David Blackburn

Wednesday

David Blackburn

The hunt for Hague’s mojo

From our UK edition

All hands to the Defence Select Committee this afternoon, for questions about the nation's security apparatus. Of course, most onlookers were not remotely interested in the answers. For them, this gathering was convened to see if William Hague might regain his "mojo". He didn’t get the chance. This was Letwin Hour. Or Letwin's Two Hours, to be precise. After a difficult fortnight for the government, the brain behind Cameron's premiership high-jacked proceedings. In insouciant tones, he explained the manifold complexities of the government's security policy to the committee. Real terms defence spending is likely to increase after the next spending round and Trident will be replaced; both are a response to perceived threats and Britain’s aspirations abroad.

David Blackburn

It’s all in the language

From our UK edition

Sue Cameron’s FT Notebook is always laced with delicious vignettes. This morning, she reveals that the new cabinet manual has been withdrawn temporarily because Sir Gus O’Donnell’s Latin grammar is like Pooh's spelling: it wobbles. What are things coming to when even Sir Humphrey puts the definite article before a Latin phrase? Cameron also reviews yesterday’s shin-dig at the Institute for Government. She reports: ‘Tom Kelly (Tony Blair’s former official spokesman) noted that the coalition was “beginning to learn the hard way that you have to get a grip from the centre”.’ It’s well known that Number 10 is reorganising. The days of the soft-touch have gone.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Ken Clarke contra mundum

From our UK edition

What to make of Sadiq Khan and Ken Clarke? As Pete has noted, Khan (and Ed Miliband) empathises with Ken Clarke’s instincts. But, as Sunder Katwala illustrates, Khan’s support is qualified. Khan gave speech last night after which he took questions. One of his answers was as follows: "It's no use us wanting to cuddle Ken Clarke - I don't want to cuddle Ken Clarke but perhaps others do - when he is part of a government which has got policies which will see the number of people committing crime going up." He was referring to alleged cuts to police numbers and devices such as the educational maintenance allowance, as well as the pressure on education and mental health in prisons. The implication is that prison works if you throw enough money at it.

David Blackburn

The most artful of dodgers

From our UK edition

For John Lithgow, art is a confidence trick. ‘I’m an actor,’ he said. ‘I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well that it isn’t.’ It’s a pithy phrase, but actors are pawns in the hands of playwrights – a troupe of Ted Baldwins jigging at Moriaty’s pleasure. This made me consider literary con artists. Fresh from the success of The King’s Speech, Geoffrey Rush is in New York, playing Poprishchin, the deluded protagonist of Nicolai Gogol’s Diary of Madman. Giles Harvey has reviewed the adaptation for the New York Review of Books and he says that Gogol is ‘literature’s great confidence man’, whose ‘best work is founded on the cornerstone of deceit.

David Blackburn

Theresa May’s unenviable challenge

From our UK edition

Many political careers have met a torturous end in the Home Office. And this morning, Theresa May began her struggle. She is taking on the "last great unreformed public service" and the opposition is formidable; so much so that the official opposition barely get a look in. The Peelers are marching on Downing Street. The Police Federation has declared itself ‘fed up’ with cuts – a perfunctory warning to the government. Vice Chairman Simon Reed indicated that the Federation feels the government is abrogating its duty of care to those who serve, a dextrous line forged by those opposed to personnel cuts to the armed forces.

Monday

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 7 March 2011

From our UK edition

It was, in case you didn’t notice, World Book Night on Saturday. BBC2’s evening of bookish programmes can be found here, together with posts by Matthew Richardson and Emily Rhodes. Besides those, here is a selection of pieces from the weekend’s literary pages. Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English is a highly acclaimed first novel, and Kelman is being tipped for further accolades: both Erica Wagner (£) and John Mullan have expressed their admiration. Lewis Jones reviews Kelman’s idiosyncratic and shocking book for the Telegraph. ‘It is bad form to be rude about first novels, and a pleasure to praise them. Stephen Kelman’s has a powerful story, a pacy plot and engaging characters.

David Blackburn

Pickles on the offensive against ‘propaganda sheets’

From our UK edition

Eric Pickles is no longer a genial giant. His speech to the Conservative Spring Forum was the rallying cry that many Conservatives in local government, some of whom will be scrapping for survival in May’s elections, have waited to hear.   ‘Ed Miliband,’ Pickles said, ‘is weaker than Neil Kinnock.’ The Labour leader could not take on his unions and militant councils, the Communities Secretaries said before turning an example: ‘Take Labour-run Camden. Ed Miliband’s local council. His councillors are cutting the Surma Community Centre, coincidentally visited by Samantha Cameron. Yet the council has spent twice as much on its town hall newspaper.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Enda Kenny will need the luck of the Irish

From our UK edition

The BBC reports that Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael party has reached agreement with Eamon Gilmore’s Labour party. The new coalition is understood to be determined to renegotiate the precise terms of its EU/IMF bailout. If they succeed (which is far from certain) they will have served two purposes: first, to obtain a better deal for the Irish taxpayer; and second, to give the government a nourishing political victory over ‘the Germans', now loathed by Ireland's boisterous eurosceptic movement.  So, will it be an easy coalition? There is a tendency in Britain to define all politics in terms of left and right; already the BBC is busy with ‘centre-right Fine Gael’ and ‘centre-left Labour’.

Friday

David Blackburn

Book of the month: Ferguson marches on

From our UK edition

Ring the bells for a very famous popular historian. Niall Ferguson latest book, Civilisation: the West and Rest, was published yesterday and it is this month’s Spectator book club book of the month. (The accompanying TV series begins on Sunday) Already the book is being debated. Ferguson has long had his detractors in academia – a mix of envious aristarchy and thoughtful criticism. Professional reviewers are beginning to have doubts too. Writing in the magazine a few weeks ago, Sam Leith illustrated how Ferguson had overstretched himself with Civilisation. And a reviewer in the Scotsman felt Ferguson’s neo-conservatism has prejudiced his approach to evidence.

Thursday

David Blackburn

A rotten basket of apples in Nottingham

From our UK edition

The Nottingham Post has a great scoop about Labour-led Nottingham City Council’s abuse of taxpayer funds. The story can be distilled into one sentence: ‘City council leader Jon Collins has used a consultant paid £870-a-day by the taxpayer for advice on Labour's campaign in the run-up to the May election.’ Nottingham is one of England's most profligate and rapacious councils. Examples of its needless largesse include stripping conkers from trees and spending £185,000 on signs to improve local morale. One probable reason for the residents’ black mood is the steep rate of council tax. In 2010-11, occupants of band A properties paid £1041.39; whilst those in Wandsworth attracted a maximum of £470.44.

David Blackburn

The king’s coronation

From our UK edition

Few things are more intriguing than an unfinished novel. With fitting symmetry, two books have been published posthumously in the past two years: Nabokov’s The Original Laura and Jose Saramango’s Cain. This year, Little Brown is to publish The Pale King, an unfinished work by David Foster Wallace – a claimant to the title of Great American Novelist, who took his own life in September 2008. Publication has been delayed twice by what one publisher described as ‘entirely foreseeable circumstances’. Obviously, sensitivity is paramount in this tragic case, but it seems that The Pale King is finally ready to be crowned.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Government to appeal on prisoner votes

From our UK edition

PoliticsHome reports that the government is to ask the ECHR to reconsider its verdict in the prisoner voting rights case. The website says: ‘In a response to a parliamentary question from Labour MP Gordon Marsden, Cabinet Office Under-Secretary Mark Harper said: "We believe that the court should look again at the principles in "Hirst" which outlaws a blanket ban on prisoners voting, particularly given the recent debate in the House of Commons."’ This is unsurprising. Last month, the government asked its lawyers to advise on the ramifications of noncompliance. The lawyers were unequivocal: the repercussions of such defiance was diplomatically impossible and extremely expensive.

David Blackburn

PMQs Live blog | 2 March 2011

From our UK edition

VERDICT: What began as a measured affair, with polite questions from Miliband about Libya and the Defence establishment, effervesced into something more dramatic. I was surprised Miliband didn't concentrate on the rising cost of living; rather, he chipped at the local government funding settlement. By concentrating on examples of Tory-led council intransigence, Miliband did not appear to be being overtly partisan. By contrast, Cameron was initially far too eager to political points: twice he raised Nottingham Council's refusal to publish details of its pay structure when the issue was irrelevant. Eventually though, he struck the right tone by attacking council waste and politicking per se. Sure, things are not easy for local government at present.

David Blackburn

May’s change of emphasis

From our UK edition

Theresa May has a new soundbite: police pay or police jobs. May has been asked to find cuts of 20 percent in the police budget. May insists that the frontline must and will be protected and that therefore these ‘extraordinary circumstances’ mean that the government will have to rewrite the terms and conditions of police employment. The former rail regulator, Tim Windsor, is already conducting a review into police pay and working conditions. In addition to his recommendations, May is scrutinising overtime payments, housing and travel allowances and so forth. Estimates vary but these perks are thought to cost the taxpayer more than £500million a year. She is also overseeing a deluge of bureaucratic reforms, which she hopes will save 800,000 man hours a year.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Of course Pickles is ambitious. He needs to be

From our UK edition

No one, most of all the normally genial Eric Pickles, said that reforming local government would be easy or quick. The New Local Government Network reports that the government’s plan to encourage councils to share back office functions is ‘hugely ambitious’. It says that considerable savings can be made, but it doubts that councils will meet the 40 percent target for backroom efficiencies. Savings of 20 percent are more likely, the NLGN argues. On the face of it, the NLGN is correct. Eric Pickles’s demand that councils share their functions and facilities is ambitious. At the moment, councils are struggling to meet the upfront costs of uniting geographically diverse buildings and services.

David Blackburn

Toppling Mad Dog

From our UK edition

Should Gaddafi be pushed? That is the question diplomats and policy makers are beginning to ask. The UN has imposed travel restrictions and frozen Gaddafi’s assets. But Gaddafi is resisting the hangman’s noose; the loss of his Mayfair property empire is the merest of inconveniences. And still he fights on. There is now a growing humanitarian case for direct military intervention by Western powers. However, there are plenty of arguments against even introducing a no-fly zone. Gideon Rachman makes some of them in today’s FT: ‘A few of the problems are practical. Some military observers say that a no-fly zone would be of limited use in Libya, since Col Gaddafi seems to be mainly relying on ground forces.

David Blackburn

Clarke in the Sun’s harsh light

From our UK edition

The Sun has launched another sortie against Ken Clarke’s restorative justice programme. The paper reports: ‘SHOPLIFTERS could escape prison by just paying for what they pinch and saying "sorry". Jail sentences and tough fines will be SCRAPPED as the default punishment for nicking from stores under controversial plans soon to be unveiled by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke. Instead he wants thieves to make face-to-face apologies to victims and pay compensation.’ The Ministry of Justice has responded by saying that it ‘strongly believe[s] offenders should make more financial and other amends to victims and are in the process of consulting on plans for this.

Monday

David Blackburn

The Tories take the train to war

From our UK edition

Philip Hammond should be wary of the ladies of Cranford. The advent of the railways was met with considerable disquiet in rural England, depicted by Elizabeth Gaskell in both Cranford and North and South. High-speed rail has inspired another wave of determined conservatism in the shires. It’s a proper grassroots movement. For months now, Tory-controlled Buckinghamshire has warned the government that its councils and associations would oppose the development. Cabinet Ministers whose seats are local have supported their constituents, but the resentment is unchecked and it will damage the Conservatives to an extent.

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 28 February 2011

From our UK edition

Nancy Drew, the timeless teenage girl’s classic, has gone digital. Will the Famous Five be joining her in the 21st Century? Time’s Techland column reports: ‘The Nancy Drew series might have been around for 80 years, but that doesn't mean that the art of the mystery novel is outdated. Her Interactive has updated the fan favorite female detective's adventures with the Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries app. Using text inspired by the original books, the app creates an interactive story for readers. You don't have to imagine you're on the case with Nancy Drew, now you can be part of it as well.’ At the moment of The King’s Speech’s Oscars triumph, Mary Beard considers the history and art of public speaking. What is “great oratory”?

Friday

David Blackburn

A landmark judgment for the security services on torture

From our UK edition

The Court of Appeal made a momentous judgment this afternoon. It was hearing the appeal of Rangzieb Ahmed, the first man to be convicted on terror-related charges in this country, for which he is serving 10 years. Ahmed’s appeal was based on the allegation that British security services had been complicit in his torture and that the evidence for his conviction, gained by Pakistan’s ISI, was obtained by a series of extreme measures culminating in the slow removal of his finger nails. The appeal judges rejected Ahmed’s suit, saying that there was no evidence that his nails had been pulled out or that British officers ordered beatings. Ahmed’s claims had been proved ‘not to have occurred’.