Rupert Myers

Wednesday

Rupert Myers

Game of Thrones has always been a vacuous banquet of sex and violence. Why are people suddenly outraged by it?

If you’ve never watched Game of Thrones, it is a twee fantasy show in which men and women discuss politics at length, dance in Austen-like balls, and drink small amounts of wine by streams. Characters communicate as much by the angle at which they hold their fans or opera glasses as by the subtext of their artfully crafted bon mots. It has attracted a massive following for the cultured and intellectually stimulating qualities of the series, but there has been some outrage after the last episode featured what appeared to be a rape scene.

Friday

Rupert Myers

The trailer for the new Star Wars film suggests it could be the best yet

If the Fast & Furious team made Casablanca 2 ('Morocco Drift') it would be a more artistically credible, better acted, and more entertaining movie than Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Vin Diesel’s Victor Laszlo may have gained an impressive set of guns fighting for the Czech resistance since we last saw him - shame, too, about the hair loss - but at least he wouldn’t spend even one second of the film talking about 'midi-chlorians'. In his decision to revisit the Star Wars universe and create a trilogy of prequels, George Lucas looked upon the epic vista of his cinematic triumph and decided to open-cast strip mine it for cash.

Thursday

Rupert Myers

James Bond

For fans of the franchise who remain unconvinced by Daniel Craig’s time on her majesty’s secret service, the stories leaking from the production of the latest film Spectre are further evidence that the time has come to hand 007 a glass of scotch and a revolver. Craig’s Bond always had less of an air of an expense-account gentleman spy and more the demeanour of a spornosexual plumber. This is a Bond who’d sooner take photographs of his abs in the bathroom mirror than go bird-watching. Stumbling after the surefooted remake of Casino Royale, there is no disguising the tedious drivel that was Quantum of Solace, nor that Skyfall borrowed heavily from the Home Alone franchise.

Wednesday

Rupert Myers

Notes from a Tory foot soldier in Newark

Newark has become a destination for Conservative campaigners demoralised by the local & European results. Around this Nottinghamshire market town there are whispers of victory in the by-election on Thursday. If Robert Jenrick wins big, then the momentum created by that, and the effect upon Conservative volunteers will be great. Defeat or narrow victory here could cause some to doubt their faith. The operation for the Conservative party, led by George Hollingbery, has been impressive. Evidence of how seriously the party takes Newark is in front of any volunteer: the wall to the right of the entrance is one long roll of honour, the signatures and dates of MPs who have campaigned. It’s like the Top Gear test track board.

Monday

Rupert Myers

David Cameron should confront Australia over Nauru asylum detention centre

Walking a lap of the North Pacific island of Nauru would take you three and a half hours. One kilometre inland, you would glimpse the republic’s phosphate mines. Living hundreds of kilometres from anywhere must sometimes feel like incarceration for the 10,000 or so Nauruans. What makes the republic seem even more prison-like is the way it is used by Australia as a detention and processing facility holding over 800 mostly Iranian asylum seekers. As fellow Commonwealth members, we should be concerned about this dot in the Pacific, and the way that Australia is off-shoring facilities there. Nauru is used by Australia to distance itself from the human face of its asylum problem.

Sunday

Rupert Myers

The Conservatives should raise the minimum wage

How do the Conservatives continue to tackle the deficit, grow the economy, and persuade voters that they are – as the Home Secretary Theresa May put it in her measured keynote speech to the ConHome 'Victory 2015' conference yesterday – a party for all? There's a chance that the answer to all three problems might be to make targeted increases to the minimum wage. Americans are starting to look at the potential stimulus effects of a similar increase in their minimum wage, and this may be the time for the Treasury to contemplate something radical. Whilst the electorate continue to view Ed Miliband as out of his depth, one of the biggest problems faced by the Conservative party is in becoming a party seen as acting in the interests of everyone.

Friday

Rupert Myers

International Women’s Day is a bit silly

The British do not do seven day mourning the way many Venezuelans are for Hugo Chavez, neither – as a rule – do we flock to the roads to see the bodies of our politicians being driven through the streets. With the exception of Jeremy Bentham we do not – mercifully - put our departed on display.  We tend to leave that to communists. Just as Chavez’s death reminds us that we like to keep our grief low-key, it is fair to say that we are incredibly bad at most public events, with people grumbling, criticising, and proudly declaring that they are going away on holiday just to avoid the thing. We are useless at celebrating St George’s day, and have never fully converted to Halloween.

Saturday

Rupert Myers

‘We called quite a few dead people’: How the Tories’ lack of data let them down in Eastleigh

At 9.15pm, with 45 minutes until polls closed in the Eastleigh by-election, the ‘get out the vote’ telephone operation at Conservative Central Headquarters stopped. As one fellow volunteer put it, it was so late in the day that we were just 'pissing people off'. Having been there all day, I’d had that feeling for several hours, as voter after voter spoke of the harassment they had received during the Eastleigh campaign from all of the major parties. By the early evening we were calling people who not only had received several calls already that day to remind them to vote, as well as one or two visits to their doorstep, but these poor voters had sent in their ballots by post, and had told everyone that.

Monday

Rupert Myers

There’s no right to live in Chelsea

Your local council owns prime real estate and could sell it to build new social houses. Housing Minister Grant Shapps says the appeal of this idea promoted by Policy Exchange is 'obvious'. With a potential pot of £5.5bn to build up to 170,000 affordable homes, what’s not to like? Plenty, apparently: Labour MP Karen Buck warned of a risk to communities, and the importance of mixing groups within our population. Lord Prescott called the idea ‘gerrymandering'. The empty slogans come from both sides. When someone says ‘nobody has a right to live in’ Chelsea they ought to remember that some people do have a right to live there, and that they pay for that right.