The Spectator

Saturday

The Spectator

Feedback | 18 December 2004

From our US edition

Ulster is not all right Leo McKinstry’s knowledge of his native province as it is today seems somewhat superficial (‘Ulster is all right’, 4 December). It is not clear how the rebranding of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as the Police Service of Northern Ireland — a move resented with good reason by many in Ulster — can be regarded as bringing policing here ‘into line with the approach taken in the rest of the United Kingdom’. And it is more than a little shameful that in paying tribute to the army’s role in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, McKinstry neglects to mention the RUC; he may have forgotten the more than 300 police officers murdered since 1969, but few here have done so.

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Let them marry

It is 12 years since the Queen stood up at dinner and coined the expression annus horribilis to describe the miseries of 1992. She probably didn’t even have in mind the fact that her Chancellor of the Exchequer had just frittered away £5 billion of taxpayers’ money and caused thousands of homeowners to lose their homes in the futile cause of pegging the pound to the Deutschmark; it was more a way of describing her sadness at losing part of Windsor Castle to fire, having to endure pictures of the Duchess of York cavorting on a Mediterranean beach, and above all having to suffer the announcement that her eldest son and heir was to separate from his wife. In some ways, the year of Our Lord 2005 promises little better than 1992.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 11 December 2004

From our US edition

The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into ‘super regiments’. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save £320 million. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called for a ban on fishing in a third of British waters. The Department of Health told Britain’s 1,184 hospitals how to clean floors and lavatories in an attempt to reduce infection by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills thousands a year. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, demanded in a five-year plan that the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts should convict, fine or caution 1.

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Feedback | 11 December 2004

From our US edition

Clarke v. Clark Ross Clark is wrong to assert that the government exerts any influence over the value ascribed to exams in school performance tables (‘Lies, damned lies and education’, 20 November). He does a gross disservice to the pupils and teachers whose attainment he seeks to belittle. The regulatory authority for public examinations — the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) — is responsible for the maintenance of examination standards. Its extensive programme to monitor standards over time does not support the contention that there has been a lowering of GCSE standards. It is the QCA, not the government, which established and consistently maintained its judgment that six-unit GNVQs are deemed to be the equivalent of four GCSEs.

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Free the BBC

If anyone needed convincing of the BBC’s pathological self-importance, proof has been provided by the corporation’s news coverage of its own reorganisation. On Tuesday, a day on which back-bench Labour MPs threatened a revolt against David Blunkett’s proposed law against incitement to religious hatred, and Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as Afghanistan’s first democratically elected president, the BBC’s reporters struggled to cover any story beyond their own building.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 4 December 2004

From our US edition

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, juggled his black hole and his Golden Rule in a pre-Budget statement. Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow Chancellor, said he would ‘expect’ the Tories to make at least ‘one specific tax pledge that we will fulfil in the first Budget’. Mr Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, held talks with Mr Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland at No. 10 Downing Street. The Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, met General John de Chastelain, head of the international decommissioning body, and the next day met Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister.

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Feedback | 4 December 2004

From our US edition

I was horrified at the outright lies that got both the U.S. and Britain into the invasion of Iraq and said that if G.W. were re-elected (not that he won the popular vote the first time) I would leave the country. However, after reading this article, I cannot envision returning to Great Britain. My God! What has happened to the land of my birth? So resolute and fearless in time of war (I was a child during WWII and not once did I witness hysteria from any adult, whether parent, aunt, uncle, neighbour or teacher) and the same resolve to not be deterred from going about the daily business of living was again displayed during acts of terrorism by the I.R.A. It seems to me that Big Brother government intruded as little as possible. Have the fear and paranoia that Bush & Co.

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Blunkett’s kiss and tell

There is no prize for predicting the two least exciting political events of 2005: the publication of Sir Alan Budd’s inquiry into David Blunkett’s alleged ‘fast-tracking’ of a visa application for his former lover’s nanny, and the conclusion of Sir Philip Mawer’s investigation into the Home Secretary’s misuse of a first-class Parliamentary rail warrant to speed his mistress to his Derbyshire weekend home. Unless Mr Blunkett has already resigned, these investigations — which needless to say will cost taxpayers vastly more than the railway tickets in question — are no more likely to assassinate him than Lords Hutton and Butler finished off the ministers involved in their respective inquiries.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 27 November 2004

From our US edition

In the Queen’s Speech, the government announced 32 Bills: one to impose ‘voluntary’ identity cards and then compulsory cards; another to create a Serious Organised Crime Agency; a Counter-Terrorist Bill that might allow trial without jury and the admittance of evidence from tapped telephones; a Discrimination Bill to extend the rights of disabled people, and an Equality Bill to criminalise rudeness about religious beliefs, both to be enforced by a Commission for Equality and Human Rights. The Prince of Wales wrote in a memorandum about a woman who then went to an employment tribunal: ‘What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their actual capacities?

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Books of the Year II

Philip Hensher The two books I enjoyed most this year were both out of the usual run. Who was the last person to publish a book of aphorisms? No idea, but Don Paterson’s splendid The Book of Shadows (Picador, £12.99) will probably discourage anyone from entering into rivalry for a good time to come. Startlingly insightful, funny, exotic and, of course, from the finest poet of his generation, irreducibly well-put, this was a book everyone should read. Simon Gray’s The Smoking Diaries (Granta, £12.99) was difficult to categorise; a ragbag of stories and reminiscences, it must be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 20 November 2004

From our US edition

A white paper proposed a ban on smoking in restaurants and pubs that serve hot food. It also proposed the banning of television advertisements for ‘unhealthy’ food before 9 p.m., but this would be ‘ineffective and disproportionate’ according to the television regulators, Ofcom. The Hunting Bill was amended in the Lords to restore the government’s original provisions for the licensing of hunts; when it returned to the Commons the amended Bill was defeated by 321 to 204.

The Spectator

Feedback | 20 November 2004

From our US edition

Oborne off target Peter Oborne seems to have spent too long in his stuffy London office and has developed a conspiracy theory too far concerning rural sports. He makes a number of unsupported assumptions in his comment on the Hunting Bill (Politics, 13 November). Perhaps he needs to get out more. BASC remains steadfastly opposed to the Hunting Bill, and has supported the Countryside Alliance through its legal protests in the run-up to the Bill. Tens of thousands of BASC members attended the marches in London and I have spoken at a number of rallies including one in Parliament Square and the recent demonstration in Brighton. We have privately and publicly told ministers at every opportunity of our opposition to the Bill.

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Books of the Year

A selection of the best and worst books of the year, chosen by some of our regular contributors Jonathan Sumption There is no point in mincing words about the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (60 volumes, £6,500 until 30 November). It is the one of the greatest feats of scholarly publishing ever. Forget the on-line edition. You will miss the special pleasure of straying into the article next door. No, take out a second mortgage, call in the cabinet-maker and buy the volumes.

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How to be generous

The last few days have seen some hysterical over-reporting of a minor adjustment in the personnel of the Tory shadow arts team, and a woeful under-reporting of an excellent new policy proposal. John Whittingdale, the Shadow DCMS secretary, has announced a plan that could help rescue the finances of museums, libraries and galleries, and encourage a new culture in this country, of generosity, philanthropy and pride. Until Mrs Thatcher’s economic and fiscal reforms of the 1980s, Britain was noted for its ‘brain drain’. This, thankfully, was halted, yet in its place has been formed a cultural drain.

Saturday

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Portrait of the Week – 13 November 2004

From our US edition

The Saturday 17.35 Paddington to Plymouth train, operated by First Great Western, was derailed when it hit a car on a level crossing near Ufton, just before Aldermaston, Berkshire; the car driver and train driver and five passengers were killed and 150 of the 300 aboard injured. Three soldiers of the Black Watch were killed in a suicide bombing ambush 30 miles south-west of Baghdad, and another soldier in the regiment was killed later. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew off eagerly to Washington for talks with President George Bush.

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Feedback | 13 November 2004

From our US edition

Israel’s rejected offers It is perhaps a bit unfair to single out Peter Oborne, because he is just one of many commentators to make the same error. He writes (Politics, 6 November) of the desirability of President Bush putting ‘renewed pressure on Israel to press forward for a settlement with Palestine’ — as though it was the Israelis who resisted reaching a settlement. The truth is the very opposite. Whenever an Arab leader has shown a desire to negotiate peace, Israel has seized the opportunity. It has also been willing to give up land as the price for securing peace. When Anwar Sadat offered Israel peace, Israel gave up the territory it had conquered from Egypt, the Sinai.

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Outsource those jobs

The defeat of John Kerry has been widely portrayed as a poke in the eye for liberal values and for prevarication in the face of global terrorism. Rather less has been made of the defeat of a third strand of Kerry philosophy: protectionism. One of the central policies of the Democrat challenger was to put a halt to ‘outsourcing’, the process whereby American companies are moving their manufacturing and some of their routine clerical operations to developing countries. This process, maintained John Kerry, was costing hard-working Americans their jobs. Making a stand against outsourcing, he calculated, would play especially well in the swing state of Ohio, where unemployment has been high in recent years due to the decline of rustbelt industries.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 6 November 2004

From our US edition

The people of the north-east of England voted in a referendum on whether they wanted a regional assembly; they didn’t. Forty-seven Labour rebels voted for a complete ban on parents’ smacking when the Commons passed a Bill limiting chastisement of children. Mrs Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, told the Commons during the debate on the gambling Bill, ‘There will be no new casinos if local people don’t want new casinos.’ About 160 Crown post offices in high-street sites could be closed or sold off because the Royal Mail lost £70 million on them last year. The borough of Macclesfield was found to have the lowest concentration of cinemas, theatres and libraries in Britain.

The Spectator

Feedback | 6 November 2004

From our US edition

Israel’s rapacious wall Anton La Guardia (‘A just wall’, 30 October) is spot-on in pointing out that Israel’s brutal wall is pushing the Palestinians ‘into reservations’. I have just returned from a week in Bethlehem, where I was warmly welcomed as a Jewish participant in the Olive Harvest Campaign, which calls on international volunteers to help the Palestinians harvest their olives in the face of harassment from the Israeli army and settlers. I have seen for myself how the wall is stealing Palestinian land and driving the Palestinians into ghettoes.

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Brown’s tax trick

While the world’s eyes have been on polling booths in the back streets of Ohio, the British political scene may appear to have been becalmed. But it isn’t so. In the past week a couple of notable salvoes have been fired in the direction of the government’s economic policy, which by rights ought to inflict a serious wound in the side of the Chancellor. They came from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and Barclays Capital, which are both scathing of Gordon Brown’s chances of sticking to his so-called ‘Golden Rule’ and of his sophistry in attempting to convince us that the rule will be stuck to.