Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Monday

Alex Massie

The Lib Dems Cut Their Own Throats

From our UK edition

Meanwhile in Scotland, Tavish Scott, leader of the Liberal Democrats at Holyrood is enduring a tough election. Even if the latest polls are too pessimistic about his party's chances the Lib Dems could still lose half their seats. It's clear that Tavish blames Nick for this. If Clegg hadn't done a deal with David Cameron the Scottish Lib Dems might not be in quite so much trouble. There's something to this even though it's also attributable to the different dynamics of a Holyrood election that has become, to a great extent, a choice between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray.

Alex Massie

Vince Cable’s Marriage May Inform His Views on Immigration

From our UK edition

Vince Cable's disagreement with David Cameron over immigration seems entirely reasonable to me and much less problematic than his attitude to Rupert Murdoch's attempt to purchase SKY. Sure, if he were a Tory he'd have been sacked. But he's not a Tory and on a subject such as immigration - and the way in which the issue should be discussed - I can't see why we have to maintain the fiction that everyone in the government must agree with one another on everything. Better, surely, to acknowledge that there's a government-sponsored policy but even within the government, it being a coalition and all, not everyone considers the policy ideal. Or is that only allowed when disgruntled Conservatives complain that the Lib Dems are "dragging" the coalition to the left?

Sunday

Alex Massie

Muckle Eck’s Big Mo

From our UK edition

Scotland on Sunday publishes a thumper of a poll today that suggests the SNP is on course to defeat Labour and remain the largest party at Holyrood. In fact, John Curtice's calculations have the Nats taking 55 seats to Labour's 49. The Tories, meanwhile, slip to 14 while the Lib Dems suffer a catastrophe and would be left with just six MSPs, just ahead of the Greens with five seats. Should this poll be accurate and should the election - which is still 18 fun-stuffed days away - produce a result of this sort then happy days indeed. By which I mean, of course, not-as-desperate-as-they-might-have-been-days. Kenny Farquharson lays it on a little thickly this morning when he contrasts the SNP's campaign of "hope" with Labour's fear-based approach but he is, in essence, correct.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Saturday Afternoon Country: The Carter Family

From our UK edition

It's a beautfiul sunny* afternoon heralding the start of summer and so here, to celebrate that, is Maybelle Carter and the girls with one of their many classics, Wildwood Flower: *Sod's Law dictates it will pour with rain next Saturday since that's when our cricket season begins.

Alex Massie

America’s Crazy War on Poker

From our UK edition

Though it's not as calamitous as the War on Drugs, Washington's War on Poker* is even dumber than that long-running fiasco. What they have in common, of course, is the criminalisation of consensual behaviour. As of today it seems that if you try and play poker online at Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker or Absolute Poker you'll be greeted by this charming message: The founders of these sites and a number of their colleagues have been indicted on charges of bank fraud, money-laundering and offenses against the (ridiculous) 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. That bill made it an offence for American banks to process payments to poker sites no matter where the poker companies may be based.

Friday

Alex Massie

Burning the Koran Again

From our UK edition

Dan Hodges disagrees with me (and with Dan Hannan) and argues that, yes, we should definitely imprison people for burning books. Certainly if that book is the Koran. And perhaps other books too. Who knows where it will all end once you start? Those who defend Quran-burning on the basis of free speech miss the point. [...] This is an overt, conscious action, motivated by malign intent. It is not the product of open, free-spirited discourse, but an aggressive, premeditated provocation. Nor is it actually speech. It's not opening a dialogue or building an argument. Quite the opposite. It's a deliberate act of destruction; the destruction of a dialogue and argument constructed by others. If you don't like Islam, fine. Write a book about why. Don't burn one.

Alex Massie

Transatlantic Deficits

From our UK edition

I don't know if the Obama administration is as enthused by the idea of deficit reduction as James suggests, not least since the American left has looked at George Osborne's approach and judged it a failure. Kevin Drum, for instance, says Osborne's plans are "not likely to work" and Britain "is probably going to be paying the price for this folly for many years to come". Matt Yglesias agrees, writing that "Austerity's failure in the United Kingdom should inform the American policy debate." This is all occasioned by a gloomy New York Times article with the headline British Deficit Defies Advocates of Austerity.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Mitt Romney’s Other Problem

From our UK edition

Apart from the healthcare thing and the Mormon thing and the whole not-always-coming-across-as-an-actual-human-being thing there's the Private Equity thing. Romney, sensibly in my view, began the "official" leg of his Presidential campaign with a pitch about jobs. That, much more than arcane-seeming debates about the deficit, is the key to blue collar America and, by extension, the vital battleground states. The difficulty is that Romney's record at Bain Capital is awfully easy to attack. Think Progress highlights one problem: Politico has more here.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Labour’s War on Literacy

From our UK edition

Don't take my word for it just ask Iain Gray, Labour's leader at the Scottish Parliament. This is from a leaflet sent to voters in Edinburgh by Labour: Aye, well, there you go. Ye ken noo. Depressingly, Scottish schools now exist as a kind of control group against which we may measure the success of the English school reforms instigated by Lord Adonis and continued by Michael Gove. I hope the English win. Meanwhile, in other depressing election-leaflet news, I've yet to receive anything from the Jacobite Party who stood (manfully) and fell (equally manfully) in these parts last year. Surely they can't have given it up as a Lost Cause? Nor is Iain Gray the only Labour chap to blunder in this fashion. There's Charlie Gordon too.

Alex Massie

You Cannot Hope to Bribe, or Twist, the British Journalist…

From our UK edition

Hugh Grant's account of a (secretly-taped!) conversation he had with a former News of the World hack-turned-whistleblower is most entertaining. Credit to our friends at the New Statesman for commissioning* it. There's plenty to enjoy, including this fine exposition of the mentality of our upstanding truth-seekers in the popular prints: Me Well, I suppose the fact that they're dragging their feet while investigating a mass of phone-hacking - which is a crime - some people would think is a bit depressing about the police. Him But then - should it be a crime? I mean, scanning never used to be a crime. Why should it be? You're transmitting your thoughts and your voice over the airwaves. How can you not expect someone to just stick up an aerial and listen in?

Alex Massie

Raising the Income Tax Threshold is an Important Symbol, Not a Sop

From our UK edition

The most obvious or high-profile Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition's programme for government is the commitment to raise the personal allowance to £10,000 over the course of this parliament. John Rentoul is not impressed by it. He says it is a "sop" that "sounds great" but fails to survive "contact with the reality-based community". He explains his argument thus: Raising the income-tax threshold is the only policy that can definitely be attributed to the Lib Dems, and it’s an inefficient way to make the tax system fairer. Raising the threshold benefits higher-rate taxpayers more than the rest, which means that other taxes on the rich have to go up to compensate*.

Alex Massie

A Russian Red-Headed League?

From our UK edition

The Daily Mail reports: The plot of a Sherlock Holmes story was behind a jewellery raid in Russia, police believe. Thieves paid a 74-year-old woman in St Petersburg to stay out of their flat - and broke through her walls to get in to a jeweller's shop next door. Although a burglar alarm went off twice security guards thought it was a false alarm because the doors were locked and the windows remained intact. [...] The bizarre theft mirrors almost exactly the outlandish heist in the 120-year-old short story The Red-Headed League by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the story, shop owner Jabez Wilson is kept away from his premises after criminals give him a highly-paid job for a bogus company. He lands the post because it was only open to males, like him, with red hair.

Alex Massie

This internet thing is never going to catch on.

From our UK edition

A classic, via Norm, from Sir Simon Jenkins. Apparently, "The Internet will strut an hour upon the stage, and then take its place in the ranks of lesser media". Also: So great is the commercial hyperbole surrounding the Internet that common sense is obliterated by dazzle. It has proved a boon for pornographers and lawyers and for the sort of up market pen pals who used to rave about Citizens' Band radio. For companies and interest groups, the "interment" is a more efficient version of the fax. E-mail has done wonders for the ancient art of letter-writing. I can see that being able to download the entire British Library on to one's kitchen table, or cruise the Louvre from one's armchair, is in theory exhilarating.

Monday

Alex Massie

Going to the Ball Does Not Guarantee A Right to Dance

From our UK edition

So Washington will just have to make do with government-as-normal after all. Oh well. The White House appears to have decided that the best way to respond to defeat is to just call it victory and hope no-one notices. Hence President Obama's speech this evening in which he will take credit for a budget deal he resisted. That's fine. That's politics. The numbers, of course, are trivial. A $38bn cut in federal outlays is a fraction of a tiny fraction of the matter. Nevertheless, it's a political victory for the GOP, not least since spending-restraint is not something this President is interested in. Nor, of course, was his predecessor but that was then and this is now.

Sunday

Alex Massie

Even Goons Should Be Allowed to Burn Books

From our UK edition

As a general rule if you're minded to burn books you're probably trotting along the road towards losing whatever argument you may be having. You also look a fool. That was true of the nutters who burned The Satanic Verses and it's true of Terry Jones and true of this chap too: A senior member of the BNP who burned a copy of the Qur'an in his garden has been arrested following an investigation by the Observer. Footage of the burning shows Sion Owens, 40, from south Wales and a candidate for the forthcoming Welsh Assembly elections, soaking the Qur'an in kerosene and setting fire to it. A video clip of the act, leaked to the Observer and passed immediately to South Wales police, provoked fierce criticism from the government.

Alex Massie

Working-Class People Can Like Opera Too, You Know

From our UK edition

Brother Korski is right to draw attention to Rachel Sylvester's interview (£) with Unite's Len McCluskey and right too to note that his defence of Castro's island gulag* is indefensible. But there's more that's wrong with it than that and not all of that is McCluskey's fault. Consider these lines: He would choose tea and scones at Fortnum and Mason over beer and sandwiches in a smoke-filled room. He is a fan of the romantic poets — “I love Byron, Keats and Shelley, I’m a romantic at heart” — and takes a feminist interpretation of Christina Rossetti.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Rickrolling Oregon

From our UK edition

Silly but kinda fun too: Ooh for the win, of course. Here's how it went: [A]ssembling the video was about as tricky an undertaking as as one can imagine. First, Smith had to sell his colleagues on the joke--which wasn't as hard as he initially feared. Most of his fellow lawmakers--at the time, the legislature was split evenly, with 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans--knew of Astley's 1987 hit and understood the basic concept of a "Rick Roll," he insists. "I pitched the idea to a few members, and they liked it," he recalls. But Smith--who developed the concept with his wife, a few colleagues and several friends, one of whom is video editor--had a few rules about the joke.

Friday

Alex Massie

Wisden’s Cop-Out

From our UK edition

I've not been hugely impressed by Scyld Berry's tenure* as editor of Wisden and his decision to name just four rather than the customary five Cricketers of the Year this season merely confirms that. It's either a cop-out or a dishonourable play for extra publicity. Neither explanation reflects well upon the venerable Almanack. For the record the four players chosen are Jonathan Trott, Eoin Morgan, Tamim Iqbal and Chris Read. Morgan, in my view, scarcely deserves his place but none of the players chosen deserve to have their honour eclipsed by the controversy over Mohammad Amir's exclusion. Berry has done the four cricketers he did deign to name a grave disservice.

Alex Massie

Dreadful MP of the Week: Glenda Jackson

From our UK edition

I'm most grateful to Selena Gray for publicising Glenda Jackson's response to the notion that volunteers might run a library that Brent council has threatened to close. I don't think, however, Selena goes nearly far enough. Firstly, it cannot be pointed out too often that any library closures are the responsibility of councils, not central government. The latter may not send as much money to the former as it did in previous years but the decisions on what to spend the money councils do have are entirely a matter for the councils themselves. If your local library or swimming pool closes it's because your local council has decided to spend money elsewhere.