Media

Monday

James Forsyth

A conservative revival in the States

Election night two years ago was not a good night for the GOP. Not only had it lost the White House but also all those predictions about how social trends and demographics were making America more Democrat appeared to be coming true.  In the south, Virginia and North Carolina shifted to the Democratic column. In the mid-West, Indiana went for the Democratic candidates for the first time since 1964. I was watching the results come in that night with an informal adviser to the McCain campaign and that evening it was hard to see how the Republicans could get to 270 in future with the upper south moving into swing

Saturday

David Blackburn

Housing benefit reform is a Good Thing

Dressed with his effortless prose, Matthew Parris has a point (£) that proves why he is the leading commentator of the last two decades. Housing benefit reform is his subject and he urges his readers reject the legends that have accrued around the issue – not Boris, not Polly Toynbee, not shrill councils, not rapacious landlords and definitely not the government. No one, he says, has the numbers but there are several certainties: ‘The outcomes may not prove nearly as brutal as this week’s predictions. What (as I asked above) can we know? We know that comparisons with Paris are ludicrous. All of our big cities are speckled with very

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Weak, weak, weak

Weak again. For the second session in a row Miliband was feeble at PMQs. He opened in his quiet-assassin mode with a quickie question. ‘There are reports that the government is planning changes to housing benefit reforms. Are they?’ Clearly he meant to wrong-foot Cameron by tempting him into admission which could be instantly disproved. But Cameron simply denied the suggestion and Miliband had no embarrassing disclosure to fire back with. Pretty duff tactics there. He fared slightly better when he asked Cameron what advice he’d give to a family facing a 10 percent cut in housing benefit after the chief bread-winner had been unemployed for a year. Cameron replied

Saturday

David Blackburn

The insidious fingers of Iran are all over Iraq

Wikileaks is the story of the day. The Guardian has extensive coverage of unsubstantiated allegations made by unnamed Iraqis. That is not to prejudge the revelations, just to provide balance against the sensational headlines before proper investigations called for by the UN. In addition to the alleged atrocities and cover-ups, Wikileaks’ disclosures support what Blair and Bush said and maintain: Iran incited dissidence to exploit instability. In fact, it is still doing so, despite the Obama administration’s protests to the contrary. The New York Times has eviscerated Biden and Obama this morning. The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden has the best summary of the unfolding debate: ‘It seems to me that the

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Sticking up for free schools

I’m on the train back from doing Radio Four’s Any Questions – broadcast live from Derby, repeated at 1.10pm tomorrow – where I had a bust-up with Christine Blower of the NUT. CoffeeHousers may recall she was the star of a cover story we ran a few weeks back, about the campaign of bullying and intimidation levelled against headteachers who are trying to seek Academy status. She raised that article during recording, and things kinda kicked off. I told her she should be ashamed of the way her union thugs try to intimidate young teachers who seek to break away from local authority control and reach independence. She denied writing

Thursday

David Blackburn

Nick Robinson earns his spurs

Nick Robinson has won blogger of the year at Editorial Intelligence’s Comment Awards. However, he deserves an award for this bit of heroism on College Green. Hat-tip: Will Heaven. UPDATE: Robinson has taken the time to pen an explanation for his sign rage, good on him. PS: Oh yes. To those of a sensitive disposition, please ignore the anti-war clips accompanying the footage.

David Blackburn

The morning after the day before

The last time the doomsayers were proved so wrong was when the Hadron Collider didn’t blow us all up. Osborne’s cuts have come and life, the universe and everything continue insouciantly. In fact, the cuts were nowhere near as deep as many expected. As the graphic above proves (courtesy of ConHome), the press reaction is cordial, which was the best the Osborne could hope for. The Times (£) and the Guardian express concern about fairness, based on decile graphs that suggest the poor will receive less direct income from the state; and the Telegraph grumbles about the ‘squeezed middle’. But the criticism is mild, certainly compared to yesterday’s horror stories;

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

More to Osborne’s plan than gambling

Paul Mason’s review of the cuts for Newsnight last night (from 10:20 into the video here) was one of the most powerful critiques of Osborne from the left. His package majored on Osborne’s decision to cut a further £11 billion from welfare and pensions, to soften the departmental cuts. Adopting a rather funereal tone, Mason declared that, “if you are poor, your life is about to change”. He produced a decile graph, showing the poorest are hit second hardest. It foreshadowed this morning’s Guardian cover: “Axe falls on the poor”. Danny Alexander was fed to Paxo: “You said you would not balance your budget on the backs of the poor

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: 1.5 million jobs to be created during the ‘cuts’

Almost every newspaper today leads on the chilling figure of 500,000 jobs to go. This was taken from a briefing paper held by Danny Alexander – a “gaffe” says The Guardian. Indeed: it was top secret – to anyone without internet access. “The OBR’s Budget forecast was for a reduction in public sector workforce numbers to 490,000 by 2014/15”. Read the offending sentence. This was not private advice, but posted online (here) and this is what it said…   But hang on. The same forecasts predict that the number of jobs in the economy will rise – by 1.08 million over the same timeframe. So by the same forecasts, the

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

The immigration game

The Fake Sheikh, Mazher Mahmood, has a good wee scoop in the News of the World today. The papers’ reporters posed as would-be immigrants, and heard immigration advisers tell them how to game the system. The quotes speak best for themselves.   1. Official from the International Immigration Advisory Service in Manchester. “Floods have come in Pakistan. Say you have lost your family and your home. That’s the best story I can see … Just get me a few photos of the floods and we can say your relatives drowned and your home is gone. The British are very sympathetic.”   2. The same official, to a second undercover reporter.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

An unlikely alliance against Murdoch

The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, Channel Four, British Telecom and the BBC have united in common cause: stop Rupert Murdoch. This has to be The Digger’s greatest achievement: not since Waterloo has more motley a coalition been scrambled to resist a ravening tyrant. The signatories have written a letter to Vince Cable, who is to adjudge if Murdoch’s proposed full ownership of BSkyB will endanger media plurality. In reality, this hostile alliance is about more than plurality; it is a battle for the control of the news in a digital future. The distinct trinity of print, television and online is being subsumed into one

Monday

The Skimmer

What a coincidence…

Ed Howker’s weekend post about life in Rochdale – and The Spectator’s study of welfare ghettos – has made the news today. There’s a powerful spread in The Sun, with full and due attribution to the source. But the Daily Mail also ran the figures, incorrectly attributing them to the DWP. (We expressed DWP dole figures as a share of ONS population estimates. The resulting ratio only we produced.) We at The Spectator have no doubt that the Daily Mail reporter did actually visit Rochdale. It’s just that her material looks as if it could have been copied from Ed’s Coffee House post. Here are some coincidental overlaps: Coffee House

Peter Hoskin

David Cameron: Linda Norgrove may have been killed by US rescue team

David Cameron arrived at his press conference forty-five minutes late, and was visibly shaken when he took to the microphone. A few sentences in, it was clear why. “Linda [Norgrove, the British aid worker who recently died in Afghanistan] may not have died at the hands of her captors as originally believed,” Cameron said, “[she] could have died as a result of a grenade detonated by the task force during the assault.” The PM explained that he had been told this by General Petraeus this morning, and that Ms Norgrove’s parents have since been informed. Cameron emphasised that he had backed the rescue operation, and believed that it was the

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s tangled web

How do you get from David Cameron to Simon Cowell in two, easy steps? Answer: Andy Coulson. The former News of the World editor is, of course, Cameron’s director of communications – but he also happens to be on friendly terms with the X-Factor impresario. We set out this, and all the other tangled relationships around the Prime Minister, in a spider graph for this week’s magazine. From Nick Clegg to the designer Anya Hindmarch, from Steve Hilton to Baroness Ashton: it’s not a map of the government, but rather of the people both in and around No.10 who form what we call the New Establishment. To see them in

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Hunt the heretic

Eureka, the science magazine from The Times, is in many ways a brilliant accomplishment. Advertising is following readers in an online migration – but James Harding, the editor, personally persuaded advertisers that a new magazine, in a newspaper, devoted to science would work. And here it is: giving the New Scientist a run for its money every month. That’s why it’s such a shame that today’s magazine opens on an anti-scientific piece denouncing those who disagree with the climate consensus. My former colleague Ben Webster, now the paper’s environment correspondent, is an energetic and original journalist – so it’s depressing to see his skills deployed in a game of hunt-the-heretic.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Reaction: David Cameron’s speech

Here is a selection of the blogosphere’s reaction to Cameron’s speech. Fraser Nelson notes that Cameron has resuscitated the Big Society. James Forsyth urges Cameron to concentrate on people power. Peter Hoskin ponders a peculiar speech from the Prime Minister. David Blackburn wonders what to make of Cameron’s disavowal of laissez-faire. Alex Massie asks if Britain is up to Cameron’s challenge. Michael White notes that Cameron’s joviality will keep the welfare dogs at bay. Andrew Porter delivers his verdict on Dave’s ‘slick’ performance. Tim Montgomerie describes it as ‘forgettable’. Toby Helm thought it ‘a profound disappointment’. And Nick Watt notes the resurrection of Lord Kitchener.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron says “yes” to the Trident upgrade – but questions remain

Courtesy of Ben Brogan, one of the most noteworthy passages from David Cameron’s appearance on Today this morning: ‘Jim Naughtie: Is the Trident upgrade untouchable? David Cameron: We do need an independent nuclear deterrent… JN: Is that a yes? DC: Yes. Basically I was going to give you a longer and fuller answer but the short answer is yes… To me and the Coalition government, yes, Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent is being replaced.’ It is certainly the most assertive that Cameron has been on the subject since the advent of the coalition, but a couple of questions remain that prevent it from being utterly unequivocal. First, what timeframe is the

Peter Hoskin

Cameron tries to defuse the child benefit row

Whether you agree with the plan to restrict child benefit or not – and, broadly speaking, I do – there’s little doubting that it has met with some fiery resistance in the papers today. The Telegraph leads the attack, calling it “a hastily conceived about-turn bundled out on breakfast TV”. The Daily Mail highlights the “blatant anomaly,” currently riling up the Mumsnet crowd, that a single earner family on £44,100 a year might lose the benefit, while a dual earning family on £87,000 can keep it. And the Independent does likewise. It should be said, though, that the Sun, the Times and the Financial Times are considerably more generous about

Friday

David Blackburn

BBC Tory conference strike suspended

The warnings from Auntie’s leading hacks have been heeded – the strike has been cancelled. There is no done deal and the government is still in the union’s crosshairs: the strike has been delayed to the 19th and 20th October, the day of the comprehensive spending review, pending further consultation. All this raises a few points. First, Ed Miliband scores by having urged the NUJ to drop its plans in favour of impartiality – very New Politics, now matter how opportunistic the initial impulse to further debase the moniker ‘Red Ed’. The BBC has, for the moment, denied its detractors a major publicity coup, not that I think that Jeremy

Thursday

James Forsyth

An example of union hostility against people who want to do their jobs

Amongst BBC political staff, there’s mounting concern about the plans for a strike during Tory conference. One of them said to me at Labour conference that they just didn’t know what to do, they had been put in an impossible position by the decision to call the strike on such politically important days. These journalists fear that striking during Tory conference would undermine the corporation’s reputation for impartiality. So, a whole host of them wrote to their union rep asking him to make representations on their behalf. His reply shows just the level of hostility these people — who are just trying to do their job — are up against: