11 August 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
Why nasty guys rule and nice guys let them
Even democracies are invariably led by the hawks in society. But we have evolved to help each other and work co-operatively, so doves will triumph in the end
Features
The fire that shames Labour and its detention camps policy
Yarl's Wood was built to placate those who believed we were being swamped by asylum-seekers. But when guards at the private prison lost control, the results were catastrophic
Can you tame the tourist?
Venice wants to fine its visitors into being better behaved. Some hope, writes Decca Aitkenhead
Open wide, please! (Your wallet, that is)
Aggressive private dentist chains are destroying the few remaining national health practices, and government promises of dental care for all are unlikely to stop the rot
Social enterprise - Third sector, fourth way
Voluntary groups have a new deal with government. But is there enough money behind it?
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner on the ramifications of Blair's demise
In Europe and America, people are considering the "when" rather than the "if" of Blair's eventual demise and what it means for Bush. But the ramifications extend well beyond that
Darcus Howe
Notting Hill Carnival is not a spectacle to watch from corporate boxes
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Back to the future
Postwar sci-fi TV serials such as Dr Who might have seemed far-fetched and fantastical, but they accurately reflected a troubled age
Fire and ice
Art - Richard Cork compares two very different meditations on the fragility of life today
Second Dan
Music - Richard Cook on the return of a US rock group which was old-fashioned from the start
Film
Child's play
Film - Philip Kerr thanks Walt Disney for helping him to survive the summer holidays
Television
In search of the perfect Burger
Television - Andrew Billen finds the controversial sitcom as clever and objectionable as ever
Books
The wavering gaze.
In her 1977 book On Photography, Susan Sontag suggested that our sympathy for suffering is diminished by a vulgar profusion of images. That is not her view today. George Walden on an intellectual at odds with her more sceptical self
Beyond reasonable doubt
A Prison Diary Volume II: purgatory Jeffrey Archer Macmillan, 310pp, £16.99
A Chaucerian joke
The Clerkenwell Tales Peter Ackroyd Chatto & Windus, 213pp, £15.99 ISBN 1856197069
The art of punnage
Slayer Slang: a Buffy the Vampire Slayer lexicon Michael Adams Oxford University Press, 308pp, £12.99 ISBN 0195160339
Scarlet fever
The Red Canary: the story of the first genetically engineered animal Tim BirkheadWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 284pp, £16.99
Commentary - This summer's No 1
A series of novels about a black female detective in Botswana, written by a white male law professor in Edinburgh, is gaining a huge following. And deservedly so
