17 July 2000

From the Editor…

sue-matthias 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

Sue Matthias, Acting Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

Special Report - Lost souls in the city in the sky

A council estate of 10,000 people, the largest in Europe, faces demolition. But do the people really want to go?

By Sarah Helm

Features

How Blair and Blunkett betrayed us

By Malcolm Clarke

Exclusive: Trafford parents give up the fight against the 11-plus

Unquenchable, except by death

By Geoffrey Beattie

As the razor wire went up in Drumcree, the loyalists prepared to re-fight the Battle of the Somme in their own land. Geoffrey Beattie watched them

Dirty deeds in deepest Devon

By Stuart Weir

Labour's latest ideas for electoral reform are a dangerous stitch-up, argues Stuart Weir

Madonna, Prince William and Blair want to show us their real selves -- but they don't want to live like real people

By Lauren Booth

Will the Tories harden on the euro?

By Simon Heffer

Hague is under pressure to declare the single currency a constitutional issue and to say he will never enter it. Simon Hefferreports

Click your mouse and vote

By John Naughton

Democracy is in such a poor state that some suggest financial incentives for voting. But could salvation lie with the internet?

Must rush! I've got to see my spiritual director

By Helen Kirwan-Taylor

There's someone to prewash your salad, someone to do your nails, someone to make sure you burn off all those calories. So why not someone to talk to God for you?

The swan song of Waterstone's

By Joel Ricketts

Commercial pressures risk ruining the book lover's favourite chain

It's all in your best interests, sonny

By Alexander Hay

Alexander Hay, on the dole after graduation, confronts the red tape of the New Deal

Shaking off Uncle Sam

By John Lloyd

France has a mission for its presidency of the EU: to roll back the Americanisation of Europe. Will Britain renounce its "special relation"?

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

Why high petrol prices are good

Diary

In my eagerness to avoid adding to my father's list of enemies, I broke the law and handed out a false name

By Annabel Heseltine

Paul Routledge

By Paul Routledge

Ken's ass need fear nothing from Trevor

By Darcus Howe

If I spend ten minutes a week with my kids, that's a big advance on the traditional, middle-class nil minutes

By Sean French

This England

Media

Press hounds separate the man from the boys

By Ian Hargreaves

Media - Ian Hargreaves

Another week, another new novel. Which character am I this time?

By Laurie Taylor

Competition - Win a bottle of champagne

Arts & Culture

Showing the Shoah

By Rebecca Abrams

Is it possible to represent the Holocaust without falsifying it? Is it an experience that should ever be aestheticised? Rebecca Abrams on the problems of showing the Shoah