24 October 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
The debt pandemic
Between us we owe £1 trillion and we can't afford the repayments. British consumers have a serious dose of borrowing sickness and, as Liam Halligan warns, it may be fatal to the economy
Features
The Bank borrows an idea - from Enron
After the Treasury, now the Bank of England is embracing the oil firm's dodgy methods. That's very bad news
Saddam: guilty - and quickly
Hussein's charge sheet should be one of the longest in history, but hundreds of cases against him will not be heard. Chris Stephen fears that justice will not be done
Girls as chauvinist pigs
Ladette culture is not "empowering" for young women - it's just a way to reassure men that, unlike feminists, they pose no threat, argues Kira Cochrane
Still in the shadow of mayhem
Downtown Beirut has been rebuilt, but behind the chic facade lurk tension and violence
Essay
NS Essay - 'The myth of the chattering classes was the product of a Thatcherite populism that aimed to short-circuit traditional elites, speaking directly to "ordinary people" '
From Bollinger Bolsheviks to Gaitskell's Frognal set, the suspicion of well-heeled urban radicals has a long history. Their demonisation in the 1980s, along with the celebration of Middle England, obscured a much more significant political struggle
Regulars
The Politics Column
The politics column - Martin Bright finds torture is now tolerable
In Committee Room 1 in the Commons, the future of our democracy is in the balance. Here the law lords are being asked to sweep aside 250 years of legal precedent
Mark Thomas looks for lost evidence
Getting rid of the whole bothersome process of trial and evidence would make policing a doddle
Lindsey Hilsum meets the boys in Basra
Basra is slipping from the grasp of the British. They may contain or absorb some of the violence, but not for long
Commons Confidential
Village life - Kevin Maguire serenades the Tories
Inscrutable faces all around, astonishing Tories and the side effects of Emily's yeast
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Official pranksters
Freed from doing official portraits of Communist grandees, contemporary artists in Russia have turned to scandal to make their mark. Rosie Millard went to Moscow to find out the story behind the new avant-garde
The sheer slog of life
Documentary film - It has become fashionable to release quirky documentaries about social oddities. Michael Glawogger is an exception. Sukhdev Sandhu reports
New York notes
You need to go off-off Broadway to find a reflection of today's America
The odd couple
Architecture - There are two accepted modes of designing a building at the moment. And Caruso St John chooses to ignore both
Theatre
Michael Portillo - Drawing the line
Theatre - The race to fix longitude makes an elegant, intriguing tale, writes Michael Portillo Longitude Greenwich Theatre, London SE10
Film
John Lyttle - Hit woman
Film - Almond eyes are not enough to turn a star into a bounty hunter, writes John Lyttle Domino (15)
Television
Andrew Billen - Reality bites
Television - Two documentaries offer little chance of a fairy-tale ending, writes Andrew Billen Dispatches (Channel 4) Tough Kids, Tough Love (BBC2)
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies counts Ferraris at White Hart Lane
Good job I was wearing sun specs in the car park at White Hart Lane
Books
In the killing fields. Robert Fisk has spent his life cataloguing the misery inflicted on the Muslim world by the west. Roger Hardy on a remarkable, flawed and deeply draining history
The Great War For Civilisation: the conquest of the Middle East Robert Fisk Fourth Estate, 1,366pp, £25 ISBN 184115007X
Life changes fast
The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion Fourth Estate, 227pp, £12.99 ISBN 140004314X
The whole picture
Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs: 100 years of the best journalism by women Edited by Eleanor Mills and Kira Cochrane Constable, 364pp, £12.99 ISBN 1845291654
Show of force
Not For the Faint-Hearted: my life fighting crime John Stevens Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 338pp, £18.99 ISBN 0297848429
Fiction - Home truths
Mother, Missing Joyce Carol Oates Fourth Estate, 434pp, £17.99 ISBN 0007207956
Private affairs
The Duff Cooper Diaries Edited by John Julius Norwich Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 512pp, £20 ISBN 0297848437
Net growth
The Search: how Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture John Battelle Nicholas Brealey, 311pp, £16.99 ISBN 1857883616
Fiction - Disco inferno
Anthology of Apparitions Simon Liberati Translators: Paul Buck and Catherine Petit Pushkin Press, 139pp, £10.99 ISBN 1901285588
