Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Competition No 3898

Set by Valerie Yule, 5 September

The New Statesman decides to take up one cause every year to make the world a better place. You were asked to suggest what the magazine could take up for 2006.

Report by Ms de Meaner

I was sorry to lose G M Davis's NS campaign for road safety ("Darcus Howe could stress that it is virile and funky to look both ways before crossing the road"). You will have to make do with an hon mensh. £20 to the rest, the best of whom (Sid Field) gets the Tesco vouchers. PS: Could someone let me know if the people who helped set the comps last year have been paid. Thanks.

In recent years we've heard a lot about performance-enhancing drugs in sport, but the parallel problem in journalism is often ignored. Throughout 2006 the New Statesman will be campaigning against these dangerous substances.

Few people realise how much high-grade cocaine lies behind a story about crack use on council estates. They don't appreciate the quantity of amphetamines required to write an editorial courageously demanding a "zero tolerance" policy. Tour de France cyclists say they can't get over the Alps without chemical assistance. But that's nothing to what it takes to reach the high moral ground.

Then there are the hallucinogens required by columnists looking for virtues in government policy. One fearless investigative journalist took so much LSD, he could actually see weapons of mass destruction. He's still in The Priory.

Let's get back to the good old days of British journalism, the days of the Oscar Wilde trial and the Zinoviev Letter, when illegal stimulants were unknown. Let's remember our traditions. Eight pints of beer, and the old-timers thought the royal family looked beautiful.

Ian Birchall

With environmental catastrophe, social decay, political cynicism and religious fundamentalism broadening daily the consensus that human civilisation is over, the NS campaign for 2006 concludes that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The magazine will be specially failing to sponsor any lectures, debates or special events devoted to hang-wringing contemplation of our predicament. Instead, it will encourage readers to enjoy the high-tech, low-morality pleasures available as we career unstoppably towards Armageddon. Together with special features on sex tourism and internet porn, there will be a host of new columns: Will Self recommends dangerous drugs; Roger Scruton revels in the bloody and illegal slaughter of his local fox population; and Andrew Martin tours the vertical drinking outlets of Britain, explaining how class is irrelevant to not giving a toss about anyone or anything. We'll regard it as a triumph if, by the end of the campaign, readers are too absorbed in their newfound and wilful pig-ignorance to care that the world has become considerably worse because of it.

Adrian Fry

To make the world a better place for all, the NS should make 2006 the year of the trilby. See what a trilby has done for Ken Clarke - it has made a man of him. And whatever else a trilby has done for George Melly, it's certainly done him no harm.

Trilbies for all would bring a revival of the felt industry. Sheep and goats would be at a premium. Felt mills would proliferate. Once more the valleys of Yorkshire and Lancashire would echo with the sounds of clippers, beaters and presses.

The trilby has a great civilising effect on mankind. Long-term police statistics show that trilby-wearing men commit fewer crimes than any other social group. Compare that with baseball-hat wearers, for instance.

Furthermore, the trilby is a great unifying

force - ideal for a classless society. It sits well upon the head of king and commoner, president and prole. You'll always find decency and common sense under the crown of the trilby; and remember the old Attaboy slogan: "Get a hat - get ahead!"

Sid Field

No 3901 Set by Valerie Yule

An outline of a Practical Life Skills course for the new school curriculum.

Max 200 words by 6 October. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website