24 November 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
The end of the affair
The special relationship is outdated. Blair deserves the axe for his Iraq follies, but can escape it if he now breaks with the US and opts for Europe. By David Marquand
Features
Exclusive: how the BBC will gag its stars
John Kampfner reveals that the freedoms of TV and radio reporters and presenters could be curtailed in the wake of Lord Hutton's report on the Gilligan/Kelly affair
When good people are not all they seem
They're supposed to be non-governmental. But NGOs often get more cash from government than from donations. So who calls the shots?
The age of spend, spend, spend
Young people are encouraged to invest in their future - on borrowed money. But is easy credit sucking them into debts that will limit their life choices? By
Health for export
Cuba, though cash-strapped, provides medical training even for students from the US
When the poor pay twice
To hire voluntary bodies to run public services is to risk a form of regressive taxation. Mathew Little reports
Essay
NS Essay - 'We are faced with a tyranny of small decisions; choices that turn out to be double- edged swords'
What we buy, which school the kids go to - daily life presents a growing array of options. Would we be better off with fewer of them?
Regulars
John Pilger - knows when Bush is lying - his lips move
Blair and Straw dare to suggest that the millions who have rumbled the Bush gang are simply being "fashionably anti-American" - another desperate act by desperate men
Darcus Howe reports bile among older immigrants
Settled migrant communities now repeat the bile that was once uttered by whites
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
The bottom line
We are obsessed by contemporary art. But are we being sold something that isn't there? It is fast, amusing and full of ideas, but ultimately lacking in visual pleasure. For true depth we need to look again at the Old Masters
Art on your sleeve
Music - John Harris charts the changing fashions of modern album design
Regime change
Opera - Peter Conrad on the misery of sitting through a lifeless performance of Aida
Theatre
The world stage
Theatre - Political drama should not only reflect reality but offer hope for change, argues Aleks Sierz
Film
Bachelor party
Film - William Skidelsky on why the kitchen is where the action is for Norway's single males
Television
Hair apparent
Television - Andrew Billen doubts that a new BBC costume drama will appeal to Sunday-night viewers
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies keeps an eye on flash gits in hospitality boxes
Flash gits in hospitality suites show you how well a country is doing
Books
The other side of the hill. Espionage has never been so discredited. The heroic myths of the Second World War have given way to the cynical belief that spooks are just the servants of politicians. But has intelligence ever been as crucial as we thought?
Intelligence in War: knowledge of the enemy from Napoleon to al-Qaeda John Keegan Hutchinson, 443pp, £25 ISBN 0091802296
Nobel beginnings
Living to Tell the Tale Gabriel GarcIa Marquez. Translated by Edith Grossman Jonathan Cape, 484pp, £18.99 ISBN 0224072781
The parlour nihilist
Godard: a portrait of the artist at 70 Colin MacCabe Bloomsbury, 432pp, £25 ISBN 0747563187
Labour of love
The Unmaking of the American Working Class Reg Theriault New Press, 211pp, £15.95
The Atlantic divide
An Alliance at Risk: the United States and Europe since September 11 Laurent Cohen-Tanugi Translated by George A Holoch Jr Johns Hopkins University Press, 160pp, £15 ISBN 0801878411
Poetry - Death chorus
First World War Poems Chosen by Andrew Motion Faber & Faber, 171pp, £12.99 ISBN 0571212077 The Selected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg Edited and with an introduction by Jean Moorcroft Wilson Cecil Woolf, 80pp, £6.95 ISBN 1900564890
Fiction - Killer Joules
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination Helen Fielding Picador, 344pp, £12.99 ISBN 0330432737
Past master
The Way to Paradise Mario Vargas Llosa Faber & Faber, 373pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571220371
