Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Monday

Alex Massie

The Australian Way of Love

From our UK edition

Noted without comment: A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman’s face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch. The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices’’. Police and a State Emergency Services crew were called to the rescue when the woman and a man, both 19, struck trouble at Warrandyte North about 4.30pm yesterday. They were floating down the river on two inflatable dolls and had just passed the Pound Bend Tunnel when the woman lost her toy in turbulent water. She clung to a floating tree, calling for help while the man stayed with her.

Sunday

Alex Massie

The Bell Tolls for Biffo

From our UK edition

Back in the rare ould times you could always rely upon Fianna Fail's instinct for self-preservation to kick-in and heaves against the party leadership were a reliably entertaining fixture of Irish political life. The remarkable aspect of this present crisis was that that, for a while at least, it looked as though Brian Cowen might somehow survive to lead his party to its looming Waterloo. Where, in the name of the father and all that's holy, was the Fianna Fail of old? So fair play to Micheal Martin, the foreign secretary, for doing his bit to wield the knife. It's hard to imagine he's the answer but he's less obviously the wrong answer than poor, beleaguered, hapless Biffo.

Thursday

Alex Massie

America’s Top Gun

From our UK edition

Bloomberg Businessweek has a fascinating article on how, starting from nothing, Glock has come to dominate the American handgun market. You may not be surprised to discover that ill-conceived gun control legislation played a major part in shifting gun owners' preferences towards ever larger magazine capacities and so on... When Karl Walter, a firearm salesman based in the U.S., first picked up a Glock during a visit to a Vienna gun shop in the spring of 1984, his reaction was, "Jeez, that's ugly." The squared-off pistol lacked the blued-steel frame and polished wooden grips of a classic American revolver. Its black matte finish seemed homely. "But still, I was extremely curious why the Austrian army bought it," Walter says. "There had to be more to it than what meets the eye initially.

Alex Massie

Obama in Tucson

From our UK edition

Thanks to at least a dozen interruptions the whole address lasts 34 minutes but if you don't want to watch it all then skip straight to the last six or seven minutes. This was Obama at his best and perhaps his finest speech since he won the Presidency. True, the bar had been lowered by all the nonsense spouted these past few days and by the rancour with which so much of that nonsense was piped into the public square. Nevertheless, this was a mighty speech that, boosted doubtless by the trappings of office, reminded you of the guy that won the election. It was a reminder too that he will prove a formidable foe for any Republican nominee in 2012. It was a memorial that turned into a celebration and ended as an affirmation of America itself.

Alex Massie

Clegg Derangement Syndrome

From our UK edition

There is, as you would expect, lots of good stuff in Nick Cohen's article on the Lib Dems in this week's edition of the magazine (subscribe today!) Among the several notable passages there's this: Leaving the disputes between pollsters aside, not even Nick Clegg’s closest friends deny that he is the most hated politician in Britain. At a student demonstration outside Westminster, I saw a ragged man climb a lamppost and urge the protestors to join him in an obscene chant against Clegg. The crowd in Parliament Square roared as one, united in its loathing, and ecstatic at the chance he had given them to crush a man they had once applauded. [...] The Liberals have no right to be surprised.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

How to Spin Defeat in Oldham

From our UK edition

Since Labour are all set to prevail in the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election (as was always likely) the government, and specifically the Deputy Prime Minister, will need a line to sell. It's made a little awkward by the fact that this unecessary election is the consequence of a lawsuit brought by the defeated Liberal Democrat candidate but, hey, nothing's perfect and no-one ever said these things would be easy. So what to say? Well... All by-elections are unusual, unique affairs but this one was even more unusual than most. It was not fought because the incumbent MP had died but because a judge ruled that he had broken electoral law. Regardless of the facts of the Woolas case, it is unsatisfactory when an election result is over-turned by an unelected judge.

Alex Massie

What’s Wrong with the United States Senate?

From our UK edition

Plenty, obviously and not the least of it is the sort of person that gets elected to the world's most insufferably self-regarding body. But what really annoys high-class liberals such as Hendrik Hertzberg and Ezra Klein is the Senate's supposed lack of democratic legitimacy. Well, that's what you get when you choose to build a Republic. Jonathan Bernstein sums up the complaint, thus: Now, I happen to agree with Hertzberg (and nearly everyone else) that the two-per-state Senate is a terrible idea, and does not at all comport with generally accepted ideas of democracy.  Bernstein acknowledges that this ain't changing any time soon. Or ever, for that matter. But allow me to make a modest case for the equal representation of the many and various states in the upper chamber.

Alex Massie

Baked Alaskan: Stick a Fork in Sarah Palin. She’s Done

From our UK edition

I hope one can still use cooking metaphors in this new age of low-key rhetoric, right? Anyway, this has been another Bad Week for Palin Inc. She's been traduced this week and the statement she's released today, while typically punchy, isn't likely to change anyone's opinion. Nevertheless, the fall-out from the Tucson shootings has damaged the erstwhile Governor and added weight to the sense, fair or not, that nominating her may be more trouble than it's worth. I think her prospects of winning the Republican nomination have been sliding quietly for some time (whatever the polls say) and this week's events do nothing to change that. Among the reasons why I think she's done: 1. Television is not enough.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Tartan Roots

From our UK edition

At some point it seems wise to suppose that Ed Miliband isn't playing any devious or subtle long game and that, far from being baffling, his public pronouncements are probably a pretty reasonable guide to what he actually, truly believes. And he really doesn't think that Labour made any significant errors while in office. Surpluses are for wimps; real men run deficits even in boom times. In this, as in so much else, Miliband rejects Tony Blair's analysis and sides with his old mentor Gordon Brown. Fair enough. Iain Martin finds this perplexing, not least from any electoral/political perspective and he's right. Miliband's views are touchingly old-fashioned. So much so, in fact, that perhaps he's in the wrong parliament. He'd be quite at home at Holyrood.

Monday

Alex Massie

Panda Politics

From our UK edition

A coup for the Royal Zoologocial Society of Scotland which announced today that it will take delivery of and house two Giant Pandas, courtesy of a deal with the Chinese government. A coup too, I dare say, for Alex Salmond who will be happy to accept whatever credit you may care to bestow upon him. I believe the going rate for a panda is something like $1m a year but Edinburgh Zoo will certainly be able to afford that. Hard to imagine pandas actually breeding in Edinburgh, but who knows? If a McPanda ever emerges I hope it gets a better name than "Butterstick" - the unfortunate moniker slapped upon the infant panda born in Washington a few years ago. Readers are invited to suggest possible names...

Alex Massie

Showdown at the Blame Game Corral

From our UK edition

Alastair Campbell, of all people, shows how the ghastly Tucson shootings are to be exploited for political purposes: What the right are now doing is trying to portray the killer of Tucson, Arizona as a crazed loner operating in some kind of vacuum. But even if it turns out that he had never heard of the Tea Party, did not know who he was shooting, and was in fact a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party, (all three unlikely) it is time for the right-wing prophets of hate, many of whom have grown rich and famous on the back of their bile, to recognise the harm they do to public discourse, and their possible role in the actions of those who follow and listen to them. That's a pretty succinct distillation of the case.

Sunday

Alex Massie

An Assassination in Tucson

From our UK edition

Washington is such a small place that it's little surprise to discover that I know people who were friends with at least one of the people murdered in Tucson yesterday. The attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords during which six people, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old, were murdered is an appalling atrocity that if the shooter weren't a young, white man would probably be considered an act of domestic terrorism. Far less appalling than the act but still disconcerting (though hardly surprising) was the rush to pin ultimate responsibility for the murders on someone other than the gunman himself. Toby Harnden has a good post rounding-up some of the attempts to blame this on Fox News and Sarah Palin here.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Land of the Unwell

From our UK edition

I'm afraid this blogging-hiatus is likely to continue for another day or so. Or at least until the batch of plague from which I'm currently suffering moves on to victims new. Assuming it ever does... Meanwhile, here are the answers to the 2010 edition of the Christmas Quiz: CHRISTMAS QUIZ 2010 ANSWERS: 1. Where could you find a countryside poet, a TV doctor, a defeated Presidential candidate and an English detective? These are all Irish counties: John Clare, Dr Kildare, John Kerry and Ruth Rendell's Chief Inspector Wexford. 2. What didn't happen in Berlin in 1916 or in Tokyo in 1940 or London in 1944? The Summer Olympics were due to have been held in these cities in these years but were cancelled because of war. 3.

Friday

Alex Massie

Happy New Year | 31 December 2010

From our UK edition

And so another year passes, replete with the usual misadventures, follies and debacles. Of course there were better moments too but this is no time to be dwelling on those. Anyway, thank you all for your company here this year and may the New Year bring you great joy and encouragement. See you again in 2011. Meanwhile, here's another cheery Hogmanay missive from that sage of all our Caledonian yesteryears, the Reverend I.M. Jolly.

Sunday

Alex Massie

98 All Out

From our UK edition

Their lowest total at home against England since 1936. Perth is looking like a blip, not a fundamental change in the series. More later, i dare say, but consider this an open thread to talk about the cricket. I fear my brother's French girlfriend - present at the MCG for her first ever day of test cricket - may have got rather the wrong idea. It's not usually as good as this... And, of course, Boxing Day is an excellent time to tackle this year's Christmas Quiz.

Saturday

Thursday

Alex Massie

Christmas Quiz! | 23 December 2010

From our UK edition

Just like last year, it's time for a Christmas Quiz. So here is this year's edition. You could, I suppose, use Mr Google to get the answers but where's the fun or honour in that? And it's only for fun and honour, I'm afraid, since there are no prizes beyond the usual measures of personal satisfaction and the warm glow that comes from doing better than someone else... The answers will be published in the New Year but if you'd like them before that you can always email me (alexmassie AT gmail.com). Have at it then, and best of luck. CHRISTMAS QUIZ 2010: 1. Where could you find a countryside poet, a TV doctor, a defeated Presidential candidate and an English detective? 2. What didn't happen in Berlin in 1916 or in Tokyo in 1940 or London in 1944? 3.

Alex Massie

Snowgoating Christmas

From our UK edition

Snowgoat: [noun] Inclement weather blamed, expediently, for the failure to be at all organised. Especially in the matter of sending Christmas cards, purchasing proper presents, etc. [verb, trans], Make a snowgoat of. Derivatives: snowgoater, snowgoating, snowgoatism. eg, Florence was unimpressed by her uncle's attempt to use a snowgoat this Christmas.

Alex Massie

Stuck for Christmas Presents?

From our UK edition

As y'all know, this website offers plenty of content for free. That's the Spectator's choice and one I support (not that they ask me about these things). But even website content costs money and while online advertising is good news it's not nearly as lucrative, in general, as adverts in the print edition. So, a small Christmas suggestion: if you enjoy the website and you're stuck for a present for someone or simply feel like treating yourself why not subscribe to the Spectator? There are a number of attractive offers, including a 12 weeks for £12 option. You get all the goodness of the magazine and the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from supporting this website too and, in a tiny fashion, helping me. Not that I'm on any subscription-related commission or anything like that.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Joy Shall Be In Heaven Over One Sinner That Repenteth

From our UK edition

Like Doug Mataconis, I confess I didn't expect to see Pat Robertson come out in favour of legalising marijuana possession. But he has. The British situation is not wholly comparable to the American one but the arguments remain broadly similar. And mandatory sentences are just as grotesque on this side of the Atlantic too.