Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator.
Galling as it may be to admit this, it is possible that in the Great Poppy Stramash of 2011 FIFA is right and the Football Association is wrong. Perhaps that puts it too strongly. Let me put it this way: were I in charge of FIFA, I’d make an exception to their general prohibition on
Making it easier for people to petition parliament is, on the whole, a modest but useful step forward. The White House offers a similar online “service” though the point of it escapes me since the President’s powers are so limited when it comes to legislation. Anyway, all Americans should sign this petition: [Hat-tip and Spotters’
George Osborne was filmed laying into the idea of a Tobin Tax on financial transactions at today’s Ecofin meeting in Brussels. As he says: if you want to tax bankers, tax them but don’t create a tax that will only be paid for by their customers. Here’s Osborne: All this is well said (transcript here)
I’ve not been paying much attention to the elections in the Congo. Nor, I suspect, have you. But politicians everywhere can learn from Etienne Tshisekedi, the man hoping to knock President Laurent Kabila off his perch. His method seems admirably simple: declare victory three weeks before the polls open for business: Those who say that
The game is the game, you know? And one of the rules of the Presidential Primary Game (Press Edition) is that there’s more space to be filled than there are sensible things with which to fill it. (This, plainly, is a problem exacerbated by the intertubes.) This being so, ’tis the season for the traditional
The obvious thing to be said about the pilot programme run amok that “loosened” border controls at a number of busy UK airports this summer is that said programme was both rational and reasonable. Obviously one is not supposed to say this and instead concentrate on the thousands of terrorists and other nasties who will
Good grief, the Metropolitan Police have asked for – and worse, been granted – permission to deploy officers armed with rubber bullets as thousands of revolting students march through London tomorrow. I suppose the Met has always had this power but, this, as Sam Bowman says, is still a terrible idea: Deploying them now is
The defensive playground boast Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me was always unconvincing protesting, as it did, far, far too much. In case you doubted this, consider the sorry example of Joe Frazier, lion of Manila and the Garden, forever embittered and broken by Muhammad Ali’s taunting. All
Back on the mainland after a magical week on Jura* and, frankly, reacquainting oneself with whatever’s been happening in the rest of the world is a pretty grim business. Must be done however, so expect a measure of catch-up blogging here soon. What happened last week that mattered? *Should you be tempted to visit the
I’m away to the Isle of Jura for the next week and so this is likely to have some impact on posting frequency here. The Paps, meanwhile, are calling…
I hold no particular brief for the people “occupying” the London Stock Exchange but whatever one may think of their aims it’s evident that in closing the cathedral this week the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and his colleagues have behaved like total ninnies. Then again, this is the Church of England so a certain
Good stuff from Lord Ashcroft this morning. Good because, obviously, he agrees with me that the Tory obsession with Europe and, just as importantly, the style in which that obsession is paraded before the public damages the party. As the noble lord puts it: [W]e know that for many people, the main barrier to voting
On the other hand, Rich Lowry – editor of National Review and therefore a man who should know better – offers this pithy analysis of American under Obama: [N]one of this should be surprising since the Democrats, despite the Clinton interlude, never stopped being a McGovernite party, and Obama is a McGovernite figure For the
Not as good as you might think, argues Ramesh Ponnuru: Last year, President Barack Obama issued a warning to Republicans. They had been “politicking” instead of “governing,” he said. “Well, we can politick for three months,” he said. “They forgot I’m pretty good at politicking.” That was in August 2010. At the end of those
Well, James, hang on a minute. The three “schools of thought” you identify in relation to last night’s Tory rebellion on Europe are not three distinct schools at all. That is, one may consider the Tory party “unmanageable” on europe and believe that the leadership got caught up in the madness yesterday. But it is
Apparently this email spent much of the summer pinging from one Wall Street firm to another. I suspect the author’s views are pretty widely shared. Sure, there are plenty of smart people in the financial world but it’s also true that many of them ain’t smart enough to know when to lie low. As a
This is one hell of a statistic: In Britain, taxes on all types of alcohol contributed 36 percent of national revenue in 1898-99, but they were also 19 percent in France (1898), 18 percent in Germany (1897-98), and 28 percent in the United States (1897-98). That’s from a new book by James Simpson Creating Wine,
In principle, I agree with Fraser’s admirable post previewing Monday’s debate (summarised excellently by ConservativeHome here) on an EU-referendum but I suspect that wily old Blairite John Rentoul is right to argue that there was no way the government could wash its hands of the affair since, whatever it chose to do, The headlines would
There’s plenty of good sense in Neil O’Brien’s article on the “squeezed middle” in today’s Telegraph but this snippet helps explain a good deal of what’s baffling about British politics: In fact, a recent YouGov poll for Policy Exchange found that eight out of 10 people believe they are in the middle 40 per cent
How is it possible to have come this far without featurig this song? Madness, man, madness. Anyway, here are Ira and Charlie Louvin with I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby. Dang they’re good.