Society

Thursday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

You’re not as special as you think

My preferred route from the Times’s offices in Wapping on to the main road takes me across a precinct then down a short flight of concrete steps to the pavement below. Across the top step (for reasons unclear to me) a yellow line has been painted behind the step’s edge, like those lines you’re supposed to stand behind on railway platforms. Crossing this, and turning right when I reach the pavement, takes me straight to the right-hand side of the steps. A rational pedestrian seeking to shorten his journey would choose such a route, but not with any precision: one could plot a range of courses down the steps, all

Digby Warde-Aldam

Are you a Yuffie? 

I remember, during one of my last classes at UCL, the topic of conversation turned from the cultural implications of Algerian independence to the subject of life after university. Our lecturer, a grumpy ‘progressive Hoxhaist’, told us that things had never been worse, and out of the 20 or so students in the room, only one or two would have found any kind of full-time employment by the time the year was out. ‘But it’s not fair!’ cried one girl, ‘we’ve all worked so hard over the last four years, we’re all clever [speak for yourself, I thought], we all have debts and we’re just going to be ignored!’ ‘Who

Nancy Dell'Olio

Nancy Dell’Olio: Englishmen can’t flirt (except for Russell Brand) 

Why can’t British men flirt? This was one of my first thoughts when I arrived in England some years ago. I adore flirting. Like so many Italians, I consider flirting a way of life, an added joy to the day, as harmless, normal and pleasurable to a woman as a glass of chilled champagne at an unexpected hour. When living in Rome, I had become accustomed to that stereotypical Italian man. I’m sure you are all aware of who I am referring to: L’uomo forte. Oh, they are adorable. The subtle glances across a room, the secret smile, that turning of the head and that silent acknowledgement that if only,

James Mumford

The fight for your life is now raging

Beneath your noses, a great change in this country is being planned. Secret polls have been taken, and a private member’s bill has been tabled. The euthanasia lobby is limbering up for the fight of its life: to change the law for once and for all. The Assisted Dying Bill, introduced by former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, is the fourth such to come before the House of Lords in the last decade. Since it is almost identical to the last bill, which sought to let doctors supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients and which Parliament rejected in 2006, why is this one being introduced? The answer has largely to

William Cook

Notes on … Christmas shopping in Bruges

Most Belgians of my acquaintance tend to be rather disparaging about Bruges. It’s a theme park, they say, a Flemish Disneyland. Antwerp is livelier, Ghent is more authentic. A lot of its historic buildings are actually clever fakes. All of this is true, but that doesn’t stop it being one of Europe’s most beautiful cities — and an ideal destination for Christmas shopping. Given the choice between Bruges and Westfield, I know which shopping centre I’d choose. Like a lot of pretty cities, Bruges is a monument to boom and bust. Commerce paid for its ornate medieval architecture, but then the river silted up and Bruges became a backwater. Preserved

J. Meirion

I got a call from Jeremy Hunt about health tourism — but he still doesn’t get it

On Monday morning, Jeremy Hunt’s diary secretary rang me to arrange a time for me to speak to the Secretary of State over the telephone. I had already received an email from his special adviser the previous week, saying, ‘The two points which the independent research make clear are central to what you’ve been saying for a long time; namely that health tourism is a huge problem with a substantial cost to the NHS and the current system is an unfair burden on frontline staff.’ When Jeremy rang, he was charming, full of praise, and eager to tackle the issue of health tourism — the exploitation of the NHS by

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: How I was bullied when I wore a burka

I dressed up in a burka to wander around the streets of Canterbury recently, to see what level of Islamophobic abuse and discrimination I suffered from the infidel locals. This was a groundbreaking piece of campaigning journalism done at the request of the Sun newspaper, which had bought me an XXL black nylon burka just for the job. I still have the burka and wear it on occasions, when nobody else is in the house. It frightens the dog. It yaps and yaps at me, with an uncomfortable expression on its face, exactly the same expression it uses for wasps. Wasps the insects, not Wasps the ruling and oppressive hegemony:

Michael Tanner

If ‘Greek’ is playing within 200 miles of where you live — watch it

This week chanced to give me a fascinating study in contrasts and comparisons: Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek at the Linbury Studio, Britten’s Death in Venice at the Grand Theatre Leeds. Two English operas from the latter half of the 20th century, both with mythological undertones and overtones, one of them the noisy announcement of his presence by a young composer, the other the last testament, a dying fall, of the ultimate Establishment figure who contrived also to be seen as an outsider; one full of profanities and vicious humour, the other both subversive and genteel, without a trace of irony or laughter. Death in Venice, the opera, has never much appealed

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Speculator: Why I get so excited at goalless football matches

A successful gambler once told me: ‘Never bet on football, never bet on multipliers, and never ever bet on football multipliers.’ Multipliers, in case you don’t know, are those enticing combination wagers on bookmakers’ shopfronts: ‘Liverpool win 2-0 + Sturridge to score = 33/1.’ Mugs like me fall for them every time. My subconscious tends to add together the two probabilities — that of Sturridge scoring and that of Liverpool winning 2-0 — when really I should be multiplying them. Duh. The bookies don’t always triumph when it comes to football, however. This year’s Champions League has so far seen few upsets: as a result, the major sports bookmakers have

Matthew Lynn

How mansion taxes will make us all poorer

There are few things most of us enjoy more than watching the value of our houses rocket. Every homeowner will have felt the pulse of excitement that comes from a mental calculation of how much has been added to their net worth by the latest bulletin from Rightmove or the Halifax. Yet fast forward two or three years and the same news could make our hearts sink — because by then a mansion tax could well have been introduced, and rising prices will take many middle-class owners over the threshold. The mansion tax bandwagon has been rolling for several years, pushed enthusiastically by business secretary Vince Cable and his Lib

Alex Brummer

Should you invest in nuclear power companies? 

Power companies are the new banks as far as the public is concerned — but does that mean they’re not worth putting your money in? In any troubled marketplace there are always stocks to be picked, but current political turbulence makes that an unusually tough challenge in the UK energy sector. Much anger is currently directed at the  ‘big six’ energy groups — Centrica, Scottish & Southern (SSE), Scottish Power, E.on, RWE and EDF — and their pricing power in the domestic market. The recent round of tariff rises, ahead of the winter heating season and in the face of a moderating wholesale market, served to underline the suggestion that

Merryn Somerset-Webb

How to make money from the Scottish referendum

The best time to buy an asset is when no one else can stomach it. Great fortunes are made in uncertainty. The self-made rich aren’t the ones who hung around on the edge of an iffy situation thinking about the possible disasters. They’re the ones who calculated the odds and bought before anyone else was sure of the answers. So where is there uncertainty in the UK today? Most English people are utterly uninterested in the prospect of Scottish independence — or in Scotland generally. But if they were actually to look up north they’d see pretty serious turmoil. It is less than a year until every resident of Scotland

Wednesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

HS2 won’t solve the North’s economic problems – it might make them worse

As Isabel says, the HS2 brigade are on a roll. Not only are Labour now under serious pressure over the party’s support or otherwise for the project, each day brings a new headline about the advantages of high speed rail. Today, the money quote comes from David Prout, the HS2 director general. He says that, without high speed rail, London would become ‘a global city surrounded by rust belt’. The Times leader page dutifully regurgitates Westminster’s fodder: ‘If the map of Britain is not to become a literal illustration of Disraeli’s two nations, the tracks must be laid.’ At first this is a compelling argument. It seems obvious that a quicker link between capital Birmingham and Manchester

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Energy bosses boost Tory tortoise in energy row with green taxes pledge

Like all good select committee hearings where MPs are grilling some unsuspecting witnesses on something they’ve decided to be very angry about, this hearing of the Energy and Climate Change committee took a very long time. It has been cut off for the time being from Ofgem’s evidence by a series of votes in the Commons, but here’s what we’ve learned from this first mammoth hearing in any case. The first is that the MPs clearly read Iain Martin’s memo in the Telegraph about show trial-style select committee hearings. Only Ian Lavery managed the kind of fury that all members of these committees normally feel it necessary to manufacture, and

Gabriel Heller

Gove’s school choice can end social segregation. The old system entrenches it

Like most foreigners who move to Britain, I was struck when I first arrived by how much people worry about which school their children go to. Even couples who don’t have kids seem to fret about where to send them. But now, working in the field of education reform, it makes sense to me. The disparity between a bad state school and a good one is huge, which in turn produces an enormous difference to the life chances of children attending them. It’s linked to money. To get into the good state schools here, you need to afford to live next to them. And if you live in a sink

John Redwood

Do we really need HS2? I’m not convinced

The Secretary of State for Transport asked for my views on the capacity argument for HS2. I thought I would share them with you. To establish that HS2 is needed on capacity grounds the government has to be able to demonstrate three main points. Firstly, that the current West Coast Main Line (WCML) is full or nearly full. Secondly that there are no easier or cheaper ways of adding significant capacity to the WCML or providing an alternative to tackle any future capacity problems. Thirdly, that the high forecasts of likely passenger growth and use of HS2 are realistic. I remain to be persuaded on each of these three matters. The government

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Life after Scottish Independence: lower taxes, lower spending, no free lunches

Every so often a report is published that cheers you up. Not because it contains any particularly good news but simply – that is to say, selfishly – because it appears to support notions you’ve held for some time. So trebles all round for the Institute for Fiscal Studies whose latest report on life in Scotland after independence is published today. Sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, the report concludes that ‘an independent Scotland could face pressure between [a] need to lower tax rates and [the] need to fix its public finances’. Well, yeah. Some of us have been making this kind of case for some time now.

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Off colour Ofgem?

Ofgem is the energy market regulator that is supposed to be examining what it is that is going well or badly in the market. But it doesn’t seem to be doing the greatest job. This week we will hear more details about the annual competition test announced by David Cameron at PMQs last week, but the problem is that Ofgem has only just concluded an examination of this anyway. That review of the retail energy market took two years and published a series of rule changes in June 2013. The changes were designed to address ‘widespread consumer confusion over energy tariffs, poor supplier behaviour and lack of transparency which is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Energy competition heats up

Now that ministers are nearing a deal on those green taxes and levies, they are also trying to highlight their efforts to improve the energy market in general. Privately there were a number of Conservative MPs of a similar persuasion to John Major who I spoke to last week who sympathised with the former Prime Minister’s windfall tax proposal. They argued that the energy companies are benefitting from a broken market, and this tax would simply be a tax on the extra benefits of that broken market. But Greg Barker this morning argued that it would damage investment. He told ITV’s Daybreak: ‘We think we need to balance the demands

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — tomorrow’s news today

The Daily Mail appear to be avid readers of The Spectator but we’re pleased that they now follow our weekly podcast, the View from 22, just as closely. It yesterday ran a story based on the comments of one of our podcast guests, Professor J Meirion Thomas, saying that £200 NHS levy on foreigners ‘will attract more health tourists’: Top cancer surgeon claims move would be a ‘disaster’. What the Mail had to say about Thomas’ take on Jeremy Hunt’s efforts to tackle health tourism is powerful stuff: ‘Professor Thomas, a cancer specialist, was one of the first whistleblowers to expose the financial impact of non-British residents seeking free healthcare on the