Columnists M - Z
Rowan Pelling: Girls who marry young get to repent at their leisure - so leave Kate alone
Published: 07 January 2007
Editor-At-Large: Shopping: the loser's route to happiness
Published: 07 January 2007
I hate resolutions, life-changing regimes and free advice. There is no way a "new" JSP is going to emerge from the gloom of January. But one simple bit of philosophy I read about last week has given me a lot to think about. A year ago, nauseated by rampant consumerism and growing piles of waste surrounding them, 10 ordinary people who lived in the San Francisco area formed a group calling themselves the Compact. They chose their name inspired by the Mayflower Compact - an agreement drafted by the original pilgrims who landed in America in 1620. The new Compact, for the 21st century, redefined the way that this group of New World citizens would run their lives. They signed up to give up shopping for a year: no new clothes, gadgets, cars, CDs or make-up. The only things they were allowed to buy were essentials such as medication, food and stuff like toothpaste.
Alan Watkins: Mr Brown is as much to blame as anyone for Labour being 'in a rut' over Iraq
Published: 07 January 2007
Brian Viner: Maximum breaks to breaking records, a year of birthdays and anniversaries
Published: 06 January 2007
Deborah Orr: It's not just the upper classes that are getting away with deadly blood sports
Published: 06 January 2007
When a pair of Rottweilers belonging to her mother's boyfriend mauled five-month-old Cadey-Lee Deacon to death, the nation remained largely decorous about the glimpse into social chaos afforded by the tragedy. There was acceptance, in the public sphere, at least, that it was reasonable that the pub the family lived in might need guard dogs, that a rule about the dogs remaining outside could have been understandably overlooked, and that no one was to blame for the baby's death.
Christina Patterson: Diet books? They're just for reading
Published: 05 January 2007
The wrong kind of weather, and indeed management, may be the chief cause of delays on our own super-pricey trains, but in New York explanations for late-running trains are a little less prosaic. According to the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the main culprits, after engineering problems, are "fainting dieters". Only in the land of the free and the faddy could an urgent desire to squeeze into your size-0 jeans bring public transport grinding to a halt. The supersized, wedged into seats increasingly designed for baby whales, must be furious.
Thomas Sutcliffe: Literary guilt ain't what it used to be
Published: 05 January 2007
Apparently, Stephen King is the nation's favourite guilty pleasure - which strikes me as a bit pathetic, really. I have no problem with the pleasure bit, you understand, having from time to time opened up one of King's Gothic potboilers with the crooning sigh of someone easing into a hot bath. But I'm not at all convinced that these responders really understand what literary guilt is. Don't they know that King effectively bypassed guilt several years ago? That he is a recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. That The New Yorker has published his short stories? Alibis for reading his books are thick on the ground: you could claim to be fascinated by his deconstruction of late-20th-century consumer culture, for example; or pretend to an analytical interest in his incorporation of American demotic into the authorial voice. But you certainly don't have to feel guilty.
Janet Street-Porter: The two Davids tell farmers what to do
Published: 04 January 2007
My local farmer in Yorkshire has just spent three days in the rain up to his knees in water and mud digging a drainage ditch near my house, for £12 an hour. Who'd work on the land in the winter, when you're paid just a bit more than most cleaners in the posher parts of London? And yet everyone seems to have an opinion about farmers, what they grow, how they run their businesses, and what help they should be given.
Mark Steel: Will anyone remember this grumpy old man?
Published: 03 January 2007
Thomas Sutcliffe: Ethics aside, citizen reporters get scoops
Published: 02 January 2007
When ITV scheduled I Was There, a review of the year which sidestepped the traditional suppliers of news coverage in favour of "citizen journalists", they can't have known that the year's end would bring the most macabre example yet of this growing trend - the mobile phone footage of Saddam Hussein's final drop.
Joan Smith: I'll always have my memories of Little Chef
Published: 02 January 2007
John Rentoul: If Gordon Brown is wise, he will not be promising to restore trust in government
Published: 02 January 2007
John Walsh: Tales of the City
Published: 02 January 2007
John Rentoul: Mr Blair is entitled to stand by his refusal to apologise for helping to oust a dictator
Published: 31 December 2006
Editor-At-Large: There's more to life than a shiny U-bend
Published: 31 December 2006
Housework - woman's work or a male conspiracy to keep us in our place? After all, it's pretty hard to be taken seriously if you're wearing Marigolds and clutching a duster. How I loathe housework. It reminds me of my teenage years when my parents refused to give me any pocket money unless I had ironed all the sheets each week, cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the carpets. By the way, I was studying for exams, working as hard as my father, but somehow housework was never considered part of his script for life. The minute I got a job, I got a cleaner.
Joan Smith: Moral? This is just state-sanctioned murder
Published: 31 December 2006
Master Alan Watkins' Almanac: Master Blair has a clever Scheam. He is desirous to make Peace with Mr Brown
Published: 31 December 2006
Brian Viner: Fiendish questions of sport... folk songs, novels and who was Mrs Bart Conner?
Published: 30 December 2006
Here, a week later than promised, is this column's annual end-of-year quiz. For many of the questions I must thank Nick Stewart of the Lord's Taverners, who set them for the dinner and balloon debate in aid of the Taverners which took place in the Long Room at Lord's earlier this month. I have also added a few of my own. And I am delighted to announce a fine first prize: a year's supply of Spitfire beer - 365 bottles - donated by the brewers Shepherd Neame. For five runners-up there will be a selection of CDs, offered by Nick Stewart, who does something important at Warner Music.
Donald Macintyre: Is it time for Israel to start talking to Syria?
Published: 29 December 2006
Joan Smith: Shopping is the true spirit of Christmas
Published: 28 December 2006
I'm not sure which was more irritating, driving to Somerset on Christmas Eve to the strains of some terrible Christmas singles or returning to London yesterday accompanied by incessant adverts for the winter sales. When the choice is between Noddy Holder of Slade and a man offering cut-price sofas from DFS, it's hard not to think that you have finally reached the bottom of the barrel of Western culture. These days, I like to think that the slight air of desperation in the voices of actors urging me to think about a new patio is down to global warming; everything is happening earlier than it used to, and I did most of my shopping for bargains well before the celebrations even started.
Hamish McRae: Here comes the shopping revolution
Published: 27 December 2006
Joan Smith: The ghastly values that link masked Muslim women to ministers obsessed by ID cards
Published: 27 December 2006
Thomas Sutcliffe: The weird world of the news searches
Published: 26 December 2006
As the year draws to its close,it's clear that the competition for most morale-lowering news report of the previous 12 months has been a hot one. Global warming, the war in Iraq and the crisis in Darfur have all done their bit - with Korean nuclear tests and Lebanon adding to the sense that long-range optimism may be a symptom of certifiable mental illness, rather than a viable way of looking at the world. But, although I know it doesn't really compete with any of these genuine crises, I couldn't help but feel sandbagged by the revelation, just before the contest closed, that Paris Hilton had topped the list of Google news searches for 2006.
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