27 June 2005

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

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

Smokescreen

Despite the government's anti-smoking bluster, the big tobacco companies live a charmed life in Britain, especially in the courts. You can't sue them and win. Investigation

By Stephen Davis

Features

Welcome to Iran. . . You're arrested

By Lindsey Hilsum

The battle between reformers and clerics might be exercising the rest of the world, but Iranians have done what all electorates do and voted with their wallets

Mugabe turns on old comrades

By Mark Olden

Liberation-war veterans are the latest targets of the burnings and bulldozers

Beyond straight "A"s

By Susan Greenfield

Exam-factory schools are churning out model students who can achieve faultless results - but lack any intellectual curiosity

Over the sea to Skye

By Natalie Brierley

Scotland knows that its future lies in broadband, but it must not forget the islands. Natalie Brierley reports

Essay

NS Essay - 'Accumulation of wealth is unjust where it arises not from hard work and risk-taking enterprise, but from ''brute luck'' factors such as returns from property. Inheritance is a form of brute-luck inequality'

By Anthony Giddens

The gap between rich and poor is far too wide and there are things the government can do about it without slipping back into the "old egalitarianism" it so despises. An exclusive extract from a new book by Patrick Diamond and Anthony Giddens

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Regulars

New Statesman Leader

Iraq - the issue we have chosen to forget

The Politics Column

Politics - Stryker McGuire asks: what's so special?

By Stryker McGuire

The special relationship has not been a laughing matter for some time, and certainly not since Blair went to war along with Bush

John Pilger isn't celebrating victory

By John Pilger

Tony Blair's "vision for Africa" is about as patronising and exploitative as a stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added)

Darcus Howe - sees justice done

By Darcus Howe

The price to be paid for a carnival of calumny? How about £60,000?

The busness - Patrick Hosking tells it straight on poker

By Patrick Hosking

The thirtysomething entrepreneurs behind PartyGaming are worth $2bn each. Not bad for a pair with backgrounds in pornography and computer programming

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

The communist heaven that is Cuba

By James Sparshatt

Helping the National Theatre get inside a Cuban cigar factory should have been easy for the photographer James Sparshatt. The only problem was, when they arrived on the island, the state-run factories had all been ordered to shut down . . .

Among the first to fall

By Simon Poe

Poetry - Early First World War poets are typically overlooked in favour of the grim realism expressed during the conflict's final moments. A new exhibition on one of them redresses the balance

See Venice and cry

By Rachel Withers

Contemporary art - Earnest academic chat? Bright, media-friendly gossip? Rachel Withers finds the Venice Biennale overstuffed with breakfast meetings

Theatre

Michael Portillo - At death's door

By Michael Portillo

Theatre - There's little life left in a classic tale of murder and deception, writes Michael Portillo The Postman Always Rings Twice Playhouse Theatre, London WC2

Film

Miranda Sawyer - The hard sell

By Miranda Sawyer

Film - Two scruffy students expose the madness of marketing. By Miranda Sawyer Czech Dream (12A)

Television

Andrew Billen - Awkward squad

By Andrew Billen

Television - People don't always improve with age, but Doctor Who does, writes Andrew Billen Antisocial Old Buggers (Channel 4) Doctor Who (BBC1)

Books

As good as it gets? Democracy once stood for self-government by a society of equals. Today, the concept is yoked to capitalism, and most representative democracies are inescapably inegalitarian. David Marquand on the subversion of a noble ideal

By David Marquand

Democracy and Populism: fear and hatred John Lukacs Yale University Press, 272pp, £16 ISBN 0300107730 Setting the People Free: the story of democracy John Dunn Atlantic Books, 246pp, £16.99