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Gideon Rachmann is unhappy that european defence budgets are still falling: Since 2008, in response to the economic downturn, most big European countries have cut defence spending by 10-15 per cent. The longer-term trends are even more striking. Britain’s Royal Air Force now has just a quarter of the number of combat aircraft it had in the
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I am afraid, dear reader, that I have misled you. Yesterday’s post on immigrants and benefit-claimants contained an inaccuracy. I repeated a claim I’d seen in the Telegraph that there are almost 14,000 Polish-born people claiming unemployment benefit in Britain. This is not the case. The true picture of Polish benefit-dependency is very different. There
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Ramesh Ponnuru has written a splendid op-ed for today’s New York Times. Splendid, not because it is new or especially original, but because, alas, it’s central message needs repeating until, eventually, even the more dunderheaded class of Republican Congressman hears the message. And it is a simple message. Namely, that asking ‘What would Ronald Reagan
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The Sunday Express is at it again. It is outraged that Britain’s prisons contain some inmates who were not born in this country. Of course, everyone is hopping aboard the immigrant-bashing bandwagon these days. Immigration, it sometimes seems, is something to be feared, not valued. I understand the political calculation behind all this. The restrictionists
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John Rentoul draws attention to a new ComRes poll that goes some way towards explaining George Osborne’s predicament when it comes to managing government finances. Put simply, the public is not interested in public spending cuts. On the contrary, British voters want to see public spending increase. Sure, they might agree that, all things being
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Party unity is one of those things you can measure by the frequency with which the idea is mentioned. The more often it is talked about, the less it exists. When a political party is actually united there’s no need to mention party unity. As Isabel notes, Sir John Major has long, wearying, experience of
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Don’t take my word for it. Ask the redoubtable Ms Penny herself. Contemplating the “lesson” of the anti-war protests a decade ago, she writes: Tony Blair’s decision to take Britain into the Americans’ war in Iraq was an immediate, material calamity for millions of people in the Middle East. I’m writing here, though, about the
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If you seek cheap entertainment, the sight of government ministers defending their immigration policies to the foreign press is always worth a sardonic chuckle or two. And, lo, it came to pass that David Cameron assured Indian TV that, actually and despite the impression his coalition may have given, Her Britannic Majesty’s government is jolly
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Thanks to AH for this reminder that the Victorians – and many since – were right to think Scotland a land of romance and all that stuff.
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I see that Con Coughlin is at it again. Apparently, you see, Barack Obama has “taken leave of reality”. How so? By declaring that al-Qaeda is but “a shadow of its former self”. That seems a reasonable statement to me. Moreover, the sensible response to that declaration is surely I should bloody well hope so. Otherwise what have we
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The SNP’s rise to power at Holyrood was predicated upon two useful qualities. First, the party has successfully contrived to appeal to different audiences without the contradictions in their doing so becoming either too blatantly apparent or too crippling. The SNP have targetted erstwhile Labour supporters in western Scotland at the same time as they
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I’ve been on Jura on a Wedding Planning Immersion Course* these past few days so, apart from noting that the Pope is retiring (upon which I have no opinion), I’ve not been paying little attention to the outside world. Some things have crept through, however. Among them this splendid obituary in today’s Telegraph. The intro
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David Ward, Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, is unhappy that his recent comments about The Jews attracted such widespread criticism. You see: “There is a huge operation out there, a machine almost, which is designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism. And that comes into play very, very quickly and focuses intensely
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Doom and gloom is all around. This is another winter, if not of discontent, then certainly of persistent grumbling. Optimism is as rare as a Scottish victory at Twickenham and, frankly, just as fanciful a thought. That, at any rate, is today’s conventional wisdom. Fleet Street looks to a Triple Dip recession and ponders what
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And lo, the battle for British Gay Marriage was in fact a rout. True, half the parliamentary Conservative party voted against the measure. True too, this is now being considered further evidence that David Cameron’s leadership skills – or, rather, since they are not the same thing – his party management skills are less than
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Borgen – the title refers to the Danish equivalent of Holyrood or Westminster – has been terrifically popular amongst those people interested in sub-titled political dramas from Denmark. I fancy that viewers in England have simply enjoyed the programme for what it is: a well-made but impossibly smug piece of “progressive” political propaganda. In Scotland,
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From a very entertaining New York Times profile of Gerard de Villiers, the French novelist who, though little known in this country, is seemingly better connected in the spy world than any mere hack novelist has any right to be: Why do all these people divulge so much to a pulp novelist? I put the
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Some jokes just write themselves. Hurrah for Ireland: The former head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has been appointed chairman of Horse Sport Ireland. Prof Patrick Wall, who was the first chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and has been a prolific commentator on the recent horsemeat in burgers scandal,
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An interesting spot, courtesy of the good chaps at Think Defence. From Hansard: Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North, Labour) To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what proportion of new recruits to the Army at (a) soldier and (b) officer level previously attended state school. Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire, Conservative) The proportion of
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So we have a question and it is a simple one. Should Scotland be an independent country? There, that wasn’t so difficult was it? It is, after all, the nub of the matter. Granted, one might agree that Scotland should be an independent country but still conclude that being so is a different matter. That might be