27 March 2000
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From the Editor…
Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly
Features
The end is nigh for the Beveridge welfare state
Donald Hirsch finds the Chancellor not guilty of stinginess to the poor, but records an open verdict on his use of means tests to help them
A culture war rages in Scotland
North of the border, the row over Clause 28 is more bitter than in England, betraying deep divisions on everything from marriage to equality. John Lloyd reports
The great Rover disaster
Geoffrey Robinsonargues that the failure at Longbridge was mainly BMW's, but wonders if the government should be more proactive
A high-flier crashes to earth
Stephen Byers, once Blair's golden boy, is now being blamed for the Rover fiasco. Has it all gone wrong for this new Labour star?
Will he film Saddam's next victims?
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, replies to John Pilger's criticisms of his policy on Iraq
Can humanity stay on top?
We thought we'd rule the world, with robots as servants. More likely, they will take charge while we make the tea. Colin Tudge on a chilling new prophecy
The assassin and the tapeworm
The killer of Verwoerd, architect of apartheid, remains unhonoured in South Africa even now. Jon Robins asks why
The do-gooders flood into the west's new colony
Kosovo is host, not just to the UN forces, but to Bible-bashers and adventure junkies. Helena Smith reports
Honoured in the breach
New Statesman Scotland
Another country
New Statesman Scotland - Travelling through Britain with English and Welsh colleagues, Tom Morton finds himself gently revising some of his more cynical perceptions of home
Scots sound a wake-up call
New Statesman Scotland - Labour's humiliation in the Ayr by-election is worse than mid-term blues. Tom Brownsees the rot setting in
Samuel Smiles
New Statesman Scotland
Primary Tartan
New Statesman Scotland
Arts & Culture
Neurotic outsiders
Was punk merely a scam, or was it a movement that served notice of Britain's cultural and political stagnation? John Harris re-examines punk's assault on orthodoxy and asks: Is pop today all washed out?
Blank generation
Punk culture - Phil Johnson talks to Richard Hell, one-time hellraiser and American father of punk
What Christ looks like
Art - Bruce Kent on how artists have risen to the challenge of representing Christ
Luxury rip-off
Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams is suspicious when he finds too much of a good thing
Film
Men behaving badly
Film - Jonathan Romney on a young Danish film-maker's diagnosis of male violence
Television
High-browbeaten
Television - Andrew Billen on TV's embarrassing attempts at civilising the masses
Books
Comforting, but meaningless. In seeking to popularise philosophy, Alain de Botton has merely trivialised it, smoothing the discipline into a series of silly sound bites. By Edward Skidelsky
The Consolations of Philosophy
Alain de Botton Hamish Hamilton, 320pp, £14.99
ISBN 0241140099
Cleared to go
Hungry for Home
Cole Moreton Viking, 278pp, £14.99
ISBN 0670880124
White and wrong
Livingstone's Tribe: A journey from Zanzibar to the Cape
Stephen Taylor HarperCollins, 260pp, £17.99
ISBN 000255836
The buzzword
Nobrow: the culture of marketing the marketing of culture
John Seabrook Methuen, 213pp, £9.99
ISBN 0375405046
Bad faith
Taliban: Islam, oil and the new great game in central Asia
Ahmed Rashid I B Tauris, 874pp, £12.95
ISBN 1860644171
Novel of the week
Under the Skin
Michel Faber Canongate, 296pp, £9.99
ISBN 0862419271
Emotional geography
Jigsaw: an unsentimental education
Sybille Bedford Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 351pp, £7.99
ISBN 0141181664
A Legacy
Sybille Bedford Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, 384pp, £7.99
Observations
Letters to the Editor
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