Issue 6
March 1996
Contents
Who killed civic America?
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Why was the generation born in the 1920s and 1930s the last of the joiners?
Sperm on the run
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
A recent study found that the average human sperm count has decreased by 40 per cent over the past 50 years. As public anxiety grows about infertility, environmentalists are blaming man-made chemical pollutants. Faith Brooke takes a look at the confusing scientific evidence behind their claim
Bland new broadcast
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
David Gordon talks to Christopher Bland, the new chairman of the BBC. Do we need public service broadcasting?
From Major to Maurras
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Just as the right is poised to take over the Conservative party, it has stopped thinking. Worse still it has introduced an alien element into British politics-centralist, interfering, paranoid. The right should show more sensitivity to the national traditions it thinks it is saving
The German ideology
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
What do the Germans want from Europe? As the European Union prepares for the intergovernmental conference in Turin, the German government is pressing for one more stride towards integration. Michael Maclay describes the group of true believers behind Germany's European policy
Philosophy among the ruins
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Philosophy has lost its place in modern culture-it has failed to respond to the disenchantment inflicted by science and the death of God. Jay Bernstein blames both Anglo-American and continental philosophers for this predicament. He says that Gillian Rose, the British thinker, was among the few who brought a modernist sensibility to philosophy
The woman from Mars
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Every step the European Union takes towards integration triggers a fresh wave of Euro-myths-fishermen forced to wear hairnets, bananas made straight, double-decker buses banned. Such stories are talked up by anti-Europeans and believed by many anxious citizens. Sometimes they are even true. Sarah Helm follows the story of chocolate harmonisation
Left with no illusions
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle have just written the unofficial New Labour manifesto for the next election. It is more coherent and less conformist than he had feared. But the book does not develop a political economy of stakeholding and it lacks the bite of the US Democrats' latest plans
The end of the ceasefire
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Northern Irish writer Carlo Gébler sends a letter to an English friend
Gene trade
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Patent laws were designed to protect actual inventions, not discoveries of natural phenomena. Patenting the human gene is challenging that rule. This is not in the public interest
Saving English cricket
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Little is expected from England's cricketers in the world cup. The economics of county cricket is to blame
The black diamond
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Black truffles are a rare, mysterious and expensive delicacy. Lesley Chamberlain visits the truffle's home ground in Provence and discovers that hunting it is better than eating it
Big screen politics
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Conservatives attack Hollywood for lax morals and liberal politics. But Christopher Tookey, who sees 300 films a year, thinks that they protest too much
Wireless wars
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Radio Three's Paul Gambaccini has been the target of an ugly campaign-accusing him of driving the once highbrow music station downmarket. Edward Pearce speaks out in his defence and offers views of his own on the station's past and future
Brodsky in Cambridge
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Joseph Brodsky, the great poet-exile, never revisited his beloved Petersburg. But as Rachel Polonsky remembers, he recited Auden in Cambridge
Matter over mind
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Anthony Gottlieb admires a rigorous refutation of belief in the paranormal
Irish writers Inc.
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Once Irish writers had to choose between exile and conformity. Now life is too comfortable for young writers-and it shows
Digest
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
Australia goes to the polls on 2nd March. Paul Keating's Labour Party came from behind in 1993. It might do so again. Nicolas Rothwell saw the Labour leader finding his voice in the Blue Mountains
Modern manners
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
There are no jobs for trainee journalists, but miracles keep happening to Jeremy Clarke
Babel
20th March 1996 — Issue 6
The significance of Ian Hargreaves' dismissal from the editorship of the Independent