27 November 1998

Now take on the big targets

• 27 November 1998

The row over the House of Lords, in which an aristocracy springs forth as a defender of democracy, sometimes seems worthy of one of those ancient philosophical conundrums about Cretan ...

7 Days

• 27 November 1998

Left behind? British government officials sent Eurosceptics into apoplexy by backing deeper integration between the socialist governments of the EU. They helped draw up a manifesto entitled The New European ...

The Journal of Lynton Charles, Deputy Minister without Portfolio

• 27 November 1998

Tuesday When I arrive back from the House, the images of the Queen reading The Master's speech still vivid before my eyes, M is already in my room sipping an ...

The wars of the Lords will go on and on

• Steve Richards
• 27 November 1998

In the House of Lords some of our peers are having a ball. They sense they have won the argument. They know they are privileged and want to hold on ...

As Chilean television shows the verdict, Sonia weeps with relief: someone finally is saying "no" to Pinochet

• Isabel Hilton
• 27 November 1998

I'm in Santiago, Chile, to make a short documentary for BBC 2's Correspondent programme. On Wednesday, it seemed as if the whole of the country had stopped and was holding ...

A hand-up or a put-down for the poor?

• Frank Field
• 27 November 1998

Frank Field fears that the welfare reform bill will take us deeper into a means-testing morass

The welfare reform bill heralded in the Queen's Speech this week is likely to prove a watershed in the life of the government. Either the government takes seriously the consultation ...

How the left hijacked the family

• John Lloyd
• 27 November 1998

Children matter, but their parents' marital status does not. That's the third way view and it's won the argument. John Lloyd reports

The moral high ground on the family, once a preserve of the right because of its perceived greater respect for the institution of marriage, has now been appropriated by new ...

Poem - Delia at MI5

• Bill Greenwell
• 27 November 1998

Delia swears by her shayler;

It cracks any canful of worms;

In cybernet caffs it turns over the gaffes,

And scratches the surface for germs.

Delia claims that her ...

The British so idolise animals that now even John Prescott has to worry about the skylark and the song thrush

• Mary Riddell
• 27 November 1998

The trial of the world's most prolific serial killer began this week. Known as the Terminator, Anatoly Onoprienko is thought to have murdered 53 people, many of them small children. ...

Up, down, shake it all about

• Phil Collins
• 27 November 1998

Is our money in the hands of lunatics? There was supposed to be a world crash; now the stock markets are soaring again. What's going on? Phil Collinsexplains

There is no five-year period this century when the stock market has not gone up. The FTSE-100 index finished 1987 higher than it started, crashing in time to recover by ...

In memory of Stokely, my friend, who said: Get Guns

• Darcus Howe
• 27 November 1998

Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael, died last week, aged 57. Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson apart, he was perhaps the leading black revolutionary activist in the United States in ...

I wanted Latin, not woodwork

• Andrew Martin
• 27 November 1998

Andrew Martin, a failure at 11, explains why he would vote against grammar schools

When it was announced last week that Britain's remaining grammar schools would each be subject to votes in their catchment areas on the question of selection, a little voice inside ...

Journalists who enjoy freebies and flattery turn the truth upside down

• John Pilger
• 27 November 1998

It was a pity that, in all the recent remembrance of the first world war, there was nothing about the press. In 1917 the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided ...

The New Statesman Profile - Gus O'Donnell

• George Lucas
• 27 November 1998

Who but the most skilful mandarin could work for Lawson, Major and now Brown?

"It's that man again,it's that man again" - ITMA, BBC Radio, 1939-1949

In the midst of wartime grimness, the ITMA carnival was a much-needed antidote to Hitler-induced human tragedy. ...

Hush, hush! The workers will hear

• Phillip Knightley
• 27 November 1998

When the upper classes were in charge we didn't need official secrecy, explains Phillip Knightley

David Shayler is a fat, jolly chap who wants to blow the whistle on his hard-drinking former colleagues who work in what he says is an inefficient security service, MI5. ...

Does God vote Labour or Tory?

• Paul Vallely
• 27 November 1998

Paul Vallelysees difficulties for both William Hague and Tony Blair in their attempts to bring the Deity on-message

God, as we all know, is an Englishman. Having thus resolved the nationality and gender issues, only one big question remains: is He also a Tory? William Hague would like ...

In the land of the free, a fascist stench

• Andrew Stephen
• 27 November 1998

Is America becoming a fascist state? Before you think I have regressed to the cliches and nihilistic political vocabulary so beloved by many of my fellow Essex University students of ...

The New Statesman Essay - Stuff the hope and glory

• Andrew Marr
• 27 November 1998

Andrew Marr argues that his children must learn to be differently British

The Eurosceptics are right. It is time for a bare-knuckle fight about what we really believe; the kind of people we are and want to be. This country is on ...

Thinker's Corner

• 27 November 1998

Down But Not Out: Japan and the world in crisis (British Institute of Contemporary Economic and Political Studies, Bowling Green Lane, London EC1R 0NE, e-mail: biceps@btinternet.com). As western governments ponder ...

At the threshold of fortress Britain

• Jennifer Monahan
• 27 November 1998

Campsfield, in the heart of Oxfordshire, is a detention centre where 200 asylum-seekers wait in limbo to know their fate. Jennifer Monahan reports

One Friday evening, an asylum detainee in Campsfield House Detention Centre, Oxfordshire, is called on the tannoy: "K . . . to immigration. K . . . to immigration." The ...

Open lists will give us closed minds

• Denis MacShane
• 27 November 1998

Denis MacShanedoesn't want Euro elections to be dominated by cash-happy millionaires

The row over the Euro elections disguises a deeper malaise in British politics. This is the failure of political parties to renew themselves to match modern needs.

If Benjamin Disraeli ...

10,000 memories in Nelson, Lancashire

• Jeremy Seabrook
• 27 November 1998

Here, the old cotton mill workers recall noise, bullying and hunger. Now, in Asia, a new generation experiences the same conditions

The streets of the Lancashire mill-towns are full of old people now. If there is a certain melancholy as they look out on to the car parks and rectangles of ...

We stopped Boadicea's chariot

• Stuart Weir
• 27 November 1998

Stuart Weirargues that the success of Charter 88 (aged ten this week) proves that people are not weary of democracy, just of Westminster

The New Statesman has created two of the great popular movements of modern Britain - the first being the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s, the second Charter 88, ...

Instant Expert Kit - Rhodri Morgan

• Duncan Parrish
• 27 November 1998

If you could just remind me who . . .Rhodri Morgan is the Labour MP for Cardiff West who stood, and lost, against Ron Davies for leadership of the ...

If there's one thing I've almost learnt in life, it's how to change a bicycle tyre

• Sean French
• 27 November 1998

The other day I read the New Statesman's recent supplement on lifelong learning. Somebody had rung up various famous people and asked what they had learnt since stopping formal education. ...

This England

• 27 November 1998

Janet Scott, president of the transvestites' campaign group the Beaumont Society, said: "This transvestite was asking for trouble and I have no sympathy with her."

Ms Scott, born a man ...

Cooke: an oldie but goodie

• 27 November 1998

As an American long resident here, I find more sense, more wisdom in Alistair Cooke's reports about my country than in any other single point of view. Quentin Letts ("Please ...

Strange kind of Labour leader

• 27 November 1998

Although Steve Richards' analysis is perceptive ("Blair doesn't have enough control", 20 November), he misses the point.

Isn't the issue that Tony Blair has cosied up to the Liberal Democrats ...

Dumb or didactic radio

• 27 November 1998

While it is true that most of the presenters on Radio 5 have a lot more hair on top of their heads than those of Radio 4 (Cristina Odone, 20 ...

Unsustainable America

• 27 November 1998

In his essay "How to make a humane market" (20 November) Amitai Etzioni ignores one fact. The American economy is completely unsustainable.

The US is dependent for its wealth on ...

We need to reverse our thinking if we are serious about using less energy

• 27 November 1998

Of course John Prescott is right ("How to cut energy use without pain", 20 November): we can reduce consumption and combat global warming with ease. The question is, will we?

Only hypocrisy justifies outing

• 27 November 1998

Simon Heffer spoils an otherwise informative article with the preposterous allegation that the outing of MPs is "often" done by "other homosexuals", and that "militant" campaigners are "rather pleased" with ...

The trouble with religion

• 27 November 1998

According to Robin Oakley-Hill (Letters, 20 November), the only serious argument against religion is that, by comforting the poor, it allows the rich to mess them around - roughly the ...

Why a liberal education is better

• 27 November 1998

In "The tale of an educational nonsense" (NS supplement, 13 November), Alan Smithers quotes Professor John Pratt of the Centre for Institutional Studies, who argues that the development of the ...

Master of the frozen moment

• Charles Darwent
• 27 November 1998

The photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's work strikes a particular chord in the British. Charles Darwent wonders if its froideur explains why

Visitors to the V&A's new Canon photographic gallery might like to carry spare jumpers with them when walking around its latest show. The first part of this, entitled Silver and ...

Golden meanings

• Hugh Aldersey-Williams
• 27 November 1998

Design by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

The hierarchy of metals is mystical and ancient. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia's suitors must choose one of three caskets, gold, silver or "dull lead", to win her hand. ...

Death becomes him

• Richard Cook
• 27 November 1998

Folk

Folk-singing has been off the popular agenda for so long that it seemed ready to go as underground as original rave culture, but recent arrivals like the young singer-violinist Eliza ...

Digging for dirt

• Andrew Billen
• 27 November 1998

Television

In Paradise Lost Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it. Channel 4's enthralling The Real Rupert Murdoch (Saturday, 21 November, 9pm) signed up to same closed list. Charisma ...

Cracked notes

• Dermot Clinch
• 27 November 1998

Censorship

The latest issue of Index on Censorship is Smashed Hits: the book of banned music. The magazine tells a tale of death, torture, censorship and the abuse of musical freedoms ...

The joy of shopping

• Andrew Brown
• 27 November 1998

Internet

Any fool can get rich by making money. It takes a genius to make his fortune by losing it. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com, runs a company which has ...

Animal magic

• Ziauddin Sardar
• 27 November 1998

Science

In the days of old, propagandists for science would make a mantra of Hume's principle that there is no relation between statements of fact and of value. But nowadays, you ...

Vanity fare

• Bee Wilson
• 27 November 1998

Food

When Becky Sharp, gasping from her first curry, is offered her first chilli, she thinks it will be cooling. " 'How fresh and green they look!' she said, and put ...

Mulling it over

• Victoria Moore
• 27 November 1998

Drink

Among the Bible's most valuable lessons is the wedding guest's dictum that the good wine should not be kept until last. It is a basic principle of alcohol no self-respecting ...

When a deaf ear is an editor's best friend

• Peter Wilby
• 27 November 1998

Media

I have been thinking about the relations between editors and newspaper proprietors, and you will know why. The owner of the New Statesman is Geoffrey Robinson, the much-troubled Paymaster-General. (The ...

Why aren't there more footballing graduates?

• Hunter Davies
• 27 November 1998

It's very hard to predict things in football. Or in life. Or in death, come to that. Columbus died ignored and in poverty. Then he became a world-class hero. Someone ...

Quick, the aliens have landed. NS writers on belief and discovery at the end of the century

• Elaine Showalter
• 27 November 1998

The Birth of Christ: Exploding the Myth P A H Seymour Virgin Books, 244pp, £16.99 Ancient Traces: Mysteries in Ancient and Early History Michael Baigent Viking, 304pp, £15.99 Arrival of the Gods Erich Von Daniken Element Books, 240pp, £14.99 Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilisation Graham Hancock and Santha Faiin Michael Joseph 352pp, £20 Why People Believe Weird Things Michael Shermer W H Freeman, 294pp, £16.95

At a Washington press conference last year, a reporter asked General John M Shalikashvili, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, to "assure us that our country is effectively ...

Future shocks

• Will Self
• 27 November 1998

What Remains To Be Discovered John Maddox Macmillan, 434pp, £20

It was Benjamin Franklin, a natural scientist manque if ever there was one, who observed that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and ...

Melancholy roar

• Jason Cowley
• 27 November 1998

An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture Roger Scruton Duckworth, 152pp, £14.99

When a man stops believing in God, to paraphrase Chesterton, he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes in everything - in anything. As we approach the end of the ...

What a bender

• Martyn Bedford
• 27 November 1998

Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic? Jonathan Margolis Orion Books, 296pp, £16.99

A funny thing didn't happen to me on the way to this review. Three funny things, to be precise. I left a coin overnight on my bedside table to see ...

Sweet soul music

• John Haldane
• 27 November 1998

Being a Person: Where Faith and Science Meet John Habgood Hodder & Stoughton, 307pp, £8.99

It belongs to human nature to seek and to ascribe meaning. Art makes land into landscape; history converts events into episodes; music turns noises into notes; and then there is ...

Genital games

• Tom Wilkie
• 27 November 1998

Engineering Genesis: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering in Non-Human Species Donald Bruce and Ann Bruce (editors) Earthscan, 337pp, £12.99

Half-way down Edinburgh's Royal Mile, John Knox's house looks down with dour disapproval at the lawyers, bankers and intellectuals of the medieval Auld Toon. Here, in the very cradle of ...

Commentary - The voice from the whirlwind

• Henry Sheen
• 27 November 1998

Henry Sheenemerges from a thicket of hard science holding the Old Testament

If the history of science tells us anything, it is that scientific theories will inevitably be superseded by other more successful theories, despite the wide acceptance and religious following they ...

Competition - Win a bottle of champagne

• 27 November 1998

No 3554 Set by George Cowley

You were asked for imaginary conversations between an (imaginary?) actress and bishop of your choice.

Report by Ms de Meaner

I knew this ...

Near the glass and the steel, a peacock glints blue and green

• Paul Barker
• 27 November 1998

Most things happen by accident. Passengers go into Stansted airport either on the special train line which comes neatly to a halt in the concrete underbelly of Norman Foster's elegant ...

Have you heard about the NS columnist who can't stop spreading rumours?

• Laurie Taylor
• 27 November 1998

I like to think that I have a modest reputation as a rumour-monger. If anyone tells me in absolute confidence on Tuesday morning that a senior BBC administrator has been ...