07 February 2005
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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
Push here
Charles Clarke's insistence that Britain is in a "state of emergency" is a cynical sham. We're safer today than we have been at any time since the 1930s
Features
Bikini Alert
According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Britain is currently on the "Black Special" level of the Bikini alert-state system. Christopher Thompson explains
Time to pension off Paxman
Michael Leapman argues that the BBC should abandon the Newsnight style of attack journalism and confine itself to reporting, rather than making the news
In Brussels, the lobbyocracy rules
EU laws affect us all, but it's the corporate lobbyists who have the biggest influence on them. Their power should be made more transparent, argues Barbara Gunnell
Graduate debt? Do a runner . . .
Stuart Dunn finds that, after 15 years of charging tuition fees, New Zealand faces a brain drain
Essay
NS Essay - Drink and be damned
New laws won't reduce our frantic consumption of alcohol. Booze occupies a hole in our core sense of identity which used to be filled by music or politics
Interview
NS Interview - Ken Macdonald
Guantanamo was a legal black hole, says the director of public prosecutions, but he sticks up for Belmarsh and Blunkett. Ken Macdonald interviewed
Regulars
The Politics Column
Politics - John Kampfner on the EU's straight banana factor
The task facing pro-Europeans is bleaker than at any other time in Tony Blair's two terms. So risky is the cause that even David Beckham won't endorse it
Darcus Howe watches monopoly at work in Barbados
How a former UK minister tried but failed to help his multinational bosses
John Pilger finds fear and silence in Australia
Australia, once the land of the "fair go", has collaborated with Guantanamo more closely than any other western government and is guilty of human rights abuses of its own
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
The wow factor
With her first single up for a Brit Award and a new album soon to be released, Kate Bush is back in a big way. It's been a long wait, writes Jason Cowley, but she's worth it
I am what I am
Encounter - Simon Russell Beale's Macbeth has been both celebrated and slammed. He talks to Michael Coveney about this and future roles
Master of surprise
Visual art - No subject or material is too humble for this true heir of Duchamp
Theatre
Michael Portillo - Slow death
Theatre - A once fresh and daring play is killed off in a plodding revival. By Michael Portillo Whose Life Is It Anyway? Comedy Theatre, London SW1
Film
Mark Kermode - A "real" con
Film - The stars cash in, but their fans are short-changed. By Mark Kermode Ocean's Twelve (12A)
Television
Andrew Billen - Shock tactics
Television - Ukip exposes its own ugliness in a witty but disturbing film, writes Andrew Billen Kilroy: Behind the Tan (BBC)
Books
The living dead. In the age of empire, leprosy haunted the popular imagination. Sufferers faced not just an unpleasant disease, but a battle against ignorance and prejudice. By Richard Gott
Don't Fence Me In: leprosy in modern times Tony Gould Bloomsbury, 420pp, £20
Trouble ahead. Ancient peoples ravaged their environments, and paid a heavy price. Mark Lynas wonders if we will learn from the past
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive Jared Diamond Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 575pp, £20 ISBN 0713992867
Off the record
Brown's Britain Robert Peston Short Books, 388pp, £14.99 ISBN 1904095674
State of insecurity
Afghanistan: the mirage of peace Chris Johnson and Jolyon Leslie Zed Books, 237pp, £15.95 ISBN 1842773771
Open connection
Subjects and Sequences: a Margaret Tait reader Edited by Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook Lux, 178pp, £10 ISBN 0954856902
Fiction - This foul world
Old Filth Jane Gardam Chatto & Windus, 320pp, £15.99 ISBN 070117756X
American pastoral
Human Capital Stephen Amidon Viking, 375pp, £12.99 ISBN 0670915270
