Features

Saturday

Leah McLaren

Know your onions

James Wong may not yet be a household name but he does have trouble getting through the checkout line at Sainsbury’s. As the presenter of BBC2’s Grow Your Own Drugs, the 28-year-old’s fame is fast on the rise. In a nutshell, he is the Jamie Oliver of plant-based medicine: affable, competent, with a cheeky glint in his eye. While Oliver can inspire even the laziest housewife to whip up a simple Italian supper, so too Wong possesses the telegenic power to make a sceptical, black-thumbed gal want to heal herself naturally. After watching his latest series, I found myself out on my rainy terrace furiously pruning a shrivelled potted rosemary for clippings to mix with organic wine, thus creating a foolproof tincture to improve short-term memory and ward off dementia.

Saturday

Alexander Waugh

Housing estates are killing our countryside

The government says that 240,000 new homes a year are needed in England, but it’s a lie, says Alexander Waugh, evidenced by every estate agent’s window in the country. This policy means that government and developers win, while communities and the country lose How do you describe your sexual orientation? Please tick: Bisexual, Gay, Heterosexual, Lesbian? Do you identify yourself as transgender? Yes? No? If yes, are you a male-to-female tranny, or a female-to-male one?

Nick Herbert

Hands off our green belt

It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash. It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash. Developers had been trying to build on greenfield land near the historic town of Arundel for some time, so when Brown began to mention ‘eco-towns’ they seized on the idea. The tiny village of Ford was to be transformed not into a new town, but into an eco-town.

Interconnect

Pull down the pylons

One thing Britain does not need is more pylons. There are already legions of the metallic monsters stomping across our fields and hills — 22,000 of them in total — and 550 of these have colonised some of the loveliest countryside in Britain: across the Peak District; through the New Forest and the South Downs; along the North Wales coast. We should be dismantling these lines, as suggested by the excellent Campaign to Protect Rural England. We should be pulling down the pylons and running the cables underground or under the sea. But instead National Grid, supported by the government, is making plans to put up even more: another 12 new buzzing, high-voltage lines supported by hundreds more pylons looming over another 170 miles of England and Wales.

Sam Tanenhaus

Why American Jews are backing Obama

It seemed a classic diplomatic faux pas — the sort that begins in mutual embarrassment and soon descends into ominous bristling and then open recrimination. On 9 March, Vice President Joseph Biden, in Jerusalem on a mission to revive peace talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians, made the expected pledge of ongoing American commitment to Israel’s security, only to be upstaged hours later when Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, announced the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, an ancestrally contentious zone. Netanyahu, pleading innocence, insisted he had no idea the announcement was coming.

Freddy Gray

‘I want to stand for parliament’

Piers Morgan talks to Freddy Gray about interviewing Gordon Brown, his horror at the prospect of a Tory government, and why he’s tempted to move into politics Piers Morgan comes across on television as the consummate new Briton: boorish yet charming, vulgar yet strangely elitist, at once chauvinist and cosmopolitan — an archetype of the Blair era. In person, he’s much the same. We meet in a pub, at his suggestion, and he orders a latte. He calls me ‘mate’, which is nice, and we settle down towards the back. Unfortunately, however, the amicability doesn’t last long.

Rod Liddle

The real scandal is that MPs are paid so little

Disgraced politicians should not be relentlessly persecuted, says Rod Liddle. We should address the problem of MPs’ expenses by raising their salaries instead I felt a little ashamed watching the Westminster Three — Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and David Chaytor — herded into a magistrates court to face charges of defrauding the taxpayer with their MPs expenses claims. Outside the court there were the usual maniacs howling at them, or grunting like pigs — one man even wore a pig’s head to drive home the point more forcefully. Can you imagine the sort of people who would do that? ‘Any plans for the day, dear?’ ‘Yes, I’m going to dress up as a pig and shout abuse at MPs.

Saturday

The Spectator

The Spectator Manifesto

David Cameron, should he become Prime Minister, has an urgent and momentous task – to transform Britain from top to toe. The Spectator gives him some pointers The key to great success is to follow great failure. David Cameron has this if little else in his favour if, as expected, he is Prime Minister in two months’ time. He may not have the majority he hoped for, but he will be able to command the government machine. Civil servants, for all their love of procrastination, will follow direct instructions. A Tory government can deliver them on the first day. This guide explains how, precisely, Britain can be transformed. The key is to demand, and expect, change at an urgent pace.

Allister Heath

Day one: getting us back in business

Dear Treasury Permanent Secretary, Good news: the nightmare is over. We both know that Gordon Brown is one of the greatest economic vandals ever to have resided in Downing Street. And to make Britain competitive again will require hard work. We can start immediately, and without the need for legislation. I’d like the following to be in place by the end of our first 100 days. 1) Please draw up plans for a two-year public sector pay freeze, and for a few billion pounds worth of immediate cuts. Rather than trimming spending across all departments, I’d like to axe entire programmes. These will include Sure Start, which would save £1.4 billion a year, and the NHS national programme for IT, saving £1.2 billion. The markets are watching us anxiously.

Interconnect

How to start saving Britain in ten minutes

The work begins Subject: No time to lose Date: Friday, 7 May 2010 14:28 From: David Cameron To: Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary Dear Gus, The Queen has just invited me to form a government. I’m sending this on by BlackBerry in the car, because there is a degree of urgency. Our country has been badly broken by 13 years of bad government. There is, literally, not a moment to lose in fixing it. The Queen has asked me to govern for up to five years, and mentioned to me that her father saw our country win a world war in six years. Her point: that five years is plenty to save our nation. That is precisely what I intend to do. I may not have won the majority that I had hoped for. But I do not need legislation to achieve most of my reform plans: I can do this by email.

Chris Mullin

‘It’s the PM for you.’

Chris Mullin MP offers prospective junior ministers a survival guide to the ‘foothills’ of government Election Day plus four. Your party has just won a great victory. Having handed out the big jobs the new Prime Minister is taking a well-deserved weekend off. It is now Monday and you are anxiously awaiting The Call. For the past two years you have been diligently shadowing, let us say, the Europe portfolio as a junior member of the Foreign Affairs team. You know everything there is to know about the Lisbon Treaty and the Common Agricultural Policy, you maybe even speak a couple of European languages. You are raring to go.  At last, the moment comes. ‘Are you available to take a call from the Prime Minister?’ inquires a detached voice.

Antony Jay

When ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ means anything but

‘My appeal to the Home Secretary is most earnest. I believe that if ever there was a debt due to justice… that debt is one the Home Secretary should now pay.’ That was an impassioned plea by Sir Frank Soskice MP for the reopening of the Timothy Evans case. The home secretary’s reply was that it would serve no useful purpose. All very unremarkable. Except that the home secretary who rejected the appeal in 1965 was the same Sir Frank Soskice who had made it in 1961. For some reason this was not greeted with the level of public hilarity it deserved, but I remember reflecting that some very strange and potent magic must take place inside Whitehall, some mysterious inverted alchemy that can transmute gold into such base metal.

Interconnect

How to spot Sir Humphrey’s schemes

Apart from a loyal army and a strong police force, the primary requirements for political power are (a) legal authority, (b) taxation revenues, (c) organisational size and (d) permanent tenure of office. Politicians certainly do not have (c) and (d), and although they may have (a) and (b) in theory, those two have long been effectively appropriated in practice by the permanent officials. As a result a general election, which is presented as a choice as to which political party will run the country, is much closer to a contest between rival marketing consultancies pitching for the civil service account for the next five years.

Ed Howker

Community spirit

If you really want to know how obtuse, how jaded, how downright bizarre Britain’s planning system is, you need only consult the findings of Lord Walker, the Supreme Court Judge who last week answered the question: should you show deference to local golfers? An odd question for sure, but one upon which rested the £55 million development of 300 homes on the Teeside coastline in a place called Coatham Common. The five residents who brought the case fought a six-year battle to preserve their local green space which, by the time it reached Lord Walker, had spent longer in court than Perry Mason. His ruling stated that simply because local strollers had showed civility towards golfers on the common did not mean they had lost the right to use the land as a public amenity.

Charlie Elphicke

A manifesto for the 2010 Tory intake

If the Conservatives win the next election, a majority of the Tory benches will be made up of members of the 2010 intake. We will be, in terms of numbers, the most significant intake for 60 years and will have huge influence on the party in years to come. So, what do I and my colleagues believe? We all share a commitment to people power and we see the potential for a new social covenant establishing that government belongs to the people and is the servant of the people. We want a government that is more transparent and accountable and we want to roll back the ‘surveillance state’. We subscribe to Lincoln’s vision of ‘government of the people, for the people, by the people’.

Ross Clark

Time for the dynamic state

A visitor returning to Britain after 30 years could easily be fooled — by the sight of privatised buses and by the replacement of heavy nationalised industries by hi-tech business parks — into thinking that Britain has been transformed from a sub-socialist society into a dynamic free enterprise economy. In some ways that may be true, yet paradoxically the public sector is actually larger relative to the rest of the economy than it was in the dying days of the last Labour government. In 1979 the government accounted for 45 pence in every pound spent in the UK economy. This financial year it will be 47.5 pence. What are public sector workers doing if they are no longer mining coal, driving buses or making steel?

Rupert Darwall

Tear up Britain’s ‘Renewables Obligation’

Unaffordable and unsustainable, Rupert Darwall explains why Labour’s worst stealth tax must be abolished The bubble has burst; there are no proceeds of growth to share and Britain’s budget deficit is, in the words of one central banker, truly frightening. Can Mr Cameron give voters a break, one which will leave them tangibly better off and is unambiguously good for the economy? Yes he can. The Renewables Obligation can claim to be Labour’s worst stealth tax. Unlike VAT, it is bundled into people’s electricity and gas bills without them knowing how much it costs. The money it raises is then spent with minimal accountability or regard for value for money. Since its introduction in 2002, the Renewables Obligation has cost consumers and businesses £4.

Stephen Brien

Make work pay – for all

Stephen Brien explains how Britain’s welfare system must change Welfare dependency is one of the most pernicious problems facing modern Britain and its deprived communities. When William Beveridge was planning the welfare state, he spoke about the giant evil of idleness: not just a waste of economic potential, but of human potential too. The tragedy is that his welfare system has gone on to incubate the very problem it was designed to eradicate. It was intended to support those who were unable to work, or for whom there were no jobs. But the benefits system now actively discourages people from taking a job, or working more hours. For millions, welfare dependency is now a way of life. This destruction of aspiration has never been morally acceptable.

Peter Hoskin

Today’s welfare state is making poverty permanent

‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression...’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. ‘Drug addiction, alcoholism, criminal records, language difficulties, a lack of skills, depression...’ Anyone working alongside Britain’s long-term unemployed can recite a grim litany of social ills. But when I speak to a welfare adviser in Tower Hamlets – one of London’s poorest boroughs – he emphasises a single factor, above all others, to explain the area’s endemic worklessness: ‘the benefits trap’ – the idea that you can be better off on benefits than in work.

Douglas Carswell

Time to lift the House of Commons off its knees

What if we win office, but nothing changes? What if, instead of running a new government, triumphant Tory ministers discover that the machinery of government runs them? Making sure that does not happen requires a strategy. Opposition may be a time for tactics, but how we fare in office will hinge on having a robust, coherent plan. We must have a strategy to make government properly accountable to parliament, and parliament to the people. The MPs’ expenses scandal has turned many people against democracy. ‘If this is how those scoundrels behave,’ runs the argument, ‘MPs can’t be trusted with anything.’ It is almost as if being elected to public office now serves as a disqualification for being put in charge of anything.