Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Forget the GOATs we need GOAPs

From our UK edition

A few weeks ago Michael Heseltine wiped the floor with the rest of the Question Time panel. Last night it was Paddy Ashdown's turn to do the same. It helped, of course, that much of the programme concentrated on defence issues, about which Ashdown really does know something. But it was still an impressive performance, not least since the Tory representative was William Hague and not some minor nonentity from the lower reaches of the Shadow Cabinet. Hague was fine and will, should the Tories be elected, be a perfectly reaosnable Foreign Secretary. But Ashdown was the star. All this was a reminder that, freed from the grubby business of having to solicit support, our politicians can talk with admirable candour, clarity and authority.

Alex Massie

All the News that’s Fit to Eat

From our UK edition

Not content with one hazardous business enterprise right now, apparently Rolling Stone is going into the restaurant business. God knows why. Anyway, this allows Slate to imagine what might happen if other magazines decided to open their own restaurant. Thus... New Yorker Cafe: Although this beloved eatery professes familiarity with international cuisine, it's best to stick with the dry, witty takes on American classics, which tend to provoke thin smiles of recognition, if rarely outright delight. If they're out of the Anthony Lane crab cakes, the David Denbyburger is an adequate second choice—while bland, it is easily enlivened with artisanal ketchup.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Another PBR, Please

From our UK edition

That would be a Pabst Blue Ribbon, of course, though another, better, Pre-Budget Report would be welcome too. As Fraser says, the public finances are ruined and will not be rebuilt for many years. Bill Jamieson's piece in the Scotsman framed the matter rather well and explained why the level of debt matters more than, I suspect, many people think it does: But why should debt figures matter so much? This is why: Next year, we will be paying £44.4bn in debt interest alone – never mind debt falling due for repayment.

Alex Massie

The Laffer Curve & Its Reverse

From our UK edition

Danny Finkelstein makes an obvious, if oft-ignored or forgotten, point and does so with his customary elegance: This idea of [Arthur] Laffer's is clearly true. We don't know what the curve (does it have a different dips for different taxes or a sharp fall near 100 per cent, say) would look like exactly and we don't know the lags. But obviously something like a Laffer curve must exist. But the reverse Laffer argument is also true. If tax rates were 0 per cent there would be no tax revenue. So there must come a point at which as you cut taxes revenue falls. The relationship between tax rates and revenue is therefore not as simple as Maurice [Saatchi] argues. Lower tax rates do not necessarily mean higher tax revenues.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

American Exceptionalism & the Decline of Limited Government

From our UK edition

Via Megan McArdle, a sentence to ponder from Tyler Cowen: One implication [of this book] is that the United States kept "small government" for an artificially long period of time, due to North-South splits and the resulting inability to agree on what a larger government should be doing. I suspect there's something to that. The realignment of American politics over the past 40 years has created coherent parties that, while disagreeing on the details, agree that the Federal government needs more power. Republicans may pay lip-service to federalism but their record in office tells a different story.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Christmas Scandal: Bute House Edition

From our UK edition

Why do so many people hate politics? Partly because politicians insist upon making everything a matter of wearying, partisan, sillyness. Take this painting for instance. Hardly a masterpiece, not least because the young girl looks as though she knows she's marching off to doom and that is the consequence of yet another episode of national folly. But, still, it's just a picture and, in the end, only a Christmas card. But it's Alex Salmond's official Christmas card and so, natch, a matter for bickering and seasonal tomfoolery.

Monday

Alex Massie

Obama & Reagan

From our UK edition

I've remarked before that Barack Obama is, in many ways, American liberalism's long-delayed response to Ronald Reagan. This chart, found via Andrew Sullivan, comparing their Gallup approval ratings, is uncanny: Clearly, none of this is predictive, far-less guaranteeing that Obama will recover and romp to a second term as Reagan did. But what it does do is permit one to imagine both the upper and lower set of expectations one may reaonably hold for the rest of Obama's Presidency. (This has nothing to do with the wisdom of Obama's policies or one's approval of them). It's also a reminder to pundits everywhere that Presidents' ability to "make the political weather" is seriously limited.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Prejudice Isn’t Daring; It’s Boring

From our UK edition

So, yes, we all know that Rod Liddle's shtick is to try and be as offensive as possible so that he can chuckle at those po-faced ninnies who dare to be offended by his courageous insistence to tell it like it really is. But like his comrades Clarkson and Littlejohn Liddle confuses being offensive with being provocative. The latter requires that you be, you know, interesting. Here's Rod however: The first of an occasional series – those benefits of a multi-cultural Britain in full. Let me introduce you all to this human filth.   It could be an anomaly, of course. But it isn’t. The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community.

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Steve Earle

From our UK edition

Apologies for the light blogging these past couple of days. Still, it's Saturday and so it's time for some more country. Since I'm seeing him perform in Perth on Monday night it's appropriate that Steve Earle makes another appearance in this series.

Friday

Alex Massie

Rum, Sodomy and a Radish

From our UK edition

Proof that even well-intentioned and useful fads can go too far: the Grow Your Own Vegetables movement has reached a tragi-comic end with the news that Shane MacGowan, the hardest-living poet ever to emerge from the mean streets of Tunbridge Wells, is, well, this... Shane MacGowan is set to appear in a reality TV programme about growing vegetables. The Pogues' frontman and his girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke both take part in the RTÉ One programme, which is called 'Victoria and Shane Grow Their Own'. In the show, the pair attempt to emulate the plot of '70s sitcom 'The Good Life', which saw characters Tom and Barbara Good attempt to live a sustainable life by growing their own veg and rearing their own animals for food.

Alex Massie

Sarah Palin, Birther?

From our UK edition

Nearly! The thing is that Mrs Palin doesn't need to pander to the nutty fringe. Many of them love her anyway. So perhaps she really does mean this sort of stuff: Speaking to the conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama's birth certificate. "Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?" she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above). "I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers," she replied. "Do you think it's a fair question to be looking at?" Humphries persisted.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The New Class War

From our UK edition

James argues, quite correctly in my view, that it is now clear that Gordon Brown is preparing to run a campaign arguing that, as Brother Forsyth puts it, "a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich." Ben Brogan makes the same point in his column today:  In a fight to the death, there is no longer any point pretending to govern in the national interest. As it was in the beginning for Labour, so shall it be in the end: class war, plain and simple. Soak the rich, crow about it, and damn the consequences. It's true that this is red meat for the Labour base - precisely the constituency Brown must rally first - and it's also true that it dovetails with a classic Shrumian narrative of "the people against the powerful" and "the many, not the few".

Alex Massie

Pirate Markets

From our UK edition

Capitalism is not in crisis everywhere. Somali pirates have launched their own stock exchange: One wealthy former pirate named Mohammed took Reuters around the small facility and said it had proved to be an important way for the pirates to win support from the local community for their operations, despite the dangers involved. "Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 'maritime companies' and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking," Mohammed said. "The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials ... we've made piracy a community activity." [...

Alex Massie

Obama’s War: Same as the Old War

From our UK edition

President Barack Obama speaks in Eisenhower Hall at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Photo: Roger L. Wollenberg-Pool/Getty Images The text of President Obama's West Point address is here. I didn't watch the speech, but having read it I think it can be summarised, broadly, as "More of the Same, Only More So". It's an intensification, I think, of the existing strategy rather than a radical new approach to a series of interlocking, intractable problems. Increasingly the Afghan campaign reminds me of that old Irish joke: "Can you tell me the way to Limerick?" "Well, you wouldn't want to start from here." But here is where we are. And that means, I think, that avoiding defeat is a more urgent priority than defining, let alone achieving, "victory".

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Afghan Conundrum | 1 December 2009

From our UK edition

Like Yglesias, I guess one ought to have an official "What I Think About Obama’s Escalation in Afghanistan post". And the truth is that I don't know. Don't know whether Obama's new strategy will work, don't know if it is wise or enough or too much or just about right. And I'm intensely suspicious of anyone who celebrates it and, most especially, those who immediately claim that it's insufficient, reckless, half-hearted or whatever. Because (almost) none of us have a clue, really, and pretending that we do does no-one any good. What may be said, with all due caution, is that the administration is doing its best to make the best of a bad situation. It seems quite possible to me, even probable, that there is no solution to the matrix of problems we face in Afghanistan.

Alex Massie

Why are the Tories so Miserable?

From our UK edition

My excellent chum Iain Martin observes that seven of the ten most recent polls have put the Tories below the "magic figure" of 40% support. The latest ComRes survey has them on 37%. Perhaps, he wonders, some of the core vote has been scunnered by the Lisbon Treaty shenanigans or perhaps some floating voters are concerned by a perceived Tory zeal for cutting public spending and, hence, they feel, services. A bit of both, I'd hazard. But, as I've argued before, there's something more than just these elements. Frankly, if you were to take Tory rhetoric at face value the only sensible course, for those with the means to take it, would be emigration. In a variation of Tony Blair's "masochism strategy" David Cameron seems intent upon following a "misery strategy".

Alex Massie

What if the Lib Dems are right?

From our UK edition

James is right to say that the Lib Dems' commitment to increase the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000 trumps any obvious campaigning soundbite the Tories can offer. Isn't that a problem? Or, to put it another way, what if the Liberal Democrats are right? On balance, I think they are. Whatever one thinks of the inheritance tax brouhaha or the 50p rate for the super-wealthy and no matter how counter-productive one thinks those notions may be, the fact remains that Tory policy, in the case of the former, and Tory preferences, in the case of the latter, impact a tiny number of people. Important people, in some cases, given their wealth-generating potential, but not many people no matter how you slice it.

Alex Massie

Libertarians vs Tories

From our UK edition

This, from E.D Kain at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen is a good paragraph: Conservatism is not only about limited government, and where it seeks to limit government it does so because it sees government as a force of instability.  But what about those times when government is instead a force for stability?  Defense leaps to mind.  Conservatism, I would argue, is first and foremost about preserving or regaining a stable society.  Liberty and prosperity are two of the most profound ways we can achieve a stable civilization.  Limiting government often leads to both these things, and thus it is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

Monday

Alex Massie

Marketing Tiger Woods

From our UK edition

An unfortunately timed Accenture advertisement in the Wall Street Journal today: [Thanks to JNS for the heads-up and MF for the image].