Issue 86
May 2003
Contents
Means tests and tax credits
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
The tax credit is New Labour's big idea in welfare policy. It heralds an extension of means testing and a start to a merger of the tax and benefit system. It should also make work pay and reduce, if not abolish, child poverty. But is it too complex?
Brummie Muslims
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
In Birmingham, where Islam is more practised than Christianity, the clash of civilisations can be witnessed in microcosm. It may be that, now, only Christian believers have the ability to build bridges
The oil curse
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
The history of oil investment in the developing world hints at trouble ahead for the multinationals in Iraq
Speaking up
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
America's liberal Jews have the only voice powerful enough to fight self-defeating Israeli nationalism and US chauvinism. They must speak out
Artless television
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
The BBC's new arts series is isolated in a broadcasting landscape that has been all but stripped of arts coverage
The real economy
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
The American business model is both unattractive and inaccurate. Market economies work only when embedded in social institutions
End of the affair
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
War in Iraq has exposed the"special relationship" as a liability that has damaged British interests in Europe and the Muslim world. Inside the British establishment the special relationship is now supported only by prime ministers, submariners and code breakers. We must become just good friends
Science & serendipity
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Spare a thought for the many scientists who could have claimed the DNA double helix discovery but didn't
De-Ba'athification
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
How can you distinguish the bad guys from the opportunists?
Radicalisation?
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
It is a commonplace of the western media that the war in Iraq will create more Islamist radicals, but is there any evidence?
Shaken to the core
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
France will not be able to create a breakaway "core Europe" but don't expect the east Europeans to become Anglo-Saxon poodles
Extreme males
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Autism is now surprisingly common. But as society becomes more "female" there is less tolerance for those who cannot empathise
Mass consumption chic
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Art deco made mass production into art. How long before our own age of consumerism is also artified, and the McDonald's "M" winds up in the V&A?
An archaeology of the present
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
The idea that creating contemporary art is like exposing archaeological artefacts is nice but false. Archaeologists are more like curators than artists
The shadows of Suez
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Suez cast a long shadow over Anthony Eden's political career. But the crisis left surprisingly little transatlantic or cross-channel rancour, says Philip Goodhart
The science of inner space
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Consciousness poses both hard and easy problems. Science can deal with the easy problem of brain function, but subjective experience is still really hard
What are we fighting for?
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
Fareed Zakaria's book, which argues that liberalism is more important than democracy, is the missing voice of a sane internationalist US Republicanism
Your face, Lord, will I seek
20th May 2003 — Issue 86
John Updike's new novel isn't very good fiction but as a veiled work of art criticism it reveals his deepest obsessions as a writer