Leading Articles
Leading article: The lawyer, his wife, her job and their mortgage
Published: 28 February 2006
A cruel fate decreed that the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, should begin this week helping to launch a government report on women's work and pay.
Leading article: India - a nascent Asian superpower
Published: 28 February 2006
It is surprising, considering his professed enthusiasm for democracy, that George Bush has never found the time to visit the world's most populous democratic state.
Leading article: Demon drink
Published: 28 February 2006
Some hot news: people who drink cocoa live longer. Indeed. Perhaps some respect will be at last allowed to this proud beverage, for far too long the butt of easy sneers mostly directed at its association with slippers and cardigans.
Leading article: The urgent need to return politics to the people
Published: 27 February 2006
The report published today by the Rowntree Trust does not mince its words. Of Britain's political system, it says: "The current way of doing politics is killing politics". Over 300 pages, it charts how far the present political practices diverge from the requirements of the 21st century, and recommends how political power could, in its words, be rebalanced.
Leading article: Russia and the art of nuclear diplomacy
Published: 27 February 2006
Experience has taught that extreme caution is in order when reporting any breakthrough in the labyrinthine diplomacy concerning Iran and its nuclear programme. And the agreement, reached in principle between Russia and Iran, that would result in Iran having its uranium enriched in Russia is at a very early stage.
Leading article: Militants meet their match
Published: 27 February 2006
Rival demonstrations in Oxford this weekend represent a turning point. For the best part of a decade, militant animal rights activists have had the field to themselves. The virulence of their methods, including extreme violence, arson and snatching a body from a grave have intimidated even the most stalwart into silence.
Leading article: The illusion of equality
Published: 26 February 2006
Social attitudes in this country have moved dramatically in a progressive direction over the past decade
Leading article: Let Charles speak, but let us decide
Published: 26 February 2006
The Prince of Wales has made the Royal Family look foolish, again, by going to the courts, again, in a case that could only make matters worse, again
Leading article: Huhne has the strongest claim
Published: 26 February 2006
It is not because he was once the business and City editor of this newspaper that we believe Chris Huhne to be the best choice for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats - although it does offset the "unknown quantity" charge against him as a new MP. Nor does our preference for Mr Huhne signify any disrespect for Sir Menzies Campbell. It is one of the strengths of the party that it can draw on his gravitas and experience as deputy leader and spokesman on foreign affairs, even if he does not hold the top job.
Leading article: After an invigorating contest, the younger man has come to the fore
Published: 25 February 2006
This is the last weekend of campaigning in the contest for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats. Voting closes on Wednesday, with the result to be announced the following day. And for all the unfortunate circumstances that clouded the start of the campaign, the three contenders have done the party proud. They have tramped the length and breadth of the country; they have disputed energetically; they have not stinted on their time.
Leading article: Fresh air for the music business
Published: 25 February 2006
As Apple celebrates the billionth download from its online music store, this is a good time to consider how the record industry has responded to the rise of the internet as a medium for exchanging music. The fact that so many people are choosing to get their music online is clearly good news for Apple, but is it good news for the popular music industry as a whole?
Leading article: Double standards
Published: 25 February 2006
Some of our political leaders get an easier time of it than others. Contrast the current travails of Ken Livingstone and Tessa Jowell. Some are already speculating whether the Culture Secretary will be able to remain in her Cabinet post in light of her husband's legal difficulties in Italy, despite the fact that there is no evidence that she has done anything wrong. But does anyone really doubt that the Mayor of London, who was yesterday found guilty by the Standards Board for England of bringing his office into disrepute, will sail serenely on when all this is over?
Leading article: Tony Blair and the loss of civilised values
Published: 24 February 2006
Tony Blair's support for the United States in its so-called "war on terror" has been unquestioning. But never has the Prime Minister's stance with respect to the Bush administration left him so politically isolated in Britain
Leading article: Two steps forward and one back
Published: 24 February 2006
It is all too easy to feel weary about Africa. Take yesterday's elections in Uganda. Under the country's constitution, the President was only allowed two terms of office. But Yoweri Museveni got parliament to change the rules to allow him a third term
Leading article: Excuses running dry
Published: 24 February 2006
We learnt yesterday, thanks to Britain's pre-eminent hydrologists and ecologists, that parts of England are facing their worst winter water shortages for more than 40 years. For two consecutive winters, rainfall in the South-east has been at its lowest level since the 1960s. This is having a drastic impact on reservoir replenishment and river flows, of which the abnormally low level of the Thames is the most visible symptom.
Leading article: With each day, the threat of civil war is growing
Published: 23 February 2006
It was unfortunate timing for our Foreign Secretary that the destruction of the Golden Mosque at Samarra came only hours after he had flown to Baghdad with a personal appeal to Iraq's politicians to co-operate on a government of national unity
Leading article: The cost of dissidence
Published: 23 February 2006
Prince Charles's decision to take legal action against The Mail on Sunday for publishing one of his journals is the latest in a long line of embarrassing blunders by the hapless heir to the throne
Leading article: Councils need more power, and more accountability
Published: 22 February 2006
Not all politics is local. There is such a thing as national politics, just as there has always been such a thing as society. But quite a lot of politics is local
Leading article: When teacher knows best
Published: 22 February 2006
It was the White Hart Lane School in Tottenham, under the leadership of its former head, David Daniels, that pioneered the concept of teaching its foreign-born students in their first language. Now the new head of that same school has ruled that such bilingual lessons will come to an end
Leading article: Free speech and the right to dissent
Published: 21 February 2006
An Austrian court has sentenced the British historian David Irving to three years in prison for Holocaust denial in speeches delivered 17 years ago. Few in this country will shed many tears for an academic who never cared to hide his despicable views. And three years is far less than the maximum 10 years he could have been required to serve under Austrian law. But it is three years more than anyone should have to serve for exercising freedom of speech in a democracy.
Leading article: Defending the indefensible
Published: 21 February 2006
The tone of John Reid's speech on the British Army at King's College London yesterday was severely misjudged. Speaking in the wake of new revelations of abuse by British troops in Iraq, the Defence Secretary ought to have made a frank admission of the damage this episode has done to the reputation of the British Army and to have pledged to ensure that nothing similar would happen again. Instead Mr Reid chose to recommend that we be "a little slower to condemn and a lot quicker to understand". He also insinuated disgracefully that the media is playing into the hands of terrorists by bringing such abuses to light.
Leading article: Move British poultry inside before virus arrives
Published: 20 February 2006
The Government, in the person of Ben Bradshaw, junior Environment minister, still maintains that bird flu may not strike Britain. That claim is starting to look untenable. Few experts now doubt that the virus is on its way, concealed in the flocks of ducks, geese, swans and waders now preparing to leave their winter grounds on the Continent for nesting sites in Britain. It is advancing northwards and westwards like a dark cloud, as the discovery of a dead duck infected with the deadly H5N1 strain, 400 miles from Britain's south coast, near Lyons, in France, has shown.
Leading article: A chance finally to resolve the Balkan wars
Published: 20 February 2006
The last war on European soil ended only six years ago when Nato drove Serbia's bloodstained army out of Kosovo. But already the Balkan wars seem to belong to another, nastier era, and attention has shifted, which is why the talks on Kosovo's final status, opening today in Vienna, are likely to get insufficient attention outside the region and even from the big powers in charge of them. If so, it is a pity, for Kosovo is one of the last pieces of a Balkan jigsaw that we must get right if the region is not to plague Europe in future by exporting its instability and poverty westwards.
Leading article: No brainer
Published: 20 February 2006
Some choices aren't what they're cracked up to be. Offer most people a choice between a free holiday in Skegness or, say, Mauritius, and you can guess the response.
Leading article: How to lose the moral war
Published: 19 February 2006
Reports of prisoner abuse by British and American troops, and accounts of the mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo and "extraordinary rendition " flights leading to the torture of suspects, have led to a critical erosion in our moral authority. It has come to something when such words are those not only of a leading article in The Independent on Sunday but also of a speech delivered - in America - by the Conservative shadow Foreign Secretary
