Society

Thursday

2 Jul 2015

The head of Ofsted wants to fine ‘feckless’ parents. Is he in the wrong job?

Sir Michael Wilshaw may have been in charge of Ofsted since January 2012 — he is arguably the most important educationalist in the land — but in his head he is still very much a head teacher. He’s bossy. He wants to fine parents he doesn’t think are trying hard enough. He has told the Sutton Trust that, when he ran a school, he ‘would have loved’ to impose fines on mothers and fathers who didn’t turn up to parents’ evenings. Asked to clarify what he meant, he added: ‘If it’s a parent that’s doing their very very best but they can’t because of all sorts of personal circumstances, fine,’ he said, ‘but the feckless parent who just

Rod Liddle

If only more people joined Islamic State

Here’s the headline from the Daily Mail: Family of 12 from Luton – including a baby and two grandparents who are suffering from diabetes and cancer – feared to have joined ISIS It undoubtedly says something about me that my first reaction upon reading the story was: yay – result! That’s saved us all quite a few bob, no? Carry on like this and we might clear the national debt. I have no sympathy for, or empathy with, these people. Except a slight suspicion that by joining Islamic State, they are probably doing the right thing. By their own lights. Would that more might follow. These people have looked at

Justin Marozzi

Don’t abandon Tunisia!

Just as a pilgrimage to Mecca is a holy obligation for all Muslims, it should now be a patriotic duty for as many Brits as possible to holiday in Tunisia. I say this not to make light of the tragic attack on the beach at Sousse last week, but to urge everyone to show the terrorists that they cannot win. They want to terrify us and shut down Tunisia’s resurgent tourist trade. They want to turn it into a failed state, a recruiting ground for lobotomised self-detonators. What better reaction could there be for those untouched by this attack than to laugh at our enemies and board the next flight to Hammamet?

Harry Mount

Greece’s crisis turns to tragedy

Athens On Sunday night, a protest in favour of staying in the euro gathered in Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek parliament building. They were quickly confronted by a group of anti-EU protestors. What could have been an ugly stand-off was avoided by an unseasonal downpour. The 28ºC heat plunged to 19ºC and the young protestors — organised by social media — fled home, as did the riot police soon afterwards. Things are in a terrible way here, but not quite terrible enough for a Greek to hang about in the rain. As one Athenian journalist told me on the roof of the Amalia Hotel, while we watched the

Bruce Anderson

Deep Burgundy

‘There lies the dearest freshness deep down things’ — and also the dearest Frenchness. It is easy to be rude about the French governing elite; indeed, it is impossible to be polite about them. But there is a France profonde, with a deep-rooted identity, like gnarled, ancient vines. There are said to be nearly 400 French cheeses; la France profonde has at least as many capitals, where things are done in the old way, with a combination of commercial realism, ancestral piety and devotion to the terroir. You will find all that in Gevrey-Chambertin, a modest, confident and enchanting little town, in which history is now, and Burgundy. This is

Camilla Swift

Picnics

Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something to do with making the most of what sunshine we get — but if you ever plan to eat outdoors, it will almost invariably end up raining. Never mind. There’s very little that we’re better at than embracing our terrible weather, and keeping buggering on. This year’s Ascot was, for me, a case in point. Every day of the meet was blessed with excellent weather — except, of course, the one day I went. A person more sensible than I might have looked at the forecast and planned accordingly. I

Rory Sutherland

Just giving

Seven years ago I wrote here about a site called Kiva.org. I had met the co-founder of this charity when she came to Oxford in 2007 and was intrigued by her idea. Jennifer Jackley had been inspired to start the site by Muhammad Yunus’s work on microlending — the practice of issuing small loans to people in the developing world who would other-wise have no access to credit. At Kiva.org, rather than giving money, you lend it. You choose people and businesses, mostly in the poorest parts of the world, and advance them a fraction of the amount they want to borrow, typically $25. The loan is then paid back

Alex Massie

Fun runs

Something wonderful is happening in English cricket. The Ashes are upon us and, at last, the England team seem determined to play the right way. The recent series against New Zealand was a revelation. The Kiwis’ have-a-go approach rubbed off and, for the first time in too long, England played as if cricket was more than a job. It could be fun too. Remember fun? We have seen it before. In 1981, at Headingley, England were revived by the rustic virtues of what their captain Mike Brearley called ‘blacksmith cricket’. See ball, hit ball. Bowl as fast as you can. Keep it simple. Trust yourself. For a long time England

The Spectator

Secret weapons

From ‘Bogy-Mongering’, The Spectator, 3 July 1915: Of late there have been all sorts of dark hints and rumours as to wonderful new German devices by air, land, and water. No doubt such devices will be tried, and no doubt they will give us some anxious moments, just as did the poison-gas. It is not, however, by such sensational devices that battles are won. The shell, the bayonet, and the rifle still remain masters of the field. Once again, the danger for us is not in fancy inventions… It is in want of preparation, want of activity, want of men and munitions. It is to procuring these that we must bend

Peter Oborne

Dear Sirs and Madams

Those who write letters and send them by post are a dying breed. I was fortunate to have served as a newspaper columnist and received a great many. Often eloquent, sometimes humorous, their breadth and depth of experience was wonderful. With the exception of letters that were racist or completely mad, I tried to answer every one of them. If a reader took the trouble to write to me, it was the least I could do to send him or her a personal reply. There was the occasional correspondent from London, but most lived in the country or in provincial towns or cities. Most were Conservatives and many were lifelong

William Cook

Watching the next war

Late last month, on a windswept plain near the Polish town of Zagan, the defence ministers of Poland, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands joined the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, to watch Nato’s response to Russia’s incursions into eastern Europe. The dramatic culmination of a week of military manoeuvres, Exercise Noble Jump was a spectacular show of force by Nato’s new VJTF brigade. More than 2,000 troops from nine countries fought a fierce mock-battle against irregular militia, with live ammunition. Huddled in the attendant press pack, struggling to insert my earplugs, this awesome demonstration felt like confirmation — if any were needed — that Europe stands on the brink of a

Martin Vander Weyer

This Greek catastrophe isn’t Lagarde’s fault but her career is starting to look like toast

The Greek drama took a turn few of us expected last week, when the world thought compromise was imminent. What happens after Sunday’s referendum is anyone’s guess — but recrimination is already flying, much of it aimed at IMF managing director Christine Lagarde. Having inherited the Greek headache from her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn after his resignation in 2011, she has always talked tough — but now stands accused of setting aside IMF rules, as well as long-established blueprints for debt relief and the views of many of the Fund’s own economists, in order to stay aligned with the European Commission and the European Central Bank in the ‘troika’ of bailout

Lucy Vickery

Court report

In Competition No. 2904 you were invited to take as your first line ‘There’s a breathless hush on the centre court’ and continue for up to 15 lines in the style of Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’. There is just space to congratulate the winners and to commiserate with unlucky losers John Whitworth, who submitted a charming tribute to Christine Truman, Robert Cross, Sid Field and R.M. Goddard. Those printed below are rewarded with £25 each. Bill Greenwell hoists the championship trophy and nabs the bonus fiver in the process. There’s a breathless hush on the Centre Court: Seventeenth deuce after championship point — The crowd is tense,

Wednesday

1 Jul 2015

The Spectator

Podcast special: The case for Heathrow expansion

After three years and £20m, Sir Howard Davies’ Airports Commission has made its recommendation: Heathrow should have a third runway, and Gatwick expansion should not be ruled out either. But that doesn’t mean shovels will soon be tearing up the ground in West London: David Cameron needs to face up to making a decision, and face down both interest groups and parts of the Conservative party. The questions of where and why we need to build airport capacity remain urgent ones. In this special View from 22 podcast, recorded before the announcement, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson asks how Britain can best maintain its connectivity to the world. He is joined by Heathrow

Ross Clark

Yes, this is England’s hottest July day ever. But this tells us nothing about global warming

If you were deliberately trying to obtain a record high temperature reading an international airport would be a good place to take your thermometer. With huge concrete aprons and planes spewing out large quantities of hot air, airports have a microclimate of their own. That is one reason not to get excited by today’s record July temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius) measured at Heathrow. But there is another very good reason why the familiar clattering of broken weather records does little to reinforce the narrative of climate change. There are four countries in the UK, 12 months of the year and 4 main records to beat: hottest, coldest, wettest

Alex Bburghart

It’s time to measure child poverty properly

David Cameron’s decision to bin the disastrous measure of child poverty is an important step towards improving young people’s life chances. Its very existence has led policymakers to use tax credits to manipulate this metric, rather than turn lives around. Child poverty refers to parents, not children: the parents whose income is below 60pc of the national average. This was set up by left-wing academics in the 1960s and then adopted by Eurostat. This means, for example, that ‘poverty’ can fall during a recession (as it did after the financial crisis), or rise if the state pension goes up. Children can go to bed in poverty and wake up out of it without

Charles Moore

Why is the FT ordering Greece to do what Germany wants?

‘The Greek people,’ the Financial Times leading article said on Monday, ‘would be well advised to listen closely to the words of Ms Merkel. The plebiscite will be a vote for the euro or the drachma, no less.’ It is interesting how menacing powerful ‘moderate’ institutions can become when popular feeling challenges them. In the eurozone theology to which the FT subscribes, its statement above cannot be true. It is not possible (see last week’s Notes) for a member state to leave the euro, any more than it is for Wales to renounce sterling. Eurozone membership, once achieved, is a condition of EU membership. So the Greeks cannot vote to

Sebastian Payne

Norman Lamb on Peppa Pig: ‘It can start very young, this sense of attraction to someone of your own sex’

Is it time for a lesbian couple on Peppa Pig? Norman Lamb thinks so. In an interview with PinkNews, the Lib Dem leadership candidate said it should ‘absolutely not be out of the question’ to have a gay character on the children’s cartoon series. Lamb kindly graced the front seat of my Mini today for an interview about the leadership contest. On the topic of Peppa Pig, Lamb explained why he thinks it is important to relieve pressure on youngsters: ‘If we as a society have decided that it should not matter who you love and that same-sex marriage has the same value; that people can commit in exactly the same way as someone

Matthew Lynn

The sooner Greece leaves the euro, the better

Ten years ago, the Greek minister Yainnos Papantoniou came to London to give a talk at the London School of Economic on the country’s first four years as a member of the euro. A skilled, pro European technocrat, Papantoniou had, more than anyone else, steered his country through dogged German resistance into the single currency. Papantoniou boasted that a history of weak growth and chaotic government had been swept aside, and that Greece was now the equal of Germany and France. What lay ahead, he argued was ‘a new dynamic phase for the Greek economy, based on knowledge and modern structures’. A ‘bolstering of national self-confidence’ would be the natural

Kulveer Ranger

London Heathrow, obviously

A wise man looks at all the facts. The pros, the cons. Weighs up all the arguments. Takes the emotion out of the debate and presents a clear view. Well, hallelujah! Sir Howard Davies’ Airport Commission has reported back that Heathrow is the preferred choice to provide additional aviation capacity by means of adding a third runway. Tell me something I didn’t know! Factually this is a clear-cut argument. London is desperate for more aviation capacity. It has been bursting at the seams for years. This is why a significant number of flights – sure you’ve been on one – have to circle the city awaiting a landing slot at Heathrow