spiked-politics

Column

20 November 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
The anthrax attacker remains a bigger concern to most Americans than the war being fought thousands of miles away.

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Other articles

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16 November 2001

How did we get from Manhattan to Kabul?
What has the West's war in Afghanistan got to do with 11 September?

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13 November 2001

Fear goes sky-high
Many seem relieved that the plane crash of 12 November looks like an accident, not a terrorist attack. Either way, it's a disaster for America's national psyche.

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9 November 2001

A war that nobody wants to fight
The carpet bombing in Afghanistan confirms the dreadful power of the American military machine. But it also reveals a sense of powerlessness within the US (and British) political elites.

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	22 November 2001 Silicone scare Where's the evidence that breast implants are a health risk?

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30 October 2001

Oh, what a 'wobbly' war
The New Labour establishment is so nervous that it has begun to imagine a powerful anti-war movement that exists only in its head.

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16 October 2001

Fear and defeatism infect the West
Why are the American and British governments worried about 'losing the propaganda war' to a lame terrorist with a camcorder in the desert?

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8 October 2001

Now it is war - but for what?
First they told us we were at war with nobody in particular. Now they say we are not at war with somebody we are bombing.

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2 October 2001

Fear under the flag
America is united more by a sense of loss and fear for the future than it is by defiant patriotism. An Englishwoman reports from Washington DC.

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28 September 2001

Why has Bush not pushed the button?
The US government lacks the authority or legitimacy to act decisively.

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14 September 2001

It's war - but against whom?
The world is being reorganised in response to the events of 11 September.

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12 September 2001

After the attack on America
As the dust clears over the scenes of carnage, it is worth asking what these events and the reaction to them can tell us about the world we live in now.

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5 September 2001

Whoever wins, it won't be a Tory
The Conservative Party's leadership election has been marked by one concession after another to New Labour's agenda of the centre ground.

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13 July 2001

Spare us the rod
The UK government has endorsed a scheme to get young truants and vandals 'hooked on fishing'. Fishing?

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22 June 2001

Put liberty first in New Labour's second term
Can we all please turn our telescopes away from far-off Planet Tory and the amusing antics of its alien occupants? Back among the human beings here on Earth, there are important matters afoot.

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19 June 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'Bush has tried to run the country as though the Clinton years did not exist: big mistake.'

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14 June 2001

The work thing
There's more to life than making a living. So why is the government so obsessed with work?

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7 June 2001

Spoiling for a fight?
Why I resisted the temptation to spoil my ballot paper on election day.

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4 June 2001

A landslide that signifies nothing
'This is the age of landslide-lite, when you can have an avalanche in the virtual world of parliamentary politics that leaves life pretty much untouched in the real world below.'

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31 May 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter, 31 May
Tory meltdown: 'Contests just aren't very interesting if there is only one contender. And they can't be won either.'

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31 May 2001

Blaspheming through the second term
My top 10 blasphemies for life under New Labour - all the things you cannot oppose in contemporary politics because all parties accept them as common sense.

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25 May 2001

Blair wins - so why is New Labour so nervous?
'While New Labour is going to trounce the Tories, it has yet to establish the authority of the new political elite.'

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25 May 2001

Baby bondage
Think about the phrases 'baby bond' and 'Child Trust Fund'. For a few hundred quid, the state can buy a bond with your baby - and show that you, the parent, cannot be trusted.

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24 May 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter, 24 May
I have noticed that there is money to be made in self-help manuals, so I am writing one to help wannabe politicians in their election campaigns.

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18 May 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'Only one aspect of the UK election has so far aroused the interest of the US media - the total collapse facing the British Conservative Party.'

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18 May 2001

No dreams - and little reality
New Labour's manifesto leaves nothing to the imagination. And that's the problem with it.

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17 May 2001

Shopping for cut-price votes
'The parties try to use taxes to entice us to vote for them, as if we were deciding whether to do the weekend shop at Tesco or Sainsbury's.'

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16 May 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter, 16 May
'Surely it's more apathetic and lazy to vote for a party you don't really support just because you feel you ought to, than it is to refuse to vote with very good reason?'

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15 May 2001

Low 'Ambitions for Britain'
'New Labour's commitment to "equality of worth" is worse than worthless.'

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11 May 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Election day is my twenty-first birthday. What sort of party will I end up having now?'

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11 May 2001

Politics is important - voting isn't
'Nobody need feel any obligation to vote in an election that has become little more than a coronation ceremony for the new oligarchy.'

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8 May 2001

License to drink - soberly
'The new licensing laws may exercise less control over WHEN we drink, but will only bring about more controls on HOW we drink.'

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8 May 2001

Inspire us with some new tunes
As the UK election campaign gets off to a non-start, spiked editor Mick Hume proposes a few bullet points for Tony Blair and William Hague to put on little cards and give to all their candidates.

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3 May 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
On pigeons: 'I can't believe the feathered gremlins have provoked a protest, got their own alliance and had so much attention from the London mayor.'

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1 May 2001

People's peers: why not abolish the lot?
'Presumably those demanding that more "ordinary people" be turned into people's peers would be happy for political debate to echo the banality of commuter train chat.'

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26 April 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Maybe they will start a Dog-Job Club, for these latest victims of foot-and-mouth.'

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20 April 2001

Cook plays the curry card
At last we know what the UK general election is really about: it's the Tandooris against the Tories.

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20 April 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
The spy plane in China: why Bush turned an accident into an international incident.

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19 April 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'The latest torture for young people: a government-backed education manual for use in secondary schools called "Taking Drugs Seriously"'

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12 April 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Tony Blair and William Hague just aren't interested in Bridget's thirtysomething, un-unemployed, childless, no-longer-in-education, fairly-comfortable, doesn't-live-in-the-countryside kinda life.'

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12 April 2001

Don't mention the election
If any of the parties had a message to make us sit up and take notice, they would be shouting it from the rooftops now.

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5 April 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'As things stand, I have absolutely no idea when I am supposed to be not voting, what I am not voting for, or why I now have to not vote on a different date from the one I was previously not voting on.'

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2 April 2001

The strange affair of the election that never was
'Public support for cancelling the election amid the foot-and-mouth crisis was always an expression of the anti-political mood of our times.'

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30 March 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'Campaign finance reform is popular because it provides a way for politicians to distance themselves from the nasty business of politics.'

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29 March 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'For anybody thinking of voting, the question of how you are going to get to the polling station should be number one on your list of woes.'

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22 March 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'If politics is about who can create the most entertaining TV, politicians are on to a sure loser. Myleene, Kym, Danny and the rest have already won hands down.'

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22 March 2001

An outbreak of anti-election fever
'We are left with a raging national debate over when the general election should be, while the small matter of what that election is actually going to be about passes almost without comment.'

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15 March 2001

Things fall apart
'We seem to have lost sight of any distinction between rational measures to cope with an animal disease, and the irrational attempt to put the countryside (if not the entire country) into quarantine.'

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15 March 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Why not move members of the UK government and shadow cabinet into the brightly painted Big Brother house, and allow us to vote one of them out each week?'

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8 March 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'Despite the attention of the world's media, attempted murder in American schools is still extremely rare.'

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8 March 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'I live in the main "younger voters" area of Birmingham - Studentsville - and I have yet to visit a student house whose residents take all their empties down to the bottle bank.'

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2 March 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'With Labour way ahead in the polls and most election issues too weak for even a pensioner to get their dentures into, perhaps Blair and his posse have realised that somebody has to spice things up a bit.'

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23 February 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'US President Bush's foreign policies remain incoherent - but by bombing Iraq, at least last week's PR events could end with a bang.'

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22 February 2001

You don't have to be mad to vote here...
'If putting polling stations in supermarkets was a brazen stunt, putting them in prisons looks even more surreal.'

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22 February 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Threats of "do it - or that Widdecombe woman will get you" might shoo the little Blairs to their rooms, but it won't get the rest of us to the polling station.'

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19 February 2001

A matter of routine?
'The latest military display of "mine's bigger than yours" in Iraq, it seems, is not even a matter for public discussion. So how are we supposed to react to it?'

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15 February 2001

Grey days for democracy
'Behind their displays of concern, the UK authorities hold pensioners in contempt, as bodies to be bought on the cheap come election time.'

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15 February 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Taking an interest in parliamentary goings-on usually means reading about "the ridiculous debate of transport versus badgers", as my flatmate puts it.'

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Dr Michael Fitzpatrick

13 February 2001

Second opinion
'Post-BSE, civil servants are now trained in the principles of New Labour's modernised governance: never miss an opportunity to promote a health scare; always encourage risk awareness; and remember that farmers are all Tory voters.'

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spiked-health

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8 February 2001

For fewer laws, not more
When New Labour promises to be 'bold and radical', it means busy and restless.

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7 February 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Can you picture tribes of young women marching to the polling station in skinni-fit t-shirts with the new New Labour hearts and cross logo on them?'

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1 February 2001

A-pathetic excuse
'The major parties are planning short election campaigns that will not start until Blair announces polling day, for fear of "boring" the electorate.'

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30 January 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'When I went to India I saw a lot of people who didn't even have homes, never mind shock-resistant housing.'

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26 January 2001

Exploiting the Holocaust
'However worthy the intentions might be, the net effect of the current obsession with the Holocaust can only be to diminish the meaning of the slaughter of six million Jews.'

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24 January 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'The idea of us all getting emotional together is vomit-inducing.'

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24 January 2001

An Englishwoman in Washington
'George W Bush may have won the election: but Clinton and his supporters won the culture war hands down.'

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17 January 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Maybe science has to have the monster factor before it enters the limelight.'

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15 January 2001

Sergeant-Major Brown's 'Grey Army'
'In their enthusiasm to strengthen this "great British tradition", politicians risk turning volunteering into something that is not, well, voluntary.'

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11 January 2001

The stupid economy
'In the recent balance sheet of profit and loss, the biggest loss has been any sense of proportion about the state of the economy.'

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10 January 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Access to the morning after pill is old news to most 14-year olds.'

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8 January 2001

From vegetables to politics: new faces of 2001
'In an attempt to improve the image of this poor benighted vegetable, the British Sprout Growers' Association is to spend a six-figure sum on adverts ramming its virtues down our throats.'

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4 January 2001

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'I lost count of the number of image-related stunts and putdowns that passed for politics in 2000.'

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4 January 2001

Who wants to be a millionaire donor?
'It was Tony Blair's New Labour that made "sleaze" the number one issue in British politics in the first place, before the last general election.'

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29 December 2000

An Englishwoman in Washington
'Far from stimulating a sense of civic pride and duty, the intense scrutiny over the election process in Florida will make US citizens even more wary of government and elections.'

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29 December 2000

Diary of a first-time non-voter
'Most teenagers I know have better things to do with their time than citizenship homework.'

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29 December 2000

Play your cards right - and left
'In the run-up to the general election, British politics has been reduced to a cynical game of cards.'

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29 December 2000

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Dr Michael Fitzpatrick

22 December 2000

Second opinion
'The morning-after pill controversy reveals how the British government is torn between two cherished principles: its commitment to private enterprise and the maximisation of profit, and its commitment to the regulation of sexual behaviour.'

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