Saturday, 5 February 2011
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Leading article: Cameron's confusion over identitySunday, 6 February 2011
He also took issue with something he called multiculturalism, which, he said, "encouraged different cultures to live separate lives". We doubt that this could ever have been described as a "state doctrine". It is a word that usually means little more...
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DJ Taylor: Freedom's just another word for...Sunday, 6 February 2011
Jeremy Clarkson, speaking backstage at that altogether desperate affair, the National Television Awards, struck an almost Miltonic note, when he warned of the dangers of people being punished for "heresy of thought ... you should be allowed to think ...
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Greta Scacchi: Why did I do it? The question to ask is, if it does good, why not?Sunday, 6 February 2011
I was interested in doing a documentary on celebrity activists, because over the years I have been quite an active campaigner myself, involved with environmental causes since my student days and, two years ago, helping to promote a documentary about ...
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Leading article: The Big Society will never be built on the cheapSaturday, 5 February 2011
Yet it would be wrong to dismiss, as some have, the Big Society as a smokescreen for spending cuts and the privatisation of local services. At the heart of the Big Society there is a perfectly respectable and progressive idea: to encourage civic enga...
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Neal Ascherson: Every revolution has its rules. Ignore them and the fire will burn outSaturday, 5 February 2011
Seen from above, this gigantic event resembles the surges of nature, rather than of human history. Sometimes the masses slowly pour forward and then halt in a dense, dark mass: the gravel and seaweed rushed up a beach by the storm and then dumped as ...
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IoS letters, emails & online postings (6 February 2011)Sunday, 6 February 2011
In Cambodia, land which had no title was first taken by the state and is now being leased to overseas developers, leaving subsistence farmers who cannot prove ownership with no means of resisting eviction. We need to find a means of ensuring the owne...
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David Randall: Regrets about my Nazi past? No, I just can't keep up with the fan mailSunday, 6 February 2011
Rochus Misch was Hitler's bodyguard, courier and telephonist, and was with him in that Berlin bunker until the end, only escaping after the leader, Eva Braun, and the family Goebbels had committed suicide (or, in the case of the Goebbels children, be...
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Paul Vallely: Too much information, thank youSunday, 6 February 2011
Some of the purblind people now running the country appear not to understand this. Ministers have come up with a scheme to put on the internet "crime maps" covering every street in England and Wales and showing how much anti-social crime, mugging, vi...
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Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: Diversity does not breed terrorists – politics doesSunday, 6 February 2011
But by identifying the root cause of terrorism as an amorphous "state multiculturalism", Cameron reveals his understanding of the problem is as simplistic as his predecessors'. The background of those convicted on terrorism charges undermines his sug...
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Nicholas Foulkes: Consoled bynostalgia in a 10-gallon hatSunday, 6 February 2011
It was that year's news event. It may also have been the year of an Olympic boycott, the elections of Ronald Reagan and Robert Mugabe and a strike at a Polish shipyard in Gdansk, but the attempted assassination (murder is far too pedestrian a term) o...
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Tom Hodgkinson: 'Why is cleverness frowned upon?'Sunday, 6 February 2011
As it gradually dawned on my wife and me that there was very little of what we would call teaching going on, we decided to step in and fill the gaps ourselves. (Mr Gove has promised a return to a more traditional agenda, but how long will it take?) S...
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Alastair Beach: Journalists were stabbed, beaten or intimidatedSaturday, 5 February 2011
There was no roughing up or good cop-bad cop routines. On the contrary – crisps, tea biscuits and cheap Cleopatra cigarettes were handed out by soldiers including a smiling 23-year-old called Mohammad, who explained how he had picked up his stutterin...
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Letters: Marriage benefitsSaturday, 5 February 2011
Same-sex couples want to have the same status as married couples. Surely the solution is to extend the civil partnership scheme to any two people who wish to enter into such an agreement. The partnership could provide certain tax advantages, allow a ...
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Alice Jones: You're not doing yourself – or your husband – any favoursSaturday, 5 February 2011
To say that Sally Bercow, the wife of the Speaker, John Bercow, is unafraid of the glare of publicity is an understatement. She basks in it like a sun-starved Brit on a long weekend in Marbella. She's given interviews divulging a past littered with o...
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Leading article: Exodus from a neglected American citySaturday, 5 February 2011
Last year's count showed a decline of almost 30 per cent to 344,000, meaning that New Orleans no longer ranks among the 50 largest US cities. The sad fact, however, is that this most idiosyncratic and beloved of American cities was in decline long be...
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Paul Vallely: How monocultural does the Prime Minister want us to be?Saturday, 5 February 2011
It is the critique of these so-called "muscular liberals" that David Cameron has adopted in his surprisingly hardline speech. The shift began after the traumatic terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many of those who like to think of themselves as liberals the...
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Fawaz A Gerges: Egypt's generals seek ways to ease Mubarak out with his dignity intactSaturday, 5 February 2011
On Thursday, Mr Suleiman invited the Muslim Brotherhood to negotiations with the army and the opposition. This was critical since the Muslim Brotherhood – the oldest and largest Islamist organisation in Egypt that has influenced the many faces of pol...
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Jed Horne: Yes, our city has become smaller – but it has also found a surplus of spiritSaturday, 5 February 2011
The questions bristle with political and economic implications, which in a city like New Orleans inevitably provoke twinges of racial anxiety. Had the city's élites, as accused, toyed with post-disaster recovery strategies in ways to keep the low-inc...
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Harriet Walker: Another excuse for being fat: it's all my culture's faultSaturday, 5 February 2011
From the plump and deliciously rounded milkmaids of yesteryear to our own Marilyn substitute Diana Dors, from Boudicca to Barbara Windsor, the British female has never been sylph-like, nor is she meant to be. Our national dish is meat and potatoes; w...
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Victoria Summerley: How to make drama out of bereavementSaturday, 5 February 2011
I had been a lifelong Archers fan, so my vehement reaction surprised even myself. But not only was it annoying that the one character I did not find irritating was being got rid of (another hallmark of the true Archers fan is that you rather like Nig...
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John Rentoul: Will Cameron sanction a campaign that is hostile to his deputy?Sunday, 6 February 2011
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Katy Guest: Rant & Rave (06/02/11)Sunday, 6 February 2011
On Sunday she announced that she is a member of Save England's Forests, and on Monday she revealed the gruesome details of her recent Brazilian bikini wax; simultaneously, Rachel Johnson, better known as Boris Johnson's even more pointless younger si...
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Matthew Bell: The IoS Diary (06/02/11)Sunday, 6 February 2011
Has turmoil in Egypt given Colonel Gaddafi the jitters? Last week the London-based novelist Hisham Matar received the wonderful news that two of his uncles have been released from prison in Libya, 21 years after their imprisonment. The author of t...
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Leading article: Reverse gearSaturday, 5 February 2011
Must things play out this way? Top Gear should grow up. The Mexican government, and any other state that finds itself on the receiving end of such pathetic humour, should rise above it. And the BBC should not go through the charade of apologising for...
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