This blog only deals with the major issues of the day. As regular readers will know, I find tennis mind-numbingly boring. The organisers of a Spanish tournament have tried to do something about this by hiring models as ball boys. The idea has, predictably, prompted complaints. My favourite is from something called Consumers in Action, which has lodged a court case against Hugo Boss, the fashion company that hired the models, "for attacking the dignity of women".

I can't begin to think what on earth this has got to do with a consumer group, but then again I've never really understood Spain.

The best complaint by far comes from Andre Agassi:

I think that the skirts should be shorter.

(0) (0)

Terrific letter to US voters.

(via Samizadata)

(2) (0)

Two must reads on the dreadful Tomlinson Report:

Melanie Phillips and Reform.

(1) (0)

Personally, I'm not sure which of the correspondents to the Guardian I'm with.
It's either this one:

Have you not noticed that Americans don't give two shits what Europeans think of us? Each email someone gets from some arrogant Brit telling us why to NOT vote for George Bush is going to backfire, you stupid, yellow-toothed pansies ... I don't give a rat's ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. I really don't. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit. Oh, yeah - and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals. Wading River, NY

or this one:

Consider this: stay out of American electoral politics. Unless you would like a company of US Navy Seals - Republican to a man - to descend upon the offices of the Guardian, bag the lot of you, and transport you to Guantanamo Bay, where you can share quarters with some lonely Taliban shepherd boys. United States

On the other hand, this one is spot on:

Hey England, Scotland and Wales,
Mind your own business. We don't need weenie-spined Limeys meddling in our presidental election. If it wasn't for America, you'd all be speaking German. And if America would have had a president, then, of the likes of Kerry, you'd all be goose-stepping around Buckingham Palace. YOU ARE NOT WANTED!! Whether you want to support either party. BUTT OUT!!!
United States

But this one has it just right:

THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE SPENT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROTECTING THE PEOPLES OF THE EU, AND WHAT DO WE GET IN RETURN. BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL, BETRAYAL. I HAVE BEEN TO YOUR COUNTRY, THE COUNTRY OF MY ANCESTORS, AND I KNOW WHY THEY LEFT.

MAY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A TOOTH CAPPED. I UNDERSTAND IT TAKES AT LEAST 18 MONTHS FOR YOUR GREAT MEDICAL SERVICES TO GET AROUND TO YOU. HAVE A GREAT DAY.
Harlan, Kentucky

(26) (0)

An early plug: James Bartholomew's The Welfare State We're In is due out in November, but there's already a website (which you can see here) which has some blog-type entries and sneak previews of what looks like being a thought-provoking book.

(0) (0)

Excellent piece by Nick Cohen, who points out the utter stupidity of the Left's determination to destroy selection in the 1960s and 1970s.

As he puts it:

The second half of the twentieth century saw a revolution in the private sector which turned independent schools from nurseries of Empire into centres of academic excellence. Their cause was helped immeasurably by the Labour Party which began the destruction of the competition. In the 1960s, when most dons really were establishment types, two thirds of children going to Oxbridge came from state schools. The grammar schools were abolished, and the direct grant schools went private and by the 1990s the proportion of state school pupils at Oxbridge stood at 50 per cent.

The fall is just one sign among many that social mobility in supposedly classless and anti-elitist Britain is grinding to a halt. However tough the entrance exams and however many scholarships they offer, the academic achievements of the best public schools can't disguise the fact that many brilliant pupils can't think of applying because their parents can't afford the fees. As a result, Britain has become a strange island. No other country in Europe would sit back while its private schools raced ahead. They would find a way to make sure their best schools were open to all talented children.

George Walden, the former Tory education minister, asks Labour supporters who think the abolition of the grammar schools was an egalitarian triumph a good question: why do you think the Conservative Party never reintroduced selection? In its 18 years in power it pressed ahead with previously unthinkable policies. It allowed unemployment to rise to 3,000,000, privatised swathes of the economy, cut the taxes of the rich and crippled the unions. It attacked every part of the post-war social democratic settlement but never reversed the abolition of grammar schools because it suited the wealthy to a tee.

...Put bluntly, if the wealthy were to devise a system which perpetuated inequality, the system they would come up with would be a fair copy of the British education system which talks the language of anti-elitism while ensuring that the children of the elite prosper.

At the risk of dreadful self-publicity (risk is the wrong word; certainty, more like it) you can read a more detailed exposition of this argument in my book, A Class Act - if you can get hold of it, that is.

(2) (0)

Congratulations are in order for Charles Kennedy and his wife, Sarah. They are expecting a baby in April. Could I make a suggestion? If the baby is a boy, Mr Kennedy might care to name him after the man whose cause he champions, Saddam Hussein.

Throughout the run-up to the war, and in its aftermath, I have taken some small pleasure in referring to the opponents of the war as ‘friends of Saddam’. I have found few methods more guaranteed to reduce them to spluttering anger. To be honest, I have always known that the insult was rather below the belt. There were few opponents of the war who actively sought to defend Saddam. The direct consequence of their view prevailing would, indeed, have been that he remained in place as President of Iraq, but this was not their avowed intention; rather, it was a guaranteed by-product.

I did not really think that, since the war and Saddam’s subsequent arrest, the opponents of the war intended to be seen as explicitly, proudly and determinedly championing Saddam’s right to govern Iraq.

I was wrong.

Charles Kennedy and his ilk seek as a matter of policy Saddam’s re-instatement as President of Iraq. The leader of the Liberal Democrats was quite clear in this respect when, at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, he told Mr Blair that, “Now that we know that the 45-minute claim was unfounded and has been withdrawn, and now that we know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, regime change becomes the only remaining argument, but the Prime Minister knows that regime change is contrary to international law.” According to Mr Kennedy, Mr Blair “led us into an illegal war”.

There it is, spelt out in cold logic. If his words mean anything at all – and one must do him the courtesy of assuming that he only uses words and concepts which he understands – then, according to Mr Kennedy, Saddam must immediately be reinstated as President of Iraq.

If Mr Kennedy believes that the war was illegal and thus brought about an illegal regime change, then he also believes – it is not logically possible to believe anything else - that Saddam remains the rightful ruler of Iraq. He was, after all, deposed only by an illegal force. And if he believes, as he claims, in the primacy of international law, then he and those who espouse the same argument have no alternative but to campaign for Saddam’s immediate re-instatement as the internationally recognised head of state of Iraq. To allow him to remain detained by the Americans, couped up in a cell, is not merely illegal; it is an outrage which besmirches the honour of all those who are complicit in it.

Further, if Mr Kennedy’s view of international law is to have any meaning, then those who were guilty of prosecuting the illegal war must be arraigned before the International War Crimes Tribunal: Bush, Blair, Howard and the military commanders who ordered the ‘shock and awe’ attack. Assuming Mr Kennedy means what he says, then his words can lead to no other conclusion.

There are other explanations, but they are so unlikely as to be barely worth recording. One is that – perish the thought – Mr Kennedy is so devoid of intellect that he does not understand the basic logic of his position. The other is that he is so deeply cynical that he understands it full well, but is prepared nonetheless to make political capital from an incoherent, morally indefensible and shameful stance of appeasement to a dictator.

As if!

(13) (0)

Fascinating email from a retired US diplomat:

I don't dispute some of Kerry's criticisms of the current Administration's conduct of foreign policy. But KE04 presents no actual solutions on foreign policy from which we can derive a reasonable belief that his performance would be better than the current White House. In fact, it just might be worse.

Many of Kerry's policy proposals on foreign affairs strike me as nastily disingenuous. His "fair trade" mantra raises the specter of protectionism at a time when America's continued global economic engagement remains a lynchpin of the "soft power" Kerry so ardently wishes to use as leverage in the war on terror. His fulminations on a lack of allies in Iraq don't pass the red face test -- French, German and Russian interests are now clearly arrayed in a classic balance of power position against the U.S. This will not change with Kerry in the White House. As for other allies (minus the UK and Australia), we're the victims of our Cold War success - most participants in Iraq are already projecting about as much power as they possibly can, having comfortably atrophied under our security umbrella for the past 60 years. This is the burden of hegemony, and I'm not quite sure Senator Kerry, whose mind still fully inhabits the Vietnam paradigm, is up to the task of bearing it forthrightly.

...Kerry hasn't grasped this fundamental change. He hasn't comprehended that the UN, as well as other multilateral institutions, has stopped being a preserve of internationally agreed rules and collective action backed by broad consensus. These institutions have become, instead, vehicles for the pursuit of narrow self-interests by any number of major regional powers which aspire to great power status. (France, Russia, Germany, India, Brazil, China). This is a drastically different international order from the one Kerry presumes to know.

You also have to ask yourself, who is going to carry out Kerry's multilateral approach? And on that score, things simply get worse. A Kerry White House would mean the Madeleine Albright B Team moving into senior foreign policy positions. And, with the notable exception of Richard Holbrooke (his hair may be on fire, but he gets things done), this would be disastrous. These are the same folks who fiddled for 8 years on counter terror, negotiated a terrifyingly naive nuke deal with North Korea, and generally treat foreign policy as a rhetorical exercise. This is a team who has demonstrated, in past position of influence, an alarming propensity to get rolled by their foreign counterparts. Let's pick just two: Susan Rice? Jamie Rubin?! Are you serious?? During her sojourn as assistant secretary for Africa in Albright's State Department, Rice had to be consistently bailed out of trouble by career diplomats. As for Rubin, he is anti-gravitas. He's Edwards-lite.

(0) (0)

Superb piece by Charles Krauthammer:

After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry.

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

For what it's worth, my view of the debates is that it really doesn't matter who 'won' them. Whether or not Bush or Kerry outpointed the other is irrelevant. All that matters is that Kerry emerged from them looking like a credible candidate for President. And since the received wisdom has been that he has looked anything but that in recent weeks, the debates have clearly done him a power of good.

That has nothing to do with whether he is right or wrong in his policy stances.

(1) (0)

I have been away for a few days, and only just seen this superb column by Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor of Buckingham University. The gist of it is this:

[T]he Prime Minister granted Buckingham a unique privilege. Our students are to be offered most of the help offered to those at other universities (£3,000 a year low-interest loans as well as other grants and loans of up to £2,700 a year).

But other universities will be limited to fees of only £3,000 a year (so they will remain cash-strapped) whereas we will charge full fees, so our students will continue to enjoy our excellent student-staff ratio of 10:1 and our traditional small group teaching, while still being helped by the Student Loan Company.

Mr Blair has effectively, therefore, introduced vouchers into British higher education, and that is more explosive than the Higher Education Act (which, after all, raised only the existing ceiling on fees) because of where it leads: with only one more reform by the Government, most of the Russell Group of leading British universities will be freed to go independent on the Ivy League model.

That reform, moreover, could be achieved without legislation. Currently, government support for research is divided between two sets of bodies: the Higher Education Funding Councils (which also fund teaching) and the research councils (which fund only research).

...But if the Government transferred the HEFC research funds to the research councils, not only would research improve but the universities would also depend on HEFC only for teaching support. And since that support is mean, and since it restricts the universities to charging only £3,000 top-up fees, the Russell Group would be better off leaving HEFC and charging full fees like Buckingham.

And because, thanks to the Buckingham precedent, universities independent of HEFC will still be free to apply for research council funding, the Russell Group's research would not be damaged should they go independent. They would be like the Ivy League, whose teaching is independent but whose research is largely state funded.

Do read the whole column. It's scintillating (and it's not often one gets to write that and mean it).

(0) (0)

An important clarification:

I misremembered the missive sent to Daniel Finkelstein. The correct version was far more impressive:

You IS a RUBBISH columist.

(0) (0)

The inimitable Peter Briffa:

"Sexuality is a right, not a privilege",

claims Suzie McKenzie. Really? And how are we to go about enforcing such a right? Is Patricia Hewitt really be going around knocking on our doors and ordering cowered citizens to give Stephen Hawking a hand-job?

(3) (0)

I do enjoy reading Johann Hari. As of often as not I disagree with him, but he writes stylishly and always has a well made point.

For sheer fun, do have a read of his wrap-up of the various responses he received to his recent piece about the death of Derrida. It's here.

I especially like the comment by Professor Alexander Garcia Duttmann:

Dear Mr. Hari, You are an idiot.

It reminds me of a letter which Daniel Finkelstein once received and which he reprinted in The Times:

Dear Mr Finkelstein, You is an idiot.

Like most columists, I've had my fair share of angry letters. Much the best was in response to something I had written in The Express just after Great Britain had lost in the Davis Cup to the US. 'Sp what?', I asked. 'It's only tennis.'

My correspondent informed me that

The only reason you hate tennis is because you are a fat bastard.

One part of that assertion was clearly correct.

(2) (0)

Remember the direct grant schools? As a group of self-governing, state-funded schools, that took bright pupils from state primary schools, they were once a beacon of excellence. The direct grant schools opened up some of the country’s best schools to pupils with ability rather than wealth.

Their story is a parable for our times. On the altar of equal opportunity, the 1974-79 Labour Government abandoned the scheme. Like almost all acts of social engineering, its actions made worse the very problem it was seeking to overcome. Poor pupils who once had access to excellent private schools were thereafter denied hope. And those schools that once bridged the private-state school gulf were driven into becoming fully private, their doors closed to the poor.

Cut to 30 years later. For direct grant, read Oxbridge. Same story, different actors. This time round, the story goes thus. The Government has decreed that Oxford must recruit 77 per cent of its undergraduates from state schools, regardless of the relative abilities of applicants. If it does not meet the arbitrary “benchmark”, the university will be fined.

Labour’s methods are not merely crass, in expecting Oxford to act as a remedial centre for state pupils, but grotesquely counter-productive. As a direct consequence of its policies, fewer, not more, state school pupils will be able to benefit from an Oxford education.

In the context of funding constraints which, with every passing term, drag Oxford further down the international league of excellence, Oxford has no choice but to remove itself altogether from the Government’s clutches and to follow the direct grant schools into the private sector. Even Lord Butler of Brockwell, high priest of the wisdom of the State as a former Cabinet secretary, and now Master of University College, has spoken of the need for such a move “sooner rather than later”.

As a private institution, it will be free to set its own fees at a realistic level and it will be able to decide for itself who it admits. But unlike such private universities as Harvard, whose £20 billion of endowments allow it to offer scholarships to all who merit them, regardless of their wealth, a pauperised Oxford will simply not have the means. A triumph, yet again, for the most pervasive rule in public policy: the law of unintended consequences.

(13) (0)

This Guardian story reminds me of the old Not The Nine O'Clock News joke about Fiats: Built by robots. Driven by Italians.

(0) (0)

Here's something from Dubya for the iPod.

(via Harry's Place.)

(0) (0)

Spain has, apparently,

snubbed the United States yesterday by cancelling an annual invitation to US troops to join the celebrations of Spain's national holiday parade and instead invited French soldiers to Madrid.

So there'll be no invited US troops. Prime Minister Zapatero (aka 'the terrorists' friend') might just have made a big mistake. Look out for the uninvited troops, Jose Luis.

(10) (0)

I don't think I'll be troubling Amazon for the works of the new Nobel Laureate.

(3) (0)

For some inexplicable reason, it has taken me until now to record that I had the best possible fun at this year's Labour Party conference by telling people that I only remained a Blairite because of the war.

The looks of total incomprehension were a treat.

(0) (0)

A pretty vile set of remarks on immigration by David Davis yesterday.

According to the Shadow Home Secretary, tougher curbs and a ceiling on immigration (including asylum) are needed "before it is too late". Immigration, he argued, was "endangering the values that we in Britain rightly treasure...The Government says that it doesn't know if this level of immigration is too much or too little. Well let me tell them. It is too much. Far too much. And we must do something about it."

Let's be charitable. His claim that immigration endangers British values is a complete misunderstanding of the problem. Damn it, let's not be charitable. Let's say what's really going on: Davis is resorting to cheap, incendiary and ignorant near-demagoguery in a desperate attempt to shore up votes.

It's not immigration which endangers British values but the failure of immigrants to assimilate. This has almost nothing to do with numbers but is a
product of our failure to insist on certain preconditions. (And for those of you who have difficulty reading, let me say that again: almost nothing. Almost nothing does not mean nothing. It means almost nothing. I have to spell that out as I can already predict the comments appearing...)

The US isn't endangered by immigration. It is made by it. Illegal immigration is a problem not because of the numbers per se but because illegal immigrants are not absorbed into the prevailing culture properly. Immigrants buy into the American dream. We, however, stand back and make no real demands.

Immigrants are blamed for many of our ills because they are seen to be alien and to free ride. You know the usual thing: they come here to scrounge off the benfits system. But if we insisted on a genuine measure of assimilation and debarred immigrants from receiving benefits, we would all benefit from the industry and drive of those who can contribute much to society. Asylum seekers should, far from being banned from working, be forced to support themselves. No true asylum seeker would be other than grateful for such an opportunity. And by paying taxes and contributing, so they would earn their right to a place in our country.

(11) (0)