27 March 2006
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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
Trident: we've been conned again
The government says we need to update our "independent deterrent". Fresh evidence shows, however, that it isn't independent at all
Features
Just one more heave
Politics and budget special - Gordon Brown's Budget was designed to outmanoeuvre David Cameron, but was overshadowed by the crisis engulfing Tony Blair
My baby has turned into a monster
Jon Norton, who married Mo Mowlam, is ashamed to admit he helped set Labour on the road to today's fundraising scandal
A tiny step for womankind
Argentina is fighting the fashionistas with a law against micro-sized clothing. Annie Kelly reports
The cult of cheerfulness
When Barbara Ehrenreich set out to investigate corporate culture in America, she found a sinister, "Christianised" world where anger is outlawed
A lifetime for a spliff
Don't use marijuana in the US unless you want to risk going to prison for the rest of your life. America has the most punitive penal system in the world
Shhh! Save our sleepers
Sleeper trains are a beautiful way to travel but the service is fast fading. We must act now, urges Andrew Martin
Essay
NS Essay - 'Marriage has been tragically unfashionable among the left-leaning classes since the 1970s - but what if it's actually our best chance of happiness?'
Fish still don't need bicycles. But maybe women do need men after all. Laura Tennant examines the case for husbands and finds it surprisingly strong
Interview
NS Interview - Peter Hain
Northern Ireland's lord of the manor still has his eye on the main event in Downing Street
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
The men in grey suits must do their duty
Blair has to be persuaded to stand down. The announcement should take place this spring, with a leadership contest in the summer
Lindey Hilsum defends her decision to wear a headscarf
Wearing a headscarf is a wonderful thing, because it alerts the audience to the compromises a reporter has to make, writes Lindey Hilsum
John Pilger doesn't buy the sales pitch of war lovers
Turn on the television and there they are, night after night, intoning not so much their love of war as their sales pitch for it
Commons Confidential
Village life - Kevin Maguire catches a rat in the tearoom
A rat is found in the tearoom, a cyber fool is exposed, and class war returns to the Commons
Culture
South-west sound
Music - Jason Cowley traces the career of the troubled, unique collective that changed the face of British dance music
Maximum cities
London, Paris and New York are dying – the 21st century belongs to the fertile chaos of the third-world metropolis. Rana Dasgupta heralds the arrival of an alternative vision of modernity
Overdrawn
Art - William Cook on the artist who came to hate his best-known creation
Radio
Radio - Rachel Cooke
The very word "relevant", the BBC's favourite fairy dust, is starting to annoy me
Theatre
Marriage rows
Theatre - comedy of sexual frustration proves as bitter as any tragedy, writes Michael Portillo Period of Adjustment Almeida Theatre, London N1
Film
Agenda bending
Film - A transsexual's story shows minorities can be moral, too, writes Victoria Segal Transamerica (15)
Television
Red or dead
Television - Tales of post-perestroika chaos make tragicomic viewing, writes Andrew Billen The State of Russia season (More4)
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies
Match-day hospitality is a nice little earner for yesterday's heroes.
Books
The man who changed his mind. Francis Fukuyama, displaying his usual knack for capturing the zeitgeist, has abandoned the neocons and recanted his support for war in Iraq. But do his latest prescriptions for US foreign policy add up?
After the Neocons: America at the crossroads Francis Fukuyama Profile Books, 226pp, £12.99 ISBN 1861979223
Orkney boy
The Life of George Mackay Brown: through the eye of a needle Maggie Fergusson John Murray, 330pp, £25 ISBN 0719556597
Land of mystery
Another Fool in the Balkans: in the footsteps of Rebecca West Tony White Cadogan Guides, 255pp, £8.99 ISBN 1860111513
The joys of farting around
A Man Without a Country Kurt Vonnegut Bloomsbury, 146pp, £14.99 ISBN 0747584060
Out of the ashes
The Good Life Jay McInerney Bloomsbury, 354pp, £17.99 ISBN 0747580901
Tangled web
The Weight of Numbers Simon Ings Atlantic Books, 422pp, £12.99 ISBN 1843544636
Wrong number
Cell Stephen King Hodder & Stoughton, 426pp, £17.99 ISBN 0340921447
End of the world as we know it
The Brief History of the Dead Kevin Brockmeier John Murray, 252pp, £12.99 ISBN 0719568188
