickest wins that the next government could achieve is to change the power and accountability arrangements of Whitehall. At the moment, there’s a convoluted system in place where its difficult to apportion blame when a government department screws up. Sure, a minister may take the media flak if, say, a department loses
Isn’t it funny how things change? A few years ago, Brown could barely stand to talk to Blair. But now, according to the Guardian, he’s got civil servants lobbying on the former Prime Minister’s behalf in Europe: “Gordon Brown has asked two of his most senior civil servants to lobby discreetly within Europe for Tony
Spectator Business, the sister magazine of The Spectator, is on the lookout for talent again. We’re tracking down Britain’s best young entrepreneurs of 2009. Last year, we profiled ten young people who had made their mark in industries ranging from media and entertainment to food production and social networking. They included Marc Burton, a partner
I must admit that I despaired this morning when I heard that Nick Stern was arguing that meat eating should become socially unacceptable because of climate change. Those of us who think that climate change is happening and that human activity is a part of it have a big enough case to make without people
To sign or not to sign? For the past week or so, we’ve been hearing reports about how the Czech President, Václav Klaus, has decided, reluctantly, to accept the Lisbon Treaty. But a story in today’s Times suggests that he’s still holding out against ratification. Here’s the key passage: “Václav Klaus, the Czech President, who
I’ve often written that the modern Republican party’s obsession with Ronald Reagan obscures as much as it illuminates. The deification of the Gipper isn’t a great substitute for addressing the particular problems the party – and the United States – faces today. Asking “What would Reagan do?” can’t provide the answers to every issue. Nevertheless,
Plenty of CoffeeHousers are mentioning the Andrew Neather revelations in various comment sections. If you haven’t seen them yourself, the story is that Neather, a former government adviser, wrote a comment piece claiming that New Labour’s immigration policy was “intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in
A few notes and observations on the English Defence League, which has gained a bit of prominence recently and is mentioned in Mel’s latest article in The Spectator. This is the organisation which turns up to Muslim demonstrations and does a bit of vigorous counter-demonstrating for itself; they then are in turn picketed by the
…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: James Forsyth reports on Iran’s secret nuclear plant, and says that a second round of voting won’t solve all of Afghanistan’s election problems. Peter Hoskin says that there’s still no room for complacency about the BNP, and claims that the Tories now have
John Rentoul rightly flags up the story in this morning’s FT that about 100,000 NHS patients have gone private and had the state pick up the tab, the private hospitals have had to agree to do the work at the NHS price. For those of us who would like to see the NHS move towards
After 14 years on the run, Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, is finally being brought to justice. Today, prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Karadzic with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, Karadzic was one of the authors of
At last the full facts about our burgeoning quango state are laid bare. The conclusion of a report published today by the TaxPayers’ Alliance is that it’s “big, bloated and more expensive than ever before.” The TPA document provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date listing available of all 1,152 ‘semi-autonomous public bodies’ operating in the
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