12 March 2001
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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
Cover story
Please tax me, I'm too rich
The rich have found a new way to get one up on other rich people: parading their social consciences and insisting that the government takes their money
Features
Brown moves the goalposts
Both main parties are now promising extra cash for the disadvantaged. For British politics, that represents an astounding change
Get on your bike, Farmer Giles
Our farmers spread disease, destroy wildlife, threaten tourism and soak up subsidy. British agriculture is just not worth the trouble, argues David Cox
Was Selby really such a freak?
Roger Harrabin asks why we shrug our shoulders when we hear that it was a road accident
Bring back the right to strike
Francis Beckett explains why "everybody out" is now a cry so rarely heard from British workers
Just a small war in the Balkans
Nato now sees the Serbs as the good guys and is looking for the quiet life. Ethnic Albanians cannot understand the change of heart, reports Lindsey Hilsum
Safe only from Lenny Henry
From their exile in the desert, the Sahraouis are set to fight Morocco, reports Mark Thomas
Gangsters grab the limelight in Bollywood
Salil Tripathi on the dark side of India's film industry, where leading actors fail to live happily ever after
Adopt our manifesto of 50 small ideas
NS/Fabian Society Second-Term Agenda - Adopt our manifesto of 50 small ideas. By Denis MacShane MP, Tom Levitt MP and Derek Wyatt MP
Essay
The New Statesman Essay - We must learn to govern ourselves
Why has new Labour found it so difficult to deliver on so many of its promises? Because it relies on centralised power, argues Tom Bentley
Culture
Picture imperfect
Sculptor, painter and writer, Brassai might have become a dilettante. But his honest gaze made him one of the 20th century's finest photographers. Tom Rosenthal remembers the man who captured the soul of Paris
Perfect ensemble
Music - Peter Kingston meets the director of the superlative Dresden Staatskapelle
Theatre
Water and wine
Theatre - Lauren Booth enjoys two plays that challenge ideas about African American art
Film
Drama out of a crisis
Film - Philip Kerr relives the fear of thirteen unforgettable days in October 1962
Books
To smack or not to smack. Children have become the new parents, a powerful interest group supported by numerous well-paid advisers. Rachel Cusk on motherhood - the land that feminism forgot
Paranoid Parenting Frank Furedi Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 214pp, £9.99 ISBN 0713994886 Three Shoes, One Sock and No Hairbrush Rebecca Abrams Cassell, 224pp, £9.99
Paperback writer
Blackbird Singing: lyrics and poems 1965-1999 Paul McCartney Faber & Faber, 164pp, £14.99 ISBN 0571207898
Joseph K - my guy
World War 3.0: Microsoft and its enemies Ken Auletta Profile Books, 438pp, £17.99 ISBN 186197390X The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age Pekka Himanen Secker & Warburg, 233pp, £12
Novel of the week
number9dream David Mitchell Sceptre, 420pp, £10 ISBN 0340739762
Boy talk
Disobedience Jane Hamilton Doubleday, 273pp, £12.99 ISBN 0385601905
All hat and no cattle
The Bow Group James Barr Politico's, 350pp, £25 ISBN 1842750011
Erotic heaven
The Erotomaniac: the secret life of Henry Spencer Ashbee Ian Gibson Faber & Faber, 285pp, £12.99 ISBN 0571196195









