  Thursday September 25, 2008 Dangerous CameronomicsIn response to the Great Wall Street Crash of 2008, David Cameron has lashed out with real anger - at the people who correctly warned that if you strip away all restraints, markets will devour themselves, writes Johann Hari. In the middle of this global conservatism-crunch, the Tory Party is even more aggressively re-stating the dogmas that led us into the collapse. It is as if they are part of a historical re-enactment society dedicated to replaying the Herbert Hoover years. When even Comrade George Bush has taken over half the US mortgage market, this is a position way out on the market fundamentalist fringe. They don't seem to have realised that the Cameron prism of "the individual versus the big state" has little purchase when the individual needs the big state to prevent the economy haemorraghing. Johann Hari The Independent Can Brown reshuffle out of trouble?Gordon Brown is a genuine humanitarian who has finally seemed an authentic figure; unlike the brittle David Cameron, or Mr Miliband, who has looked artificial by saying one thing while appearing to do another, says Mary Riddell. Sarah Brown has provided the political charisma of Sarah Palin without the slaughter of a single moose or liberal principle. The Browns do treat their children as "people, not props". Mr Brown would do well to apply this precept to his senior ministers. While his speech contained many decent policies (and some wrong notes), his fightback now hinges on human potential. This weekend he will return from New York to Chequers to finalise next week's reshuffle. Mary Riddell Daily Telegraph Labour isolate themselves"We're holding our meeting in Manchester, because we want to show we're at the heart of real business Britain," went the publicity. It was a sick joke, writes Adrian Hamilton. There was no way that the delegates at the conference, coccooned in a special guarded area, ever saw what was going on in the outside world, and even less chance that any Mancunian would see what was going on in the armed camp set down on their city centre. It's not simply an issue of inconvenience, it's a problem of political isolation. A party can't renew itself within this kind of unreality and a democracy cannot be vital when the governing party is so removed from the real world. Adrian Hamilton The Independent How Obama has to debateA presidential debate isn't really, with apologies to Tony Benn, about the ishoos, says Matthew Norman. John Kerry murdered George Bush on those in all three of theirs, and it did him no good because he came across as effete. Al Gore went too far the other way to evade the elitist slur, storming over to invade Mr Bush's space, and came across as phoney and faintly deranged. The high wire act for Obama is persuading the public that he isn't the snotty, arugula-chomping, hug-an-Ahmedinajad, uber-liberal nancy his enemies would have them believe, but without giving the morons on Fox News the chance to insinuate that he is the "angry black man" who would alienate swing voters already inclined to vote against their own economic interests on unspoken grounds of race. Matthew Norman The Independent
 Our nuclear industry is now FrenchThe very idea that we should trust the future of nuclear power, one of Britain's most strategic industries, to an overseas company is extraordinary enough, says Alex Brummer. But what makes the £12.5 billion takeover of nuclear generator British Energy by Electricite de France (EDF) even more outrageous is that the buyer is 85 per cent owned by the French state. In effect, this country is placing control over its energy needs in the hands of a foreign-owned enterprise which earlier this summer stunned UK consumers by raising electricity prices by 17 per cent and gas prices by 22 per cent. Alex Brummer Daily Mail In BriefJoin Israel with PalestineThe peace process predicated on the two-state solution is stagnant, a unitary state is inevitable. Establishing an exclusive state defined along ethnic-religious lines and excluding its previous inhabitants was unjust and ultimately unsustainable. No political acrobatics will alter this. The sooner the UN, which unwisely created Israel in the first place, takes charge of the consequences, the better it will be for Palestinians, for Israelis and for the region as a whole.
 Ruth Kelly quitsWhether her actions are expedient politically is neither here nor there. Doubtless male commentators are guffawing with cynicism, but every mother knows she is right. Despite our fierce feminist beliefs, our iron code of independence, we know that the only difference between Ruth Kelly and most of us is that she has done something about it. She knows that her children miss her. Melanie Reid The Times Picket fence politicsAmericans are heading to the cities and suburbs in ever increasing numbers, while the small towns conglomerate, merged by the fattening arteries of fast-food strip malls - only 21 per cent of America now lives in a rural area, compared with 36 per cent in 1950. None of this affects the political importance of the small town, whose grip on American culture has made it essential to electoral success. Ben Macintyre The Times Hank Paulson’s failureHenry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence. The people who do not understand the role of government should not be regulating markets any more than they should be fighting wars or managing flood defences. P.J. O'Rourke, the conservative writer, once remarked: "The Republicans are a party that says government doesn't work - and then get elected and prove it." Anatole Kaletsky The Times Hyperactive kidsWhat makes symptoms into a disease is what the medical profession chooses to call a disease. But the explosion in diagnosis of ADHD, and in the prescribing of Ritalin, implies an unconscious contract of convenience between over-pressed doctors, frustrated parents and teachers who can't cope. |
Thursday, 25 September 2008
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