The Spectator

For years, the French have resented the success of the City of London. It has become the Rome of the globalised world, where the best financiers flock to do business, make money and pay tax. When Britain wisely stayed out of the eurozone, the City consolidated its lead as Europe’s only world-league financial centre. The best French financiers climbed aboard the Eurostar and headed north. Today, when you enter the quant trading division of firms like Barclays Capital, you hear the finest minds of the école Polytechnique speaking French to each other. It is fashionable, nowadays, to declare this to have been a fraud, the City little more than a casino and the wealth it created illusory. But however much Nicolas Sarkozy might like this to be true, he knows it is false.

The latest issue of the Spectator is released today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online now. Six articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users: As the world gears up for two weeks of hob-nobbing in Copenhagen, it is plain that climate change has mutated from a debate into a catechism. With so much at stake, says Fraser Nelson, can we afford to dispense with rational argument? The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, continues to deny that Islamist extremism is being taught in state-funded schools. Here, Andrew Gilligan shows him the indisputable evidence.

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers' Wall. For those who haven't come across the Wall before, it's a post we put up each Monday, on which - providing your writing isn't libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency - you'll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there's no need to stay 'on topic' - which means you'll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There's also no constraint on the length of what you write - so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything's fair game - from political stories in your local paper, to chat about the latest football results.

Not so special Sir: The only ‘disrespect’ Obama can really be accused of is a degree of indifference to the British delusion of a ‘special relationship’ with the USA (‘A special form of disrespect’, 21 November). One would have thought that after the con-trick of Lend-lease, the wholesale vacuuming-up of British nuclear and aviation technology, Roosevelt’s barely concealed desire to see the British empire dismantled and the Suez fiasco, scales might have dropped from post-Churchillian Britain’s eyes. Despite General McChrystal referring to two British Generals as ‘Jacko’ and ‘Lamby’, there is not and never has been a special relationship unless it suited Washington.

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson wonders if Britain's economy is turning Japanese. James Forsyth highlights the risk that a hung parliament poses to UK bond market, and makes the case for sending 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. Peter Hoskin spots Lord Mandelson making mischief, and urges caution over the rogue poll. David Blackburn says that President Obama has procrastinated his way to failure over Afghanistan, and asks if the Chilcot inquiry will be any different. Mark Bathgate cries out for the banks to be resolved. Lloyd Evans watches Clegg and Cameron spring a few surprises on Gordon Brown. Daniel Korski wonders who is to blame if the world is cooling. Martin Bright reveals the real broken Britain.

The latest issue of the Spectator is released today. If you are a subscriber you can view it here. If you have not subscribed, but would like to view this week’s content, you can subscribe online now. Six articles from the latest issue are available for free online to all website users: Prepare for a lost decade. Fraser Nelson and Mark Bathgate believe that zombie banks and high unemployment look set to curse our economy as they did Japan’s. A Conservative government could avoid disaster, but only if it is prepared to face the painful reality.   A century ago, leading leftwing thinkers such as George Bernard Shaw subscribed to the vile pseudo-science of eugenics.

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers' Wall. For those who haven't come across the Wall before, it's a post we put up each Monday, on which - providing your writing isn't libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency - you'll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there's no need to stay 'on topic' - which means you'll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There's also no constraint on the length of what you write - so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything's fair game - from political stories in your local paper, to chat about the latest football results.

Eliot’s anti-Semitism Sir: I yield to none in my love of T.S. Eliot’s work, and have even managed to defend to myself the iffy passages about Jews in his poetry. But the letters that Craig Raine quotes in his review (Books, 14 November) are so blatantly, even honestly, anti-Semitic that they leave no room for doubt; except, it seems, at Faber & Faber. Mr Raine’s attempts to argue the anti-Semitism away present a hilarious and painful spectacle. For example, Eliot writes that Jews are inclined to Bolshevism — a classic Nazi belief. Mr Raine asserts, desperately, that this is a tribute to Jewish iconoclasm. It isn’t; it’s racism. The question is, why does Mr Raine go through such contortions to protect his hero when the evidence is so plain?