Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Rick Perry’s Federalism: Another Lost Cause

From our UK edition

Dan Drezner tweeted this afternoon that Barack Obama vs Rick Perry would be the starkest choice between rival philosophies and policies since Johnson-Goldwater in 1964. That might well be true, particulalry if you limit the question to domestic policy. Perry is barely out of the traps, of course, and already people are rushing to argue he's a dangerous lunatic. Matt Yglesias, for instance, reads Perry's book Fed Up and picks out ten of its "weirdest ideas". Among them, apparently: 5.

Alex Massie

Adventures in Polling

From our UK edition

Oh look: a poll produced by R3 "the insolvency trade body" finds - surprise! - 47% of people think "financial pressures" contributed to the riots and 92% of folk think "easy access to credit" created "a sense of entitlement". Well played lads. Sir Humphrey would be proud of you: [Hat-tip: Hopi Sen who - huzzah! - says he will be back blogging soon.

Alex Massie

Breaking: Screws Editor Knew How Paper Got Its Stories! Shocker!

From our UK edition

Boom! Phone-hacking is back and it's yet more bad news for Andy Coulson and, by extension, David Cameron. The Prime Minister's problem is that we are tasked with believing that he believed the former News of the World editor when Coulson claimed to have had no knowledge of phone-hacking (and other criminal acts) during his time at the paper. At best the Tory leader was deliberately naive; more probably - common sense tells us - he appreciated that the immediate advantages to having Coulson on his team were greater than the potential for embarrassment at some uncertain point in the future. Perhaps nothing would come of it anyway! Fingers crossed! It was a risk worth taking and, in as much as Coulson played a part in getting Cameron to Downing Street, one that paid-off too.

Alex Massie

Obama: My Opponents Are Beastly

From our UK edition

I think it's ridiculous to argue that Obama is comparing himself to Lincoln here and his remarks about the Old School way of doing politics are a welcome reminder that American politics is not actually very much or even at all uglier now than it has been in the past. Which kinda makes it unfortunate that on his latest non-campaigning, campaign tour the President complained that: "The problem," Obama continued, "is that we've got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that is more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win. Nowhere was that more evident than in this recent debt ceiling debacle." He also, incidentally, blamed his present woes on "bad luck".

Alex Massie

McDonalds vs Burger King

From our UK edition

It's rare that I disagree with James but I'm not quite persuaded by this: David Cameron and Ed Miliband both gave speeches on the riots this morning and the political dividing lines between the two are becoming more and more apparent. Cameron argues that these riots were about culture not poverty, Miliband thinks you can’t ignore inequality. Cameron believes that society needs two parent families, Miliband that it is about parental responsibility. Cameron doesn’t want an enquiry, Miliband does. Granted, James refers to "political dividing lines" not "policy divide" and that's what saves his bacon. Nevertheless, is there anyone (sensible) who thinks inequality matters but you can't ignore the impact of culture?

Monday

Alex Massie

Cameron’s Cognitive Dissonance

From our UK edition

The best parts of David Cameron's speech this morning were those passages spent defending the government's plans for police reform and secondary education in England. This should not be a surprise: whether you agree with them or not, these are relatively coherent policies that have enjoyed the benefit of long gestation. The rest of the speech, alas, was a humdrum tour of long-familiar bromides (families are good!), items pulled from discount bins ('elf and safety!) and impossible promises just vague enough to escape obvious ridicule ("a clear ambition that within the lifetime of this Parliament we will turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country"). Perhaps it has to be this way.

Alex Massie

Bill Bratton’s Approach Provides Ammunition for Tories and Labour Alike

From our UK edition

It's always worse elsewhere. That, at any rate, is one conclusion to be drawn from this question: This is consistent with polls that find twice as many people think crime is "Top Three" problem for the country as a whole than consider it a major problem for their own family. Doubtless there are many reasons for this discrepancy, among them the way in which crime is reported by a breathless, always-indigant media. Nevertheless, perceptions matter in life as in politics and cannot be wished or even, sometimes, persuaded away.

Alex Massie

Thought for the Day | 15 August 2011

From our UK edition

Courtesy of Karyn McCluskey on the Today programme: “The territoriality of gangs is really difficult. The territoriality of public services is even more difficult” Territoriality is a pretty rotten word but you know what she means and Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair would, I think, agree with her.

Saturday

Friday

Alex Massie

Ames to Oblivion

From our UK edition

Being a dreadful sucker for these things I stayed up to watch the Republican presidential debate in Iowa last night. As Jonathan Bernstein notes the stramash, hosted by Fox News, did not really matter very much and nor, of course, does (or should) the preposterous Ames straw poll this weekend. Nevertheless, it was unusually entertaining (by the standards of these things) and, actually, quite interesting. Like Conor Friedersdorf, I felt the most telling, significant moment came when the candidates - a grim, motley crew to be honest - were asked if they would endorse a (hypothetical) deal that offered ten dollars in deficit reduction in return for one dollar of tax increases.

Alex Massie

Awkward Ed

From our UK edition

Perhaps the best example I've yet seen in a well-stocked genre: Awkward Ed Miliband Photos. Captions, please... [Thanks to Harry Cole and Ian Leslie.

Alex Massie

Still the Greatest Living Yorkshireman

From our UK edition

The Old Batsman - one of my favourite cricket bloggers - had a typically lovely post yesterday noting that August 11th is the anniversary of Geoffrey Boycott's one hundredth first class hundred. Few players will ever reach that landmark again; none will do so in a Test match. This is cricket's loss. The Old Batsman is a few years older than me and he remembers watching Sir Geoffrey - Yorkshire folk are right - in the flesh. My memories of him are slighter: the 1981 series is the first year of Test match cricket I really remember and even then I wonder how much those memories have been corrupted by frequent reviewings of old VHS tapes of "Botham's Ashes". Even as a seven year old, however, I knew that Boycott was a boring batsman.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Tariq Jahan’s Britain

From our UK edition

Many aspects of British life have been on display this week but, amidst them all, Tariq Jahan's response to the death of his son, killed in Birmingham, deserves to be remembered too. The qualities on display here are scarcely unique to this island but there is a dignity and fortitude of a kind that we like to think reflects a certain classic kind of Britishness. Not that Mr Jahan is alone; social media efforts have been busy raising money for worthy causes today, including the 89-year old barber whose shop was destroyed in the rioting. Amidst the despair, there is still much decency and more of it than perhaps we, or the newspapers, tend to remember.

Alex Massie

Parliament, Police Powers and Authoritarian Temptations

From our UK edition

To the surprise of no-one the public is more concerned by crime this week than it was a week ago. Fancy that! and, equally, to the surprise of no-one, parliament was prepared to indulge any number of kneejerk nonsenses today. Hence the foolishness* about shutting down "social networking communications" during "times of unrest". Parliament may need to be recalled to give the impression that something is being done; most of the time, in circumstances such as these, it may be best if it only pretends to be doing something. You don't need to be as preoccupied with civil liberties as I am to appreciate that there's the potential for this kind of power to be desperately misused.

Alex Massie

Gangs: The Strathclyde Model

From our UK edition

I suspect that the idea that opportunistic looting can be explained by organised gangs is, no matter what the Prime Minister said this morning, a questionable premise. Nevertheless, it was interesting and encouraging to see him reference the work done by the Violence Reduction Unit at Strathclyde Police. Interesting because their approach to gang-related violence demonstrates just how tricky the problem is and how "traditional" policing and criminal justice approaches fail to have much, if any, useful impact. Here's a terrific and freshly-relevent Prospect piece that explains how the project has worked in Glasgow and, before that, in Boston. Karyn McCluskey is a very impressive person and, in my limited experience, someone worth listening to.

Alex Massie

Salmond on the Riots: Ned In Our Name!

From our UK edition

The great traditions of journalistic hyperbole justify this magazine's cover image this week (Subscribe!) but that doesn't mean we must take it literally. "Britain" is not "ablaze" even if the riots we've seen in London, Birmingham and Manchester might make it seem as though the entire country is on fire. So a little perspective might be thought useful. Is the situation serious? Yes, of course it is. Is it crippling? Of course it is not. So one can see why Alex Salmond - and his allies -  have been determined to point out that these are not "UK riots" but "English riots". In one sense this is correct.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Cricket for the Blind

From our UK edition

Meanwhile, mercifully, there's a Test match taking place in Birmingham. The contrast between this England and that other England in the headlines these past few days is total, complete and reassuring. Which brings me to this lovely piece by Peter White on how a blind man may adore - and imagine - cricket: [...] I love cricket's sounds, its scores, its slowness. I delight in its long periods of apparent apathy, suddenly punctuated by a moment of frenzied excitement (I understand that non-cricket lovers claim to be unable to distinguish between the two). I, of course, attempt to explain I'm also there for the atmosphere: the sound of bat on ball in a live arena is completely different from having it filtered through the speakers of the most sophisticated stereo.

Alex Massie

Regression to the Mean

From our UK edition

Via Art Goldhammer, a new paper examining trends in public disorder across europe from 1919 to our own blessed unhappy time. Here's the chart: The authors explain their methodology: "We look at five different types of instability – anti-government demonstrations, riots, assassinations, general strikes, and attempted revolutions – in Europe over the period 1919-2009. The data comes from a large-scale international data collection (Banks 1994), and is based on an analysis of reporting in the New York Times. The individual indicators are then aggregated by summing them up for each country and year. This gives the variable called CHAOS. Figure 1 shows how it evolved over time since 1919, presenting the mean and the maximum.

Alex Massie

Tories Should Not Be Surprised By the Riots

From our UK edition

If a riot has a hundred causes then it's caused by everything and anything and any all-purpose, universal explanation for it is bound to be implausible. When a 31 year old teacher is among the first people charged in the aftermath of the worst of the violence you can put away your handy explanations about youthful alienation and all the rest of it. Of course that's doubtless a factor but it doesn't explain why the majority of those who might be thought most likely to take to the streets did not in fact do so. Indeed, as I suggest in passing in a piece for the Daily Beast, if these disturbances remind one of anything much it's the riots that convulsed France back in 2005.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Elvis Presley

From our UK edition

Sure, you don't necessarily think of Elvis as a country singer. But then you remember his gospel roots and the rockabilly and it all makes sense. How could such a great American ever escape the greatest American musical genre of them all? He never did. Or, if you prefer, he just often returned to it.