Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

Tory Plans for an EU Referendum are Baffling and Incoherent

I wish the Conservative party's attitude towards european policy made more sense. To be more specific, I wish the Prime Minister's attitude made more sense. One can respect the views of, say, Bill Cash or Michael Heseltine without needing to agree with them. They have the merit of holding views that are easy to understand. This does not appear to be the case as far as David Cameron and his closest chums are concerned. And so, I'm afraid, James's column in the magazine this week makes depressing reading. The Cameroons, he says, are shaping up for a referendum on the EU and this seems likely to be a manifesto commitment at the next election.

Alex Massie

Obama’s Evolution

Yesterday, Barack Obama came out of the closet and acknowledged what we'd all suspected for a long, long time: he supports extending the civil recognition of marriage to same-sex couples. As you might expect, this has been hailed as a bold and risky and courageous move even though, as the chart above demonstrates, Obama is following public opinion, not leading it. His own position, he says, has "evolved" and he's been mocked for putting the matter in those terms even though, as the chart shows again, the US population as a whole has "evolved" in pretty much the same way. Of course, it's probable that Obama has long-supported gay-marriage but has only recently been able to say so.

Alex Massie

Cardinal Brady Should Resign

Last night, I finally watched last week's BBC This World documentary investigating the latest stage of the child abuse scandal that is destroying the Catholic Church in Ireland and, like Jenny McCartney, suspect it is time for Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All-Ireland, to resign his post. I don't suppose Cardinal Brady is a bad man, nor should one suppose that his resignation would draw some manner f line under the whole, sorry, rotten, scandalous affair. But it would be more than just a gesture too. William Oddie, writing in the Catholic Herald, plainly would prefer Brady to remain in office but accepts he "almost certainly" must "bow before the storm".

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Weak, Weak, Weak: Cameron’s Brooks Affair Will Haunt Him.

The public is not, I suspect, nearly as bothered by or interested in the Leveson Inquiry as some editors think. Nevertheless it is not just a Guardianesque enthusiasm. And even if voters dn't much care for it, Leveson inevitably colours how the professional press views the government. With Andy Coulsen giving evidence tomorrow and Rebekah Brooks appearing on Friday you could argue that this was a bad week to try and have a government relaunch. Worse still, it looks as though the Prime Minister is going to be humiliated. This is not good. Then again, nor is this: David Cameron privately sent Rebekah Brooks a message of support as his government was publicly condemning her newspaper group for hacking Milly Dowler's phone, it emerged last night.

Alex Massie

Today in Blundering: Government Relaunches Always Fail

A government relaunch of the sort we've endured this week is inevitably a fraught, fragile affair. The problem with such enterprises is that they have this unfortunate habit of drawing attention to the fact that it is, well, a relaunch. Downing Street may hope differently but a relaunch inevitably draws attention to the very failures the relaunch is supposed to put behind us. You wouldn't be doing this if things were going well, would you Prime Minister?  Of course things are not going well. Nor will they get any better any time soon. Yesterday's Essex reprise of the chummy Downing Street coalition presser was a mistake. A necessary or at least understandable one perhaps but a mistake nevertheless. That's a river, as an old Greek said, in which you cannot bathe twice.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Predictable End of An Old Fighting Song

Years ago, before government began to take its toll I remember reading an interview with young David Cameron published by the Dundee Courier. The paper wanted to know if the leader of the opposition (as he then was) had any plans to reverse the army reforms that bundled all the Scottish infanty regiments together to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. As I recall, Mr Cameron (gently) suggested he was unlikely to be able to unpick that reform but stressed he was mindful of the importance of local afiliations and that he understood the depth and breadth of sentiment attached to the regiments in Scotland. Aye, weel, tht was then and this is now. No-one should be surprised that the army plans, according to the Daily Telegraph to kill-off the ancient regiments once and for all.

Friday

Alex Massie

Cameron’s Municipal Failure: All Hat and No Cattle

The first-time visitor to Manchester cannot fail to be struck by the grandeur of its Victorian civic buildings. The Town Hall, pictured above, is a mighty declaration of municipal pride and confidence. It is proudly provincial but there is nothing pejoratively provincial about it. Nor is Manchester alone: Newcastle and Leeds and the other great English cities built their own sandstone monuments to themselves. Hold up your heads, citizens, you come from nothing small. Never mind the wins and losses in yesterday's council elections. These are no more than the usual spins on the political merrygoround. Much more significant and much more depressing is the apparent rejection of locally-elected mayors in cities such as Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, Coventry and Bradford.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Did Cameron Text Rebekah Brooks 12 Times A Day?

The Prime Minister's supporters will hope that this detail in Peter Oborne's column today is not true: A fresh embarrassment concerns Rebekah Brooks, who providentially retained the text messages she received from the Prime Minister, which I’m told could exceed a dozen a day. These may now be published, a horrible thought. Now "I'm told" and "could" allow for some doubt. But the quantity of texts zipping between Ms Brooks and Mr Cameron is not the only problem, so too is their frequency. I cannot think the Prime Minister's reputation will be enhanced by the disclosure that he was in contact with Ms Brooks almost every day.

Alex Massie

Up Down and More of This Irish Anarchy

A propos nothing at all except coming across it in a comment over at Slugger O'Toole, here's a jolly tale of 1960s Irish anarchism: One day in the late 1960s, when we thought we'd heard the chimes of freedom flashing, I drove to Dublin with [John] McGuffin and the American anarchist Jerry Rubin. A mile or so out of Newry, McGuffin explained to the fabled member of the Chicago Seven that the town we were approaching was in the grip of revolution. The risen people had turned en masse to anarchism. We'd better barrel on through. If we stopped for a moment the fevered proletariat would surely engulf us... Down were in the All-Ireland final that weekend. Every house, lamppost and telegraph pole was festooned with red-and-black flags.

Alex Massie

Come Fly the Expensive Skies

Meanwhile, in other defence news Winslow Wheeler says it is time for the cousins to give up on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It is, as everyone knows, a troubled plane. Quite expensive too: The F-35 will actually cost multiples of the $395.7 billion cited above. That is the current estimate only to acquire it, not the full life-cycle cost to operate it. The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion -- making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain. And that estimate is wildly optimistic: It assumes the F-35 will only be 42 percent more expensive to operate than an F-16, but the F-35 is much more complex.

Alex Massie

Death by 100 Cuts: The Army Downsizes. Again.

The next round of army cuts will be announced next month as the government reduces reconfigures Britain's military capability yet again. According to a report at the weekend the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the Royal Scots Dragood Guards will be two of the casualties heading to the knacker's yard. Progress, if that is what it is, waits for no man and sentiment plays no part in these deliberations either. Perhaps that is as it should be. And yet it is possible for sentiment to be discounted too cheaply too. An army is, in part, the weight of its history. Recent governments, of either colour, have paid no heed to that however.

Alex Massie

Washington’s Favourite Unimportant Parlour Game: The Veepstakes

The American presidential campaign is in one of its few fallow periods just now. Which means it is time for a favourite quadrennial pastime: the Veepstakes! Who will Mitt Romney choose to be his running-mate? Rob Portman of Ohio? Marco Rubio of Florida? Chris Christie of New Jersey? Someone else entirely? Who can tell but does it matter anyway? And that, as Mike Crowley points out, is the small secret lurking behind most of the press coverage of this mini-drama: most of the time the identity of the Vice-Presidential nominee isn't worth even the famous bucket of warm spit. Very few people even consider, far less are swayd by, the Vice-Presidential pick and the success or failure of these running-mates is usually suject to the post hoc propter hoc fallacy.

Alex Massie

Three Cheers for Canada

And for Honduras too. Ottawa and Tegucicalpa are considering founding a Charter City in Honduras. As Paul Romer - the NYU professor at the head of the Charter City movement - explained in the Globe and Mail yesterday: Honduran congressional support for the RED reflects a clear understanding of the challenges the country faces. Inefficient rules are the major obstacle to peace, growth and development. These rules are difficult to change, especially in a society that suffers from fear and mistrust. Building a new city on an undeveloped site, free of vested interests, with trusted third parties, is one way to fast-track reforms that might otherwise take decades to achieve. [...] The world does not need more aid [...

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Let Tesco Run the Border Agency

Lord knows Heathrow airport is usually a pretty hellish place even on its better days (another reason, incidentally, for starting again on the Thames Estuary and building houses for 150,000 people at Heathrow) but, at the risk of seeming simple this stramash over lengthy queues at LHR's immigration seems laughably simple to resolve: deploy more Border Agency officers to check passports or, if you prefer, check only a random sample of passengers. Either will do, both will prevent people - especially those from outwith the EU - from spending hours for the joy of entering a country enduring, with no more than the usual level of grumbling, the wettest, coldest drought in recorded western european history.

Alex Massie

Waiting for Growth

With apologies to the Beckett Estate... Two tramps appear on stage. They are dressed in white tie and tails and wearing top hats. Their clothes are dirty and shabby; their hats gleam. The stage is bare, apart from a mound of earth and a tree. Which appears to be dead. ACT ONE: David: [gloomy] It's too much for one man. On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties. George: What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment. David: [Ponders this] The last moment... Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that? George: It is an election, isn't it? David: [Despairingly] Why don't you help me? George: There's nothing to show. David: Suppose we repented?

Alex Massie

Amarillo Slim, 1928-2012

From one great Texan to another: Amarillo Slim, giant of poker and peddler of western wisecracks, has died. Now that poker is a mainstream entertainment, you have to do some brain-cudgeling to recall the era when it seemed distant and exotic and even attractively seedy. All that has gone the way of all flesh now that you can, should you be up all night, watch poker on television every day of the week. Poker players, these days, are ordinary guys who can come from anywhere. The game has become a corporate, branded business and, while this has enriched many people, one kinda feels something has been lost too. In the 1980s, Anthony Holden's account of a year as a professional poker player seemed a revelation. People lived like this?

Saturday

Friday

Alex Massie

They Don’t Do Paying Their Way

It's Friday afternoon and even Rangers fans might have to laugh at this: There have been numerous [football computer] games throughout the history of the genre which have fallen by the wayside: Sierra's Ultimate Soccer Manager, Elite's Complete Onside Soccer and... Ally McCoist's Director of Football. Released in 2001, the game allows you to manage some of the less glamorous sides of the game, including the expansion of your stadium, negotiating contracts and finding sponsorship. If you ever wanted to be part of the decision making process on the number of car parking spaces by your stadium, you genuinely can in this simulation.

Alex Massie

Does Ed Miliband Have A Clue About Scotland?

I'm not sure Ed Miliband's people will be altogether happy that James McIntyre's Prospect interview with the Labour leader devotes quite so much time to Miliband's leadership credentials. This is not, I think, generally considered helpful. Mr Miliband says he is "Labour's biggest critic" to which the obvious rejoinder is "Not while so many of us remain alive, you ain't". There's plenty to chew on in the interview but, as McIntyre suggests, it's worth paying attention to Miliband's comments on the Scottish Question: [W]hen I ask Miliband if he will help Cameron save the Union in what should be a cross-party campaign for the UK as we know it, he laughs again.

Alex Massie

Is Sir Simon Jenkins the Worst Columnist in Britain?

I know that this must seem a large claim while so many other rotters still breathe but at least, as questions go, it makes more sense than the one bold Sir Simon asks today: Now everyone is connected, is this the death of conversation? Good grief but, being the charitable sort, you may suppose that since Mr Jenkins doesnae write his ain headlines his article may have been mischaracterised by some Guardian sub-editor. Such hopes will not survive for long. Mr Jenkins, you see, has been in the United States and he has noticed, as veteran foreign correspondents are wont to do, that the young people are spending quite a bit of time tapping and typing messages to one another on their smart-alec telephones that are no longer really telephones at all.