Issue 112
July 2005
Contents
A matter of respect
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Tony Blair's "respect" policies reflect public disquiet and anxiety among policymakers about declining trust and social capital. The task of moral renewal must not end with the fading of traditional institutions
Dangerous pity
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project
Europe without illusions
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
The constitution is dead, long live the constitution! Did European elites simply oversell a modest document? Is there a real crisis of legitimacy? Andrew Moravcsik explains the meaning of "no" and others take issue with him
Return to Tanzania
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
I first visited Tanzania in 1964, volunteering for Nyerere's African socialism. It didn't work. In 2005 the country is still poor, but starting to grow. Is a dose of debt relief and more aid what it now needs?
Jean-Paul Sartre
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
As a teenage existentialist in the 1970s, I feasted on Sartre. He had already become unfashionable in Paris, but now, on the centenary of his birth, France is coming to appreciate him again
France profonde
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
My neighbours all voted against the constitution, but this was a nationalist "No-to-Europe" rather than the pro-European "No" of the Socialists. Meanwhile, Paris has not yet acknowledged defeat
The end of congestion
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Congestion charges won't be needed in 2015—the oil will be running out. We must ration
The Uzbek tinderbox
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Most post-Soviet states, like Ukraine, decided not to shoot their citizens. Not Uzbekistan
In praise of debt
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
There are sound reasons for countries to incur debt. Relief is not always helpful
Aid-dumping
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
The use of western food surpluses to provide aid is soon to end. Two cheers
Aid, not trade
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
In the short term, opening up agricultural markets will not help African countries
The Ribena test
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
If I prefer Ribena to Château Lafite, does that make me a fool? No. It's just a matter of taste—as it is for art. That is John Carey's thesis, and it's wrong
Politics of the playground
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Why does British fiction only portray politics as a mean, childish squabble? The BBC4 drama "The Thick of It" bears out an immature tradition
Albanian witness
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Ismail Kadare, who charted the legacy of Hoxha's Albanian dictatorship, reminds us that the Balkans is a storehouse of European literature
Arts forecast
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
In opera and ballet, the Kirov continues to innovate, even as it builds on historic strengths. Driving this winning formula are the titanic energies of its artistic director, Valery Gergiev
Widescreen
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Last year, Asian film dominated at Cannes. This year the west is back. But it has taken a lesson from the east about the meaning and consequences of violence
Private view
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
There is good art and there is bad art, but the Venice biennale is depressing for wider reasons. To a critic, the globalised art market makes no sense at all
Smallscreen
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Melvyn Bragg's history of ITV hailed 50 years of the world's greatest commercial network. It couldn't admit that this legacy has recently been squandered
Dear Angela Merkel
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
It is probable that Angela Merkel will become Germany's first woman chancellor later this year. Robert Jackson explains to her why he thinks Britain and Germany would make such a fine European team
Matters of taste
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Could Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck really be the best in the world? I went to lunch there with my mother, who usually hates fancy food
Washington watch
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
The first hint that it really could be McCain, and not Jeb Bush, for the Republicans in 2008. And Anatol Lieven says goodbye to the Carnegie Endowment
Brussels diary
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
Many true believers still can't take it in. But we should have seen it coming. The "no" vote was the culmination of a five-year French nervous breakdown
Notes from underground
23rd July 2005 — Issue 112
When I applied to work for the underground, I hadn't realised there would be a drugs test. It was looking like a mightily expensive eighth of hash