07 July 2003
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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
661 new crimes - and counting
Nick Cohen tots up new Labour's most extraordinary record: the hundreds of fresh reasons it has found for sending people to prison. And there are more to come
Features
Peter Tatchell proposes a Civil Commitment Pact
Why should the new civil partnerships be reserved for those in love or having sex?
The lessons we can learn from Rwanda
Our obsession with fighting terrorism is creating dangerously weakened states. The consequences for poor nations could be catastrophic
Who's on the testosterone?
Women trying to survive in the macho world of politics are resorting to hormonal help, learns Bernard Mallee
Special report 1- Maybe it's because he's a Londoner
The great Tory lie - that you can have better public services without paying for them - has been exposed. Ken Livingstone on how devolution has worked for the nation's capital
Special report 2 - Big, chaotic and out of control
Tony Travers argues that the capital may benefit from being governed only fitfully
Special report 3 - The city that forever resists the rational
Since it burst its stone banks in medieval times, London has defied central planners. Only Margaret Thatcher understood its anarcho-dynamism. By Will Self
Essay
NS Essay - There is a character missing from the cast of political life: the public intellectual
Academics write in peculiar language for specialist peers; think-tanks are slaves to corporate funding. So will politics now remain an ideas-free zone? By Richard Reeves
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner finds defiance at the BBC
Downing Street appears to be arguing that, if it denies a particular story, then the BBC should not run it. The implications are Orwellian
Darcus Howe welcomes a Tory to Lambeth
Brixton welcomes a Tory who understands the importance of neighbourliness
John Pilger insists that all governments lie
Unless we apply the lesson "all governments are liars" to our own leaders, British fighter jets and chemical weapons technology will continue to wreck lives all over the world
Film
Tough love behind bars
Film - Philip Kerr is made to squirm by a prison drama exploring male rape
Theatre
Sex, Scrabble and murder
Theatre - Sheridan Morley on Ibsen's late-life crisis, a woolly Stoppard and a powerful dose of inner-city reality
Television
In Shakespeare's footsteps
Television - Andrew Billen on a search for the Bard that fails to convey any insights into his work
Books
Desolate
A short story, written for the New Statesman by Rachel Cusk
The quiet sceptic. Mary Midgley has consistently opposed attempts to transform scientific theories into political doctrines. In her latest book, she takes issue with the "magnificent visions" of the new geneticists. By Edward Skidelsky The quiet sceptic
The Myths We Live By Mary Midgley Routledge, 192pp, £19.99 ISBN 0415309069
Up close and impersonal
The Clinton Wars: an insider's account of the White House years Sidney Blumenthal Viking, 822pp, £25 ISBN 0670912042
Cold comfort at Hogwarts
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J K Rowling Bloomsbury, 768pp, £16.99 ISBN 0747569606
Universal song
Beethoven's Ninth: a political history Esteban Buch (Translated by Richard Miller) University of Chicago Press, 327pp, £16.50 ISBN 0226078124
Novel of the week
Dynamo Tariq Goddard Sceptre, 288pp, £12.99 ISBN 0340821485
City of hope
The Birth of Sydney: the story of Britain's arrival in the Antipodes Edited and introduced by Tim Flannery William Heinemann, 349pp, £20 ISBN 0434008761
Secret texts
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a story of love, books and revolution Azar Nafisi I B Tauris, 350pp, £14.95 ISBN 1860649815
