Insufficiently pro-Atlanticist and weak on Europe too... Nick Cohen puts the case for the prosecution. Can't say I'm entirely convinced, but I take his point about the lack of scrutiny from the Fourth Estate:
...In one area Cameron has been more than happy to keep his brand toxic. When he enters Downing Street, Britain will be alone in the world, with few friends and fewer allies. It is only a touch hyperbolic to say that in two years' time we won't have a foreign policy...A Cameron government will tear up the complex web of alliances and understandings through which Britain exercises her influence. It is about time journalists asked him what he intends to put in their place.
As Carisenda [sic] looks, when one stands below
On the leaning side, and watches a passing cloud
Drift over against the slant of it, swimming slow,
Antaeus looked to me, as I watched him bowed...
As we know, Simon Jenkins takes a dim view of the dismal science:
When muck hits fan, economists always blame politicians. They would have some justice if they did not take credit when things go right. I was always uncomfortable at the overselling of economics as a science, when it is rather a branch of psychology, a study of the peculiarities of human nature.
Greg Mankiw - much less of a sceptic, inevitably - has set out a list of US campaign policies which would win the vote of his peers. The ideas include opposing farm subsidies and liberalizing drugs policy and - no surprise here - putting much more money into economic research.
Jessica Duchen returns to the subject of the Roma, while Arthur Goldhammer is troubled by the case of the Moroccan woman whose application for French nationality was refused because her Salafist beliefs were "incompatible with the values of the French community":
I confess that I find this decision profoundly disturbing. The choices and commitments this woman has made are not mine, but there is no evidence that they are anything but voluntary. If she is "submissive" to her husband, she has chosen to be so of her own free will... This...decision brings the state into the private sanctum of relations
Alex Massie joins the debate over the greatest film endings of all time. For me, it has to be the chilling final moments of "Seconds", as Rock Hudson's ill-starred character gradually realizes what is about to happen to him. (It's almost all here. Best not to watch it if you haven't seen the film before, obviously.)
I still can't believe they booed the movie when it was first shown at Cannes. The late, great John Frankenheimer talks about Hudson's role in this documentary clip. Of course, in retrospect you can see why the part of a man who's erased his past might have appealed to him.
I have a feature on John McWhorter's book about political hip-hop in today's Sunday Times:
If Barack Obama is the most admired black man in America right now, it may be no exaggeration to say that John McWhorter is a candidate for the unpopularity prize. Which is an odd thing to say about a courteous academic from the arcane realm of linguistics. Yet by venturing onto the mean streets of hiphop with a dispassionate critique of a multimillion-dollar industry, he risks becoming a target of drive-by shootings by enraged
The headline on Andrew Gilligan's column reads "Knife crime is a teenage craze - and it will pass". And he adds this:
One fascinating thing about England's youth knife "epidemic" is that it is largely confined to London. Other big cities, like Manchester and Liverpool, have seen nothing like the same rises in knife attacks. And as knife-use by kids has risen in London, gun use has dropped. Yet the young people of Manchester and Liverpool face pretty much the same social problems and family breakdown as ours do... I can't help wondering whether the explosion of London
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If Barack Obama is the most admired black man in America right now, it may be no exaggeration to say that John McWhorter is a candidate for the unpopularity prize. Which is an odd thing to say about a courteous academic from the arcane realm of linguistics. Yet by venturing onto the mean streets of hiphop with a dispassionate critique of a multimillion-dollar industry, he risks becoming a target of drive-by shootings by enraged
