04 December 1998

Warning: inequality kills

• 04 December 1998
• 1 comment

The nanny state is far from dead: league tables of school results, of the sort published this week; curfews on unruly children; campaigns to stop people smoking; counsellors for prospective ...

The Journal of Lynton Charles, Deputy Minister without Portfolio

• 04 December 1998

Wednesday The day starts with a row. Cheryl decides that a minor domestic failure on my part (I forgot to do the twins' homework with them yesterday when she was ...

7 Days

• 04 December 1998

Bon appetit Desperate Dan and other T-bone aficionados can start salivating. Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, announced his intention to lift the ban on beef, probably in time for ...

Come on, let's hear it for the euro

• Steve Richards
• 04 December 1998

There is no question which side is setting the pace in our parochial debate about the euro. The Eurosceptics may lack charismatic figureheads to lead them all the way into ...

Jeremy Isaacs is obsessed with Stephen Fry's donation - apparently, my dear, it was enormous

• Neil McKenna
• 04 December 1998

To Adelaide Street for the unveiling of the statue of Oscar Wilde, on the 98th anniversary of his death. It is a very British affair with a melange of the ...

Third way? They'll do it their way

• John Lloyd
• 04 December 1998

Europe has turned pink and now it is hurtling towards integration; once more, Britain finds itself dangerously isolated, reports John Lloyd

This week the British government made it crystal clear that it does not believe that its fraternal parties on the Continent have understood that socialism is dead. It was made ...

Poem - Human Rights

• Bill Greenwell
• 04 December 1998

(Osaka scientists are to implant a genetically modified pig's heart in a baboon, to improve human transplant surgery)

I'm the heart of a hen in the breast of a duck,

A calf-liver stuck in a sheep,

The brain of a pea in the shell of a bean,

A ...

Statisticians tell us that we're all middle class now - but that doesn't stop poorer people dying younger

• Mary Riddell
• 04 December 1998

Class boundaries have been redrawn. Up the social order go teachers, librarians and bank managers, now elevated to Professional Grade One. Down go cooks, hairdressers and plasterers. Technically, this leaves ...

Just get out and have fun!

• Mark Leonard
• 04 December 1998

More security and more closed-circuit tv aren't the answers to crime. Instead, argues Mark Leonard, we should make our cities bristle with life

A few years ago, Nick Ross, the veteran presenter of Crimewatch, told us that "we are barking mad about crime in this country. We have an obsession with believing the ...

Instant Expert's Kit - Fay Weldon

• Duncan Parrish
• 04 December 1998

What has our favourite feminist mouthed off about now? She revealed this week that she worked for MI6's "Information Research Department" in 1952, writing anti-Polish propaganda for the media. She ...

Hard times in the classroom

• Francis Beckett
• 04 December 1998

Francis Beckett thinks that David Blunkett should do the simple thing: give all teachers a decent salary rise

Some years ago university lecturers noticed that their pay had been overtaken by that of some college teachers. Horrified, they marched down Whitehall to lobby their MPs, carrying banners which ...

If I pleaded guilty, said the lawyer, I'd only get five years

• Darcus Howe
• 04 December 1998

As I write, it is almost 27 years to the day that I and eight others walked out of the Old Bailey, freed by a jury on charges of riot, ...

Pinochet: the press got it wrong

• Geoffrey Robertson
• 04 December 1998

The Queen is safe, and so is Margaret Thatcher: the Law Lords' ruling need only worry genuine tyrants, explains Geoffrey Robertson

The most remarkable aspect of the Pinochet judgment was the media's failure to grasp what it means - and what it does not mean. Their errors seriously misled the public ...

Thinker's Corner

• 04 December 1998

The Dead Citizens' Charter (National Funerals College publication, £5 from the NFC, 3 Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TX, tel: 0117 928 9024). Death may be the last taboo, but this ...

If we really want to be more European, we should move in with mum, dad, auntie and grandma

• Cristina Odone
• 04 December 1998

My brother, 35, still lives with his mum. Two years ago, when our mother moved to London, it seemed only natural that my high-earning, single brother should invite her to ...

The New Statesman Profile - Annie's Bar

• Ian Aitken
• 04 December 1998

At the heart of the Commons stands a watering hole where indiscretion is routine and intrigue flourishes

Visitors to that hub of our parliamentary democracy, the central lobby of the Palace of Westminster, can see at once that they are in the presence of two essential pillars ...

How to make money from being wrong

• Ivor Gaber
• 04 December 1998

Most ITV companies bid too much for their franchises. Guess who pays? Ivor Gaberreports

Christmas hasn't just come early for the ITV companies - it's come twice. It first arrived when the Independent Television Commission (ITC), despite a consultation exercise which showed public opinion ...

The wonks are coming of age

• Caroline Daniel
• 04 December 1998

Rarely have think-tanks had such an opportunity to influence policy

They thought they had got over the worst once they had struggled through their eight-minute presentations on "Can there be a Third Way in foreign policy?" But there was one ...

The charged eel in French politicians' hands

• David Lawday
• 04 December 1998

The idea of gay marriage has driven Parisians on to the streets

In his homosexual novel Maurice, E M Forster has a doctor advise the tortured hero to move to France. "The English," the doctor observes, "are disinclined to accept human nature." ...

The New Statesman Essay - The rise of the philistines

• Geoffrey Wheatcroft
• 04 December 1998

Geoffrey Wheatcroft laments the paucity of politicians who can quote Homer

When Tony Blair was asked recently to name his favourite book, he said The Lord of the Rings. Pausing only to stifle a low groan, and to recall the late ...

Held back by Hindu gods?

• John Elliott
• 04 December 1998
• 3 comments

India has no modern roads, chronic power shortages and a middle class that throws rubbish into the street. Who's to blame, asks John Elliott

What is it that prevents India being successful and stops it pulling its vast population of almost one billion out of the rut of widespread poverty, illiteracy and general non-achievement? ...

Still haunted by the ghosts of slavery

• Andrew Stephen
• 04 December 1998

Not so long ago I found myself in a curiously heated exchange with an American academic. We had just listened to his wife, who was head of one of the ...

This England

• 04 December 1998

The prince sympathised with young black soldiers at the Army Training Regiment in Pirbright, Surrey.

Donovan Mowatt, 19, recruited in the army's recent drive to attract soldiers from ethnic ...

The best advice I can give a young writer is to read a lot and steal even more

• Sean French
• 04 December 1998

Has anybody famous come out of the "Fame School of Performing Arts" that Paul McCartney helped set up in Liverpool four years ago? And what about that football academy that ...

How to fund a genuine pension guarantee

• 04 December 1998

The government's £75 "pension guarantee", which Frank Field rightly criticises as a disincentive to savings, is neither a pension nor a guarantee ("A hand-up or a put-down for the poor?", ...

Beyond little Englandism

• 04 December 1998

I always suspected that Andrew Marr ("Stuff the hope and glory", 27 November) had gone to the wrong school and his confession that he was taught a sort of little ...

Chesterton's chestnut

• 04 December 1998

G K Chesterton is often said to have said that when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing but in everything or anything - an attribution repeated ...

New Labour, new class wars

• 04 December 1998

I was surprised to read in David Halpern's article ("Hard times for the lucky and the lazy", 20 November) that the enemies of new Labour are no longer clearly class ...

Family values

• 04 December 1998

John Lloyd is wrong: there is nothing "right-wing" about support for marriage ("How the left hijacked the family", 27 November). Indeed, traditional family life was the bedrock of ethical socialism. ...

Boosting Britain

• 04 December 1998

Chris Powell is absolutely right to argue that Britain must promote itself more vigorously through its innovative products and services. He is wrong, however, to suggest that this is not ...

Godless dogma

• 04 December 1998

It is just as dogmatic of Anna Freeman to assert that God is not as for the Pope to assert that God is (Letters, 27 November). Isn't an open-minded agnosticism ...

Pointing the finger

• Hugh Aldersey-Williams
• 04 December 1998

We used to fire arrows. Now we just follow them. Hugh Aldersey-Williamscomes over all sagittate

We'd be lost without them. We see dozens, perhaps hundreds of arrows in a day, on roads and in air-ports, on keyboards and web sites. We dare not disobey them, ...

Tehran, SE1

• Kamin Mohammadi
• 04 December 1998

Music

Anyone wandering over the Embankment Bridge on Wednesday night last week would have been confronted by a tide of Iranians, mostly of a certain age, heading to the South Bank ...

LA lore

• Jonathan Romney
• 04 December 1998

Film

Paul Newman is no longer the face on the sauce bottle. As weather-beaten private investigator Harry Ross, his expression is tight, military, unamused, the voice bruised and grainy. Robert Benton's ...

Private lives

• Andrew Billen
• 04 December 1998

Television

The third episode of ITV's comedy drama Cold Feet (Sunday, 9.30pm) opened with Karen Marsden (Hermione Norris) wallowing in a warm bath and ended, post-coitally, with her splashing her face ...

American mythic

• Dermot Clinch
• 04 December 1998

Music

The Barbican Centre's festival of "American Pioneers" ended with the music of three composers, two of whom are indubitably American and indubitably pioneers, but one who has often seemed barely ...

Diminishing returns

• 04 December 1998

Rock by Richard Cook

Rock likes to think it overturned everything that came before it, but rock package concerts - which have been with us since the birth of the music in Britain - ...

All that jazz

• Richard Cook
• 04 December 1998

Afterword

As a child I would sometimes gaze at a particularly weighty dictionary or encyclopaedia and wonder at how anyone could have put together such a monument. Those were the days ...

Real friends

• Andrew Brown
• 04 December 1998

Internet

In the desolate wastes of north Essex we have to make our own entertainment, but I don't think that completely explains why I have been brooding on the death of ...

Bon gout, mauvais gout

• Bee Wilson
• 04 December 1998

Food

Regular readers of this column might have noticed that I don't do restaurant reviews. I'm not one of your A A Gills or Fay Maschlers. I've never been to Mezzo ...

Red mist

• Victoria Moore
• 04 December 1998

Drink

A weeping willow bows silently towards the vitreous waters of the Seine. It is too cold for snow. Naked trees - still, frozen - flank the crumbling buildings with their ...

Must Africa always be reported by chaps in cowboy hats?

• Ian Hargreaves
• 04 December 1998

Media

When people of earnest goodwill debate the future of the Internet and its effect upon journalism, it does not take long before someone raises the question of the growing gap ...

Cuba: the last country that hasn't heard of Man Utd

• Hunter Davies
• 04 December 1998

I've just come back from nine days in Cuba. Very weird. They have two economies, one based on US dollars and the other on local pesos. I kept on meeting ...

Books of the year

• 04 December 1998

Joan Bakewell

Some big, impressive books this year, hard on the wrist but stimulating. Consilience (Little, Brown, £18.99) by Edward O Wilson does more than keep the Darwinian debate going. ...

Erotic literature

• Rowan Pelling
• 04 December 1998

Rowan Pelling shows how the classics can kiss us into rapture

Like most little girls, my erotic awakening was closely linked to my prepubescent passion for horses. The first distracted tingling to the written page happened as I thrilled to the ...

Economics

• John Lloyd
• 04 December 1998

Is the end nigh for global capitalism? John Lloyd on a clutch of fiscal jeremiads

Here is a group of books that are, in the main, charting failure; the first fruits of the end of the optimistic narrative of growth fuelled by South-east Asia and ...

Books of the century

• 04 December 1998

Six writers return to works of great personal or political moment

Lisa Jardine on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

If one is not to be facile or parochial, selecting a "best" book for the entire 20th century is a ...

Children's books - The uses of enchantment

• Amanda Craig
• 04 December 1998

Fiction

Everyone knows that there are two kinds of stories for children: one in which good children live happily doing ordinary things; the other in which life is transformed by magic ...

Children's books - Sniffing out the past

• Geoffrey Wheatcroft
• 04 December 1998

History

One field of publishing has to be run by inspired guesswork. Authors and publishers of literary fiction or biography can at least write and publish what they like themselves, and ...

Children's books - It's rhyme time

• Lavinia Greenlaw
• 04 December 1998

Poetry

Children like poetry for its imagined worlds, emotional resonance and the way that its sounds and shapes reveal the character and texture of words. There are the galloping rhymes and ...

Audio books

• Francis Gilbert
• 04 December 1998
• 1 comment

Francis Gilbert wonders how William Blake would respond to tomes on tape

For William Blake the ear was "a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in" and "a golden ascent winding round to the heaven of heavens". Despite his pictorial talents, Blake perceived ...

Best-seller

• Tom Holland
• 04 December 1998

Since its publication in 1994, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a historical novel set on the small Greek island of Cephalonia during the second world war, has sold an improbable 900,000 copies. Tom Holland explains why

Considering the habitual British distaste for foreigners and learning musical instruments, Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a brave title for a novel. But Louis de Bernieres clearly knew what he was ...

Publishing

• Christopher Gasson
• 04 December 1998

Christopher Gasson mocks the voodoo economics of the modern book trade

The one good thing about the disappearance of small independent publishers in the face of the expansion of large international media corporations is that having your book rejected is a ...

Biography

• Roz Kaveney
• 04 December 1998

Roz Kaveney trawls through the lives of the great (and the not so great)

There is no heaven or hell; there are, however, biographers . . . If we live after our deaths, it is as mimed selves in the memories and dreams of ...

Competition. Win a bottle of champagne

• 04 December 1998

No 3555 Set by Gordon Gwilliams

You were asked for prose that included terms found in the New Oxford Dictionary of English: lunch box, black information, Barnum effect, car bra, ...

In Toys'R'Us you see the hard truth of the playground

• Paul Barker
• 04 December 1998

This Toys'R'Us store looks, at first glance, like a big white temple dedicated to novelty. CD-Roms of bosomy Lara Croft (£34.99 for Tomb Raider 3), ready to slot into your ...

Frozen at the foot of the bed after love-making, I sent for Mr Proctor, the osteopath

• Laurie Taylor
• 04 December 1998

I was going to save this information until the next significant dinner party silence but, deferred gratification never having been my strong point, I might as well lean back smugly ...