It’s Saturday morning, so here are twelve thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices…
The lottery of life: Where to be born in 2013 – The Economist‘s annual list of the top quality-of-life countries: ‘Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matter too.’ Britain comes 27th. (The Telegraph has a picture-only version here.)
The burdens that Israel should not have to bear – Brendan O’Neill calls on the rest of us to leave the Middle East alone and quit projecting: ‘The anti-Israel lobby heaps upon Israel historic judgements that it does not deserve and should not have to answer. And the pro-Israel lobby expects Israel to do something that it, or any other nation on its own, is incapable of doing: defending for all of mankind the values and thought of the Enlightenment.’
Are legal curbs the answer for Britain’s errant newspapers? – Nick Cohen (anti-regulation) and Jacqui Hames (pro-regulation) slug it out ahead of publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report.
Easy to blame politicians and media for apathy, but public need to take a look at themselves too – Alastair Campbell tells it like it is: ‘It is not easy either for politicians or the media to criticise the public, as they are the lifeblood for both. But as someone who is neither politician nor journalist, but is in both politics and the media, I feel no such hesitation.’
How Adam Smith could help the Church – Tim Harford channels the Scottish economist and calls for the privatisation of the Church of England: ‘more competitive religious marketplaces lead to more dynamic churches.’
Gove the Gagster – love him or loathe him, Michael Gove can be both sharp and funny, as PoliticsHome’s transcript of his Spectator Awards speech shows: ‘Will we ever see a comprehensive school boy in charge of the Guardian in my lifetime? Or perhaps a comprehensively educated woman as director-general of the BBC?’
Has Cameron realised that Tory government is not our default setting any more? – Rafael Behr looks at the Tories’ poll problems — Ukip, ethnic minority voters and constituency boundaries. His conclusion: The Tories have a self-image as Britain’s natural party of power … The last hurrah for that soft cultural monopoly was April 1992.’
Debunking 5 post-election political myths – Marc Ambinder at The Week takes a closer look at the 2012 US presidential data, including: ‘Myth 4: The auto bailout saved Obama in the Midwest by keeping up his percentage among white voters.’
Research reveals popularity of live blogging – Ever wondered why The Guardian live-blogs everything that moves? Because readers like it, as Roy Greenslade notes: ‘readers feel that live blogs are less opinionated and “more factual” than traditional articles written with care after an event.’
Liberal Hero of the Week #22: Chris Skidmore MP – my nominee this week for his bold stance on wealthy pensioners’ freebies: ‘While preaching ‘we’re all in it together’ austerity, the Tory leader finds himself in the awkward position of defending the fact that 988,000 millionaire pensioners receive a tax-free winter fuel allowance.’
Give prisoners the vote. But not because Europe says so – Simon Jenkins on top form: ‘If they may not vote, should they read newspapers, watch television, talk to an MP or debate politics in prison? We allow them some rights that have evolved over time, such as exercise, occupation, seeing their families and knowing the date of their release.’
The old fashioned work that created the ‘expert’ in the first place is at risk from the dangerous attitude of the Twitter world – Conor Gearty weighs up the positive/negative effects of social media on serious research: ‘It is the attitude that the world of Twitter/blog generates that is its real danger. If the moment counts for so much can anything other than that moment every count at all?’
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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3 Comments
I must say that I thought the article by Brenden O’Neil from Spiked was very poor and I can’t figure out why it was selected (apart from the obvious point that Stephen must have thought it was good).
There is not one word in that article about what the Palestinians have been through over the past 60 years. It would seem from many western commentators that the only valid form of resistance that the Palestinians should engage in whilst their lands are taken away from them is that of non-violence and that they should be pacifists. However are these commentators pacifists? Of course not, they would see that as an insult.
Not all Israelis are racist and I would not describe myself as anti-Israeli. I wish Morretz and Peace Now all the best in the forthcoming elections and I admire the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra set up by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said. Having said that, the policy of right of return which only applies to Jews and NOT to Palestinians, surely that is racist? That the Israeli people live on the best most fertile land where once Palestinians lived but now they are not allowed – surely that is racist? That Israel can impose a blockade on Palestinian territories for their atrocities, whilst Israel continues to get substantial aid from the US despite theirs – is that not racist? And if the UK sells weapons to Israel – and for that matter Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other countries that trample on human rights, doesn’t that make us complicit?
Brendon is obsessed with hypocrisy but he often misses the mark. I was an enthusiastic supporter for Obama simply on the grounds that the alternative was so awful. I also happen to be vehemently opposed to the drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen which in my eyes makes the US no better than Israel. The only acceptable use of drone strikes for killing people is in a scenario when you are in a state of war against a country. The west has NOT declared war against Pakistan or Yeman and I would be surprised if this is allowed under international law.
What needs to happen is for there to be some kind of peaceful reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians for a long lasting settlement. In reality we are light years away from that. The current status quo favours the Israelis for as long as they have the largely uncritical support of the US, without which they would not be a viable state.
Under the current status quo the Israelis have overwhelming military superiority. With that superiority they are now safer from Palestinian attacks and do not have to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. Instead they have effectively imposed a settlement that suits them.
There is nothing in Brendan’s article that looks forward to what the logical outcome of Israeli dominance will be in 10, 20 or 50 years time. The Palestinian population is rapidly expanding but they are forced to live in small areas of land which is blockaded by Israel. What will this lead to? Famine? “Population transfers” to use the language of the Israeli politicians – in other words ethnic cleansing? The choices look bleak. We face a man made humanitarian disaster of which Brendan says nothing. Well that is up to him, but what I want to know is what are the Liberal Democrats doing about it now they are in government? My Google search on Nick Clegg and Gaza takes me back to 2010.
I was just about to say how much I enjoyed reading the spiked article on israel, but geoffrey beat me to the punch with a contrary opinion.
Oy vey!
The simple fact is that no-one can hope to create the values of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ by murdering innocent people. Brendan O’Neill seems unable to realise, as another commentator has intimated, that being opposed to the policies of the Zionist government in Israel is not to say that one is anti-semitic. No-one I think would have called me anti-British because I was opposed to Blair’s war in Iraq. It is a ludicrous position.