Shall I tell you the worst thing about this wretched business? Worse than the return of socialism, worse than the indenturing of our children? It's the way we've treated Iceland, until last week perhaps the most Anglophile country in Europe, says Daniel Hannan. To seize the assets of a friendly state was bad enough; to use anti-terrorist legislation was unforgivable. When the Crime and Security Act was passed in 2001, we were repeatedly told that it would be used only in cases of imminent danger: "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear." Nothing to fear, eh? Since then it has been invoked to eject a heckler from the Labour conference, to detain a woman walking on a cycle path and to prevent recitation of the names of fallen servicemen at the Cenotaph. Now this. DANIEL HANNANThe Times RBS is set to be majority-owned by you and me, the taxpayer, says Jonathan Freedland. HBOS is not far off. Now what will those banks do when faced with people falling behind on their mortgage payments? In the past they would have ordered repossession, which made sense in terms of pure profit and loss. But now there will be other factors to consider, because these banks will no longer work solely for dividend-hungry shareholders but for the taxpayer. Every family that has endured a repossession costs the public purse, through rehousing, most obviously, but in myriad and less visible ways - right down to the burden that falls on the NHS as it repairs the mental and emotional damage inflicted by forced eviction. JONATHAN FREEDLANDThe Guardian Richard Littlejohn, predictably, was worse, getting in a tortured allusion to a gay sex act before adding a completely extraneous reference to some visit that Peter Mandelson had made to a sausage manufacturer in Italy,writes Alice Miles. It's a level of personal abuse and innuendo that would not be tolerated if it were aimed at a black person, a woman, even another gay man - anybody in public life, in fact, except Mandelson. He may have another issue to contend with too: one member of the House of Lords overheard another referring to Mandelson on the day that he was ennobled as a "quintessential Jew" - whatever that means. Someone else is spreading a false rumour that he has Aids. Britain was meant to turn out nicer than this. ALICE MILESThe Times In his book The Black Swan, the financial analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb provides a useful analogy, writes Daniel Finkelstein. In the months before Thanksgiving, turkeys begin to build up a theory about mankind. Man is benevolent. Every day he appears with more food, and the turkey is allowed to get fatter and fatter. And then, about a week before Thanksgiving, the turkey will, as Taleb puts it, "incur a reversion of belief". Our view of the Brown decade is like the turkey's view of mankind, utterly destroyed by what has now happened. The stability was a trick of the light, the lengthy period of growth was fuelled by house prices and debt, the low interest rates (of which Brown is still, amazingly, boasting) were an error. The length of the good years is being paid for by the severity of the crisis we now face. DANIEL FINKELSTEINThe Times Andrew Rawnsley also revealed that Gordon Brown had lied when he stated on Radio 4's Today programme in November 1997 that he did not know that Bernie Ecclestone had donated money to New Labour. When he returned to the Treasury after giving the interview, he had raged at his staff. 'I lied. I lied. My credibility will be in shreds. I lied. If this gets out, I'll be destroyed.' Stephen Glover Daily Mail Let's be honest, literary prizes and literary festivals are where middle-class luvvies pat each other on the back, and they're never ending. There's a massive disparity in publishing between books people actually buy and read and swap with their friends and the stuff that gets reviewed favourably in newspapers. Janet Street-Porter The Independent The BBC still wheels out politics on Sunday mornings, but Andrew Marr's show is very soft and The Politics Show, with its heavy regional component, often seems like a box-ticking exercise by the corporation. Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott, BBC1's late-night political Punch and Judy, would seem dangerously flippant among NBC's line-up of heavyweight political pundits. If Lord Reith were alive today, he'd see more education, information and entertainment about politics in US television than on the BBC. Neil Midgley Daily Telegraph Guardian writers and Labour politicians have been drooling all week over what they call the "collapse of the free market model" of a modern global economy. They are simply wrong. All markets required regulating. It was regulation that failed last month, not the market economy. When a car is driven too fast and crashes it does not invalidate motoring. Simon Jenkins The Guardian Glaswegians are dying from the effects of drink at twice the rate of everyone else. And I mean everyone. Not just the pussycat provinces of polite suburbia. Backslapping is a luxury in a city more violent than New York and sicker than parts of Iraq. In Glasgow, a willingness to embrace excess brings status – even if it also brings jail and broken health. Lesley Riddoch The GuardianBrown the bully
Full article: Gordon Brown's raid on Iceland was cowardice, not courage 
First stop Brussels, then the world, for rejuvenated Brown We are now the bailiffs
Full article: When old dogmas die, there is room for all kinds of radical new thinking
RBS is a failure made in Scotland 
Hatred for Mandelson
Full article: Peter Mandelson is too naive to be a Machiavelli
News in Pictures: Peter Mandelson's comeback
How Guyana brought out the bully in Mandelson 
Turkeys before Thanksgiving
Full article: If this is a triumph, I'd hate to see a disaster
America enters a new Depression 
In Brief
Brown also lied about Ecclestone
Full article: The lie that lays bare the rank corruption of the Blair years 
Literary luvvies
Full article: Booker prize snobs have lost the plot No politics on the BBC
Full article: Sarah Palin dives in poll ratings as Tina Fey impersonates her on Saturday Night Live Not the end of capitalism
Full article: The end of capitalism? No, just another burst bubble Glasgow - an elite world city?
Full article: Glasgow can ill-afford to be smug
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Posts
