18 December 1998

Long live the means test

• 18 December 1998

Pensions is one of those subjects that sees British public debate at its worst. It belongs, alongside the Schleswig-Holstein question, local government finance and the Common Agricultural Policy, in a ...

The Journal of Lynton Charles, Deputy Minister without Portfolio

• 18 December 1998

Tuesday I am just finishing a note to Dr Jack, detailing the political objectives of my proposed Minnesota visit, when M calls from the heart of his barony.

"Lynton, love ...

7 Days

• 18 December 1998

Saddam's sideshow Western pronouncements on Iraq reached a threatening and decisive note (again), as the UN ordered its weapons inspectors out of the country. There is little room for ...

I felt a slight shock to learn that a model electric chair is now on sale in America as a children's toy

• Bruce Kent
• 18 December 1998

Last week we had a visitor. He has been before but has never stayed so long. I hesitate to mention the matter lest a gang of red-coated thugs bring their ...

Hansard? It's as good as Dire Straits

• Steve Richards
• 18 December 1998

In my mid-30s I have discovered what so roused the adolescent William Hague late at night in bed. He was only 13, but I am as excited now as he ...

Down and out in the class war

• Suzanne Moore
• 18 December 1998
• 1 comment

Suzanne Moore notes the death of the working-class hero - destroyed by drink, drugs, sex and violence - but still hopes for working-class heroines

A working-class hero is something to be. But only if you like the working class and much of the time I don't. I grew up in a class where people ...

Poem - Wuthering Britain

• Bill Greenwell
• 18 December 1998

Cliff Richard, celebrating his 40th anniversary in the music business, reckoned that his role as Heathcliff was his greatest success (To the tune of "Bachelor Boy")

When I was younger, my spin doctor said,

Tony, please sweeten your tongue,

And what he told me I'll never regret,

For I've stayed eternally young,

He said, Son, you'll ...

This has been a year of noisy neighbours, nosy neighbours and dirty herberts

• Mary Riddell
• 18 December 1998

We base ourselves on the idea that we must peacefully co-exist, said Nikita Khrushchev - clearly a man who had never lingered in Purley where, shortly before Christmas, Sir Bernard ...

Don't slip on the media's banana skins

• Umberto Eco
• 18 December 1998
• 1 comment

Umberto Ecoargues that society is ill: the press is full of gossip, and only the rich want privacy

I haven't had time to read today's paper yet, but I might just as well not read it, because I saw the news on the telly last night: the deaths ...

The giving age has been postponed

• Geoffrey Lean
• 18 December 1998

Geoffrey Lean reveals a shocking and precipitous fall in aid from rich countries to the world's poor

Good King Wenceslas had better look out. Not that his virtue, to which we attest, more or less tunefully, at this time of year, is in doubt. But is the ...

The new political dictionary

• Nick Cohen
• 18 December 1998

Nick Cohen on words that mean just what you want them to mean

English, as we are often told, is a living language whose meaning changes as the world changes. This is particularly true of politicians' English, which has always employed ever more ...

On television, on billboards, in poetry, at dinner parties and even on the Tube - sex is everywhere

• Cristina Odone
• 18 December 1998

The most memorable scene in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita was provided by blonde, buxom Anita Ekberg splashing about in Rome's Trevi fountain. In its spontaneous and joyous exhibitionism, Ekberg's ...

The New Statesman Profile - Albany

• Hywel Williams
• 18 December 1998

Since Byron's days, the great and the wicked have chosen to call this place home

"You know Albany - the haunt of bachelors, or of married men who try to lead bachelors' lives - the dread of suspicious wives, the retreat of superannuated fops, the ...

It's Chr- - - - - -, but whisper it quietly

• Andrew Stephen
• 18 December 1998

Happy Christmas. Just by writing those words from here, I feel like part of some samizdat press movement secretly sending out furtive greetings. For though we are told that 96 ...

Perfect for a nation of gripers

• David Lawday
• 18 December 1998

David Lawday fears that extremists will always flourish in France

It could not have happened to a nicer party. You can almost smell the beer hall and hear the smack of knuckle on flesh. The lurid self-destruction of Jean-Marie Le ...

How to grow a better class of carrot

• Leanda de Lisle
• 18 December 1998

Organic food costs too much. Leanda de Lisle proposes a return to the rotating crops of our ancestors

Farmers aren't very popular. Those who are rich are assumed to have succeeded at the expense of the rest of us. They have cheated us, poisoned us, destroyed the very ...

The New Statesman Essay - One chicken soup for the soul to go

• Damian Thompson
• 18 December 1998

Damian Thompson urges the churches to pay attention to music, dance and TV

The best place to think about the future of religion, in my experience, is over a cup of coffee - or, to be precise, over a tall, semi-skimmed vanilla latte ...

Thinker's Corner

• 18 December 1998

British Constitutional Revolution: challenges for the English regions (Centre for Reform, Dean Bradley House, 52 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AF, 0171-222 5121, £5). The Lib Dem peer Dick Newby offers ...

The New Statesman Interview - David Attenborough

• Mary Riddell
• 18 December 1998

He is a "boring left-wing liberal" who despairs of standards at the BBC and dares tease Peter Mandelson

Obliging soul that he is, David Attenborough suggested that he come to the NS office for this interview. He arrives brandishing his pensioner's rail pass and extolling the virtues of ...

I take thee, in a lawful relationship

• Penny Mansfield
• 18 December 1998

Marriage means better health, more money, more sex. But we still need some alternatives, argues Penny Mansfield

The good relationship these days is central to our idea of happiness. We tell researchers that, apart from staying free of serious illness, the quality of our relationships is our ...

At Xmas, my mother, usually so sad, burst into song

• Darcus Howe
• 18 December 1998

Two Christmases ago my mother made a series of unusual telephone calls to London from her home in Trinidad. "Is your father coming home for the Christmas holidays?" she asked ...

A city lost to the forces of darkness

• William Dalrymple
• 18 December 1998
• 1 comment

Indian independence and partition destroyed the city of Lucknow and its Hindu-Muslim culture. William Dalrymplemourns the passing of a civilisation

On the eve of the great mutiny of 1857, Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Avadh, was indisputably the largest, most prosperous and most civilised pre-colonial city in India. ...

It's that time of year when little messages reveal just how important you are (or aren't)

• Sean French
• 18 December 1998

I never quite know what to do about Christmas cards. Some years I send them, some years I don't. The result is a strange sort of fractured, dislocated correspondence from ...

This England

• 18 December 1998

Mr Park, a self-employed technician from Melksham, Wiltshire, first put up his Christmas decorations in the summer of 1993 to "cheer himself up". They have not been down since.

Each ...

Unite against the tyranny of toys!

• Ziauddin Sardar
• 18 December 1998

Ziauddin Sardar implores parents to resist demands for Sindies and Barbies and to give their children empty cardboard boxes instead

Christmas, the season of goodwill, is also the season of tyranny. It is the season when little children blackmail their parents to buy the toy that is all the rage ...

A time for unadulterated tradition

• Simon Heffer
• 18 December 1998

Salmon is naff and goose a waste of time. As for the wine, if George III couldn't drink it, then neither should you. Simon Hefferpraises a proper Christmas

By this stage you will have been sickened by the endless pretentious articles, in every colour supplement and magazine you have looked at in the past fortnight, telling you how ...

What they want for 1999

• Catherine Webb
• 18 December 1998

Politicians, novelists, broadcasters and historians confided their hopes for the last year of the millennium to Catherine Webb

Victoria Glendinning, biographer"A thorough international review and control of the arms trade. For governments to admit that conflicts have happened and will continue to do so because the powers ...

Watch out when you go back home

• Oliver James
• 18 December 1998

R D Laing was right: family Christmases can drive us mad, argues Oliver James

Every December I am asked to write something for the press about "how to survive Christmas" or "why Christmas is such hell". Usually I take the money and run but ...

Would you believe it?

• Peter Stanford
• 18 December 1998

Thumping good stories are part of the Christian church's success, but Peter Stanfordthinks it is time to distinguish fact from fiction

I've got to be away on the afternoon my two-year-old son is having his pals round for a pre-Christmas get-together, so we need a replacement Santa Claus. My suggestion of ...

A dysfunctional family feast

• Henry Sutton
• 18 December 1998

Christmas today, writes Henry Sutton, means having to say you're sorry to your step-parents, stepchildren, step-siblings and your parents' significant others . . .

"Thank God it happens only once a year," my mum invariably says. Yet for years I had two Christmas Days, one straight after the other. Both with presents and hot ...

On Christmas night, a baby cried

• Liz Hunt
• 18 December 1998

Liz Hunt explains why, when asked if she believes in ghosts, she says "maybe"

"Besides this earth, and besides the race of men,there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits;that world is round us, for it is everywhere("Jane Eyre" ...

Now, boys, that's not very nice

• Caroline Daniel
• 18 December 1998

The left believes in altruism, equality, community and all-round cuddliness. Caroline Danielfinds new Labour a bit short on these qualities

When John Major departed from 10 Downing Street he left behind more than just memories of snatched sandwiches over his desk and morning tea in the kitchen with Norma. He ...

The KGB interrogated my turkey

• John Kampfner
• 18 December 1998

John Kampfnerrecalls 25 December 1991 in Moscow - the day Gorbachev resigned

I had a question for the British ambassador. What country were we in, I wondered? He stopped, frowned, and replied that he was as lost as I was. This was ...

Where do all the women go?

• Anthony Browne
• 18 December 1998

Look around the streets and you will see that the homeless are almost exclusively male. Anthony Brownefinds out why

John is not typical of the homeless. Well educated and articulate, he has slept rough for five years, ever since his wife died. Since his loss, John has sought refuge ...

From North to South - an air that kills

• David Nicholson-Lord
• 18 December 1998

What is the price of an air-conditioned car? A few drowned Bangladeshis

The year's end may seem an unlikely time to start waxing sentimental about the British weather. Winter in Britain, even when it isn't chilly, means skies the colour of dishwater ...

A very English affair

• Andrew Stephen
• 18 December 1998

The sacking of the organist at Westminster Abbey offers a glimpse of the closed ranks and snobbery that still rule our Establishment

Do you have to live outside your own country to understand fully its national characteristics and foibles, both positive and negative? Having lived most of the past decade in Washington, ...

The brightness and the glory

• Stephen Smith
• 18 December 1998
• 1 comment

A 154-foot tower, a chandelier weighing 300 kilos. Stephen Smithgains entry to the Mormon temple in Chorley, with its wedding chamber and celestial room

It must have been all the excitement, but as I entered the soaring new Mormon temple in Lancashire, I was distracted by an urge to perform an irredeemably earth-bound function. ...

How can I cut Mrs Windsor out of my life?

• John-Paul Flintoff
• 18 December 1998

John-Paul Flintoff wants to give up royalty. But the Queen is everywhere, even if you are lost at sea

If you're vegetarian, it's so simple. You just cut meat out of your diet. The issue is entirely in your own hands. Everybody else may eat meat if they wish, ...

No more sleeping with the enemy

• Njeri Rugene
• 18 December 1998

Masai husbands regarded wife-beating as an age-old tradition and inalienable right - until Agnes came along. Njeri Rugeneand Beatrice Newbery report

The Masai are not labelled Kenya's most conservative tribe for nothing. Their daily lives have hardly changed for centuries: the men graze their goats and cattle on the dry, dusty ...

You must be mad to speak to me

• Christina Lamb
• 18 December 1998

A ride on the London Underground makes Christina Lamb less than proud to be British

I tried to talk to a fellow passenger on the Tube recently. I did this, I hasten to add, not out of some strange perversion nor for a sociological study, ...

New Media Awards - How to freshen up democracy

• Patrick Dunleavy
• 18 December 1998

Imagine tracking your tax form, following a planning inquiry or lobbying your MP, all from home. Patrick Dunleavyand Stuart Weir think it can be done

Jack Straw's secret is now thrillingly out in the open. Against all expectations, the new draft freedom of information bill is the most radical departure this government has yet undertaken. ...

New Media Awards - Why geeks are heroes of democracy

• Andrew Brown
• 18 December 1998

The open net that we know could turn into an instrument of state power

One of the pervading ironies of the Internet is that it was largely built by anarchists but paid for by the military; both parties believed that they were getting a ...

The Instant Expert Kit - Impeachment

• Duncan Parrish
• 18 December 1998

The "I" word? Sounds like it's getting serious . . .It certainly is. No US president has actually been impeached since 1868.

So Clinton could be removed from office ...

Only connect

• 18 December 1998

Mark Leonard is partly right - we do feel safer on the streets after dark when there are plenty of people about ("Just get out and have fun!", 4 December). ...

Official secret or cover-up?

• 18 December 1998

Would you care to tell us more about the Ministry of Defence police - the chaps who dawn-raided Gillian Linscott ("Dawn raids: a guide to the etiquette", 11 December)? The ...

Source of inequality

• 18 December 1998

You lead on "Warning: inequality kills" (4 December), Steve Richards follows on taxes, then there's a piece on (groan!) the Third Way. But you fail, like the Labour government, to ...

Ration that man

• 18 December 1998

Under a previous Statesman editor there was a profusion of letters from Keith Flett. A change of editor brought welcome relief for some time, but I notice he has crept ...

Weary, wary voters were looking for real change before they would elect Labour

• 18 December 1998

Francis Beckett argues plausibly that "old" Labour could have won the election in 1992, which was lost only after an untimely stumble in support precipitated by televised images of the ...

Tabloid agendas

• 18 December 1998

Peter Wilby tells us that since 1992 the news agenda has been dominated by royalty, the sex lives of politicians, footballers and pop stars (Media, 11 December). Isn't he really ...

In the Union of Facelessness

• Will Self
• 18 December 1998

An original short story

John had found Vienna to be even more absurd than he remembered. The name was a problem to begin with: in German "Wien"; hence wiener; hence - when he was ...

Northern light

• John Henshall
• 18 December 1998

Photography

Last week I visited Liverpool, a place which remains one of the great cities. The northern skies glowered as if a hurricane were on the way. At a fine high ...

The life of Brian

• Charles Darwent
• 18 December 1998

Art

"Damien?" says Brian Sewell, his expression somewhere between a rictus and a moue. "Oh, he's really not entirely without talent, you know. I mean, the dead sharks are all crap, ...

Remote possibilities

• Hugh Aldersey-Williams
• 18 December 1998

Design

There are not many products we have not even troubled to name. But the television remote control unit, a functional description, became "the remote", and there we left it. Like ...

Star trek

• Ziauddin Sardar
• 18 December 1998

Astronomy

The Hubble telescope, anchored 350 miles above the earth, boldly goes where no man has gone before - straight to the heart of the Universe. Since December 1993, when its ...

Gone for a song

• Richard Cook
• 18 December 1998

Folk

Britain feels saturated with music, but there is precious little left of national origin and tradition. If there was ever such a thing as the voice of the people, it ...

Key-notes

• Dermot Clinch
• 18 December 1998

Classical

In a year of concerts many will be good, many bad, and more will be somewhere in between. A couple will be great. Was anything more disappointing than Seiji Ozawa's ...

Fact or fiction

• Jonathan Romney
• 18 December 1998

Film

Considering the recent surge in that hybrid TV form the docu-soap, you might think we'd be sceptical about the supposed separateness of filmed reality and fiction. Yet at heart we're ...

White mischief

• Andrew Billen
• 18 December 1998

Television

Just when everyone else has jumped off the flagging bandwagon he helped design, Paul Watson this week abandoned the fly-on-the-wall documentary and went back to interviewing people. The result, White ...

Child's play

• Kate Kellaway
• 18 December 1998

Theatre

Raymond Briggs's Snowman is celebrating his 20th birthday (that makes him, I believe, in snowman years pretty ancient). But his charms have not melted away with time. He is to ...

Sites of interest

• Andrew Brown
• 18 December 1998

Internet

Keith Dawson was walking on Cape Cod when he found a roll of film abandoned on a wooden bench. One of the small, innumerable sadnesses of modern life: someone would ...

Currant opinion

• Bee Wilson
• 18 December 1998

Food

Do you like mince pies? Or Christmas pudding? Or that marzipan-coated fruitcake that gets wheeled out with more mince pies, just when you've almost got your breath back from lunch? ...

Sweet surrender

• Victoria Moore
• 18 December 1998

Drink

Decadent is the season. Jewels and furs and little black dresses are shimmering down every dark street. Fairy lights adorn every tree. In every corner of London champagne bottles jostle ...

Thanks to a Sun goal, it's 2-1 against EMU.. over to Ally in Vienna

• Ian Hargreaves
• 18 December 1998

Media

Once in a while, you receive an offer you can only refuse. An American publisher suggested earlier this year that I achieve boundless fame and wealth by creating a European ...

Who needs a football agent anyway? OK, I admit it, I do

• Hunter Davies
• 18 December 1998

I had lunch last week with two agents who between them look after Alan Shearer, Michael Owen, David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, David Platt, Dion Dublin, Gary Lineker, Graeme le Saux, ...

The idea of a European superstate was born in Britain, but we've remained stubbornly on the margins ever since

• Ben Pimlott
• 18 December 1998

This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair Hugo Young Macmillan, 558pp, £20

How many British people fail to yawn at the mention of Europe? Few topics of conversation are such a powerful bromide. Yet if nothing else has sedated the citizenry more ...

Snobbery unbound

• Andrew Neil
• 18 December 1998

The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt: Volume One Sarah Curtis (editor) Macmillan, 748pp, £25

Reading Woodrow Wyatt's posthumously published diaries is like eating a Chinese meal: there are plenty of tasty titbits (the Queen Mother is supposedly a closet Thatcherite, Rupert Murdoch once considered ...

Beijing's mane man

• Jonathan Mirsky
• 18 December 1998

Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite Bruce Gilley University of California Press, 410pp, £19.95

Chinese leaders, whose flacks emphasise their "plain living" (a bowl of noodles handed to them by a modest wife is always enough), have a penchant for self-eulogising titles. Jiang Zemin, ...

A Year in Paperback

• 18 December 1998

Literary editor's recommendations

Fiction

John Banville: The Untouchable (Picador, £5.99)

Emmanuel Carrere: Class Trip, translated by Linda Coverdale (Quartet, £6)

Raymond Carver: Elephant and Other Stories (Harvill Press, £6.99)

Stella Duffy: Singling out ...

Poetry - Surveying in verseland

• Lavinia Greenlaw
• 18 December 1998

The best anthologies are big, small, exhaustive and selective. Lavinia Greenlaw explains

Poetry anthologies should fit in your pocket, to be lived with, mulled over and dipped into. Then again they should be capacious, exhaustive and many-angled, making the case that poetry ...

Commentary - Great writing, shame about the writer

• Sousa Jamba
• 18 December 1998

Sousa Jamba won't let V S Naipaul's temper spoil his enjoyment of the great man's work

Paul Theroux came on stage at the Lyttleton Theatre on the South Bank to loud applause. He then started ruffling papers and reading quotes from negative reviews. Turning to the ...

Competition - Win a bottle of champagne

• 18 December 1998

No 3557 Set by John O'Byrne

You were asked for business euphemisms for 1999.

Report by Ms de Meaner

It's true: we British were born to speak in euphemisms. ...

Just an ordinary town where Monty collected his pension

• Paul Barker
• 18 December 1998

Two old men are standing outside the Argos shop, killing time. At the railway station, the commuters with first-class tickets line themselves up at the precise point they always go ...

I don't want to moan or anything, but where are all my Christmas cards?

• Laurie Taylor
• 18 December 1998
• 1 comment

I certainly don't wish to fill a column which has got to last you for the next two weeks with something which will sound like a purely personal grievance. But ...