Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Sunday

Alex Massie

Six Nations Report Card

The rugby wasn't always vintage and the set scrum (or rather its interpretation by referees) remains a terrible mess but there's still something very splendid and very special about the Six Nations championship. France were the class of the field, even if they produced their most indifferent performance of the season when clinching Le Grand Chelem against England last night. Elsewhere it was a case of frustrated regrets over what might have been mixed with glimpses of a more promising future. Every side will mourn the opportunities that got away. For Scotland that feeling was especially acute as winning positions against Wales (a match henceforth to be known as The Mad Horror), Italy and England were all squandered. But everyone else could say something similar.

Alex Massie

Is Edinburgh University Scotland’s latest disgrace?

Imagine if Durham University were to decide that for courses heavily over-subscribed with qualified applicants it would reserve a small percentage of places for would-be students hailing from within 50 miles* of the university. Would anyone raise an eyebrow? I doubt it. Yet when Edinburgh University adopts precisely this approach - for some of the humanities and, I suspect, medicine - suddenly there are hysterical cries of "racism" and "xenophobia". Tom Harris MP** [see update]  says this is "shameful" and goes so far as to label the university "an embarrassment to Scotland". What piffle.

Saturday

Alex Massie

The Pope: Child Abuse is Liberals’ Fault

An eyebrow-raising passage from the Pope's letter to the Irish church: In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.

Friday

Alex Massie

Blond in America

As David says, Philip Blond has charmed David Brooks (who, in turn, has not impressed Matt Welch). I wasn't terribly impressed with Blond last November and am not sure I've really changed my mind. Anyway, that post can be found here. Bottom line: Sometimes, if I understand him correctly (not as simple a task as it ought to be), it seems as if Blond wants to take us back to the 1930s - at home and at work. I think he'd like everyone to live in small towns or, preferably, villages too. Now there was much that was good about the 1930s but time, and society, moves on and it's futile to suppose that the clock can be wound back. Equally, for all that progress or, if you prefer, time, causes some valuable things to be lost, it also brings valuable improvements.

Alex Massie

When Hitler Played Cricket…

Until today I had not known that Adolf Hitler played cricket. Once. Apparently. This is, actually, reassuring since it seems that cricket found him out and, as it is wont to do, smoked out the essential elements of Hitler's character. Ben Macintyre has the story: Adolf Hitler played cricket. He raised his own cricket team to play some British prisoners of war during the First World War, then declared the sport “unmanly” and tried to rewrite the laws of the game. The Führer’s First XI sounds like a Spike Milligan joke, but this small nugget of history is true. In all the millions of words written about Hitler, his telling brush with cricket seems to have escaped the attention of historians.   [...

Alex Massie

The Mephedrone Panic is an Argument for Ending Prohibition

Nikhil Arora at the ASI makes a good and necessary point in response to the mephedrone moral panic: Realising the danger that ‘legal highs’ pose to their core market of young night-clubbers, cocaine and ecstasy dealers mobilised every lawyer and lobbyist at their disposal to ensure that their rivals’ products are outlawed as quickly as possible. Quite. Nevertheless, the urge to ban currently legal drugs merely because they may be ill-used or have problematic, even terrible, side-effects will doubtless prevail. It's sad when people die from reactions to the drugs they take (or from mistakes in the taking) but those deaths are not in themselves a compelling argument for yet more prohibition. But suppose we went the other way.

Alex Massie

Smokers are Patriots

These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it's commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you'd do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn't you? Of course you would. Something similar may now be said about the levels of tax imposed upon alcohol and tobacco. More than 75% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Treasury. It's hard to think of many other products punished so severely. And we all know, I think, that tobacco taxes are going to increase regardless of this election's outcome. It's for our own, and the country's, good you understand and anyway won't you please think of the poor beleaguered suffering children?

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Unholy Three Threaten America*

Of course, it's important to remember that the United States has always been under threat and that there have been many un-American plots designed to yoke the populace to the government. Consider this flier produced in 1955 by the Keep America Committee: I'll grant that insuring the uninsured - at doubtless considerable and as yet under-accounted for cost - must seem a tiny peril compared to the threat posed by fluoridated water, polio serum and, never forget, mental hygiene but I'd remind you that one can never be too careful. Needless to say the left are just as happy to hop aboard the moral panic bandwagon as the right. But there isn't a moment at which, preserved in jelly, one may perceive the United States pure and unsullied. Times change and so do countries.

Alex Massie

Super Bill Sunday

So this is it. The long international nightmare (for anyone who follows American politics and wishes the conversation could move on to something, anything, other than health care) is finally coming to an end. It looks as though there will be a vote in the House on health care reform on Sunday. The process has been exhausting and damaged the President and Congress but, thanks be to god, it's nearly over. One way or the other. Since Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts there's been much talk (on both sides of the Atlantic - see this Simon Heffer column for instance) that the Obama presidency is all but over. Already. This always struck me as being absurdly premature.

Alex Massie

You’ll Never Beat the British Journalist

American readers may (or may not!) be comforted to know that the newspaper responsible for this masterpiece (written, I'm pleased to see, by Andrew Malone) is one of the two most powerful papers in the country. Even by the Daily Mail's lofty standards, this is a classic, and I'm indebted to John Rentoul for bringing it to my attention. As is his wont he concludes that the answer is - as tends to be case with any headline that ends in a question mark - 'No'. But surely this shows a sad lack of imagination upon his part? Then again, I'm also pleased to see that Mr Malone was able to find just the right kind of expert who could sum up the whole strange tale perfectly: As one expert said: 'Even if Gottlieb wasn't involved, he'd wish he had been.

Alex Massie

The Tories & Middle England: United Against the Unions

The admirable Hopi Sen thinks the Tories will blunder if they continue their Unite-bashing. Childish, playground stuff he calls it: The idea that Gordon Brown is in the pocket of the Unions because errr, he keeps going around condemning them, and (in the case of the RMT) designs business models that make them so angry they disaffilliate from the Labour party is silly on its face – and therein lies the danger for the Tories. This false perception leads the Tories to overplay their hand.

Alex Massie

Tales from the Downing Street Crypt

Why aren't more people talking more about Andrew Rawnsley's book, The End of the Party? It's full of fascinating, appalling stories! Again, the Tories (and the Lib Dems) should be producing a Rawnsley Dossier on Brown. There's nae shortage of material that's for sure. Here's a bit from page 305: The scene: Anthony Minghella has arrived to film a 2005 PPB featuring Gordon and Tony that's designed to show what good pals they are... 'It's all about working as a team,' Brown was recorded saying to the Prime Minister he wanted rid of. 'It's a partnership that has worked,' said Blair of the Chancellor he had planned to sack. Before the filming began, Minghella did a warm-up exercise with his subjects to get them into the mood for some acting.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Mike Tyson and the Fancy

I don't, alas, believe for a second that this magazine cover is real but, my, how I really, really wish it were. Anyway, it seems that Mike Tyson is going to be appearing in a new reality TV show about, yup, pigeon racing. Really, right now, I'm pushed to come up with a better TV proposal than that. Needless to say the folks at PETA are not amused. But according to the New York Post Tyson's been part of the fancy since he was a kid. This will be the first time he's trained doos for actual racing, however. The Post reports: Tyson began with pigeons, he says, at age 10 or 11 in his Brownsville neighborhood, swiping milk crates for bigger kids who used them as coops for their birds. "I cleaned cages," he says. "I was their go-fer." In exchange, "I got the strays.

Alex Massie

Real Un-Americanism

But if you want to see something that really is antithetical to the idea of the American Idea then this, from Glenn Greenwald, should dp the job nicely: [T]he bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain -- the so-called "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act" -- now has 9 co-sponsors, including the newly elected Scott Brown.  It's probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act.  It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect -- including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil.

Alex Massie

When did America Cease to be America?

Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have some fun with Charles Krauthammer's argument that resistance to Obama's health care plans is rooted in a certain concept of American exceptionalism. Here's Dr K: This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America. It’s the essence of America. And it’s what distinguishes Americans who are essentially refugees of the old society in Europe. That’s why it’s always been harder to make Americans break to the yoke of government, as happened in Europe. Look, once you get accustomed to the kind of entitlements you have in Sweden, England, France, elsewhere, it doesn’t get undone. And America is different. It’s resisting the imposition of new yokes.

Alex Massie

Morgan in Parliament? Surely not!

Is Piers Morgan going to be an MP? I suspect that this is one of those questions to which, as John Rentoul would tell you, the answer is no. (UPDATE: Indeed it is!) So Fraser has to be joking, right? I mean Piers Morgan is ubiquitous enough as it is without raising the chill prospect that he might make it into parliament? That said, Morgan is right to suggest that vastly increasing the provision of sport in schools is something most people should be able to agree upon. Doing so, mind you, would a) be hugely expensive, b) exceedingly difficult and c) be bound to further annoy the teaching unions. Those aren't reasons for not making kids exercise but actually making that happen is much harder than people might assume it would be.

Alex Massie

The Blarney Festival Arrives Again

Faith and begorrah it's that time of year again. Time, that is, for the kind of "virulent eruptions of Paddyism" that, in the words of Ireland's greatest newspaper columnist, is another form of "the claptrap that has made fortunes for cute professional Irishmen in America." Yes it's St Patrick's Day and Myles na Gopaleen's withering verdict on the nonsense of professional Irishism remains about the best there is. These days, mind you, it's gone so far that you can no longer easily determine what's pastiche and what's become parody. In a curious way, the celebrations in New York, Chicago and Boston are the real deal and it's the attempts to emulate them in Ireland that are the most ridiculous part of the entire shenanigans.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Problems with the Contemporary Political Novel (& Ian McEwan)

Following these ruminations on Iraq, Shakespeare and the contemporary political novel, I came across this post by Nick Cohen in which he discusses the provenance of some scenes in Ian McEwan's new novel Solar. I've not read the book - which is, at least in part, about global warming - but McEwan's publishers promise "a serious and darkly satirical novel, showing human frailty struggling with the most pressing and complex problem of our time. A story of one man's greed and self-deception, it is a profound and stylish new work from one of the world's great writers." Of course they would say that, wouldn't they?

Alex Massie

Bush, Cheney, Blair, Brown: Four Characters in Search of a Tragedian?

I enjoyed Ross Douthat's column this week in which he contemplates the inadequacies of Hollywood's response to the Iraq war. (Hey - at least Hollywood has responded: has the British film industry? There haven't been too many British stories told, as opposed to Britishers telling American stories. Which is a little different.) The narrative of the Iraq invasion, properly told, resembles a story out of Shakespeare. You had a nation reeling from a terrorist attack and hungry for a response that would be righteous, bold and comprehensive. You had an inexperienced president trying to tackle a problem that his predecessors (one of them his own father) had left to fester since the first gulf war.