Leading Articles
Leading article: The route back to the negotiating table
Published: 26 February 2007
Iran has great potential to stabilise the region, as well as disrupt it. That was why the Iraq Study Group, headed by the former secretary of state James Baker, concluded that President Bush should co-operate with Iran to improve the situation in Iraq.
Leading article: A safety-first approach
Published: 26 February 2007
The derailment of a London to Glasgow Virgin Pendolino train in Cumbria on Friday night has once again cast the spotlight on to the safety of our railways. We are told the investigation into the accident is focussing on a set of points that the train passed over shortly before crashing.
Leading article: The other side of Africa
Published: 26 February 2007
Voting began in Senegal's presidential elections yesterday. The former French colony is not without its problems. Unemployment is high, something that prompts tens of thousands of young Senegalese men to risk a perilous boat journey to Europe in search of a better life each year. And a low-level conflict with separatists in the southern province of Casamance has been rumbling on for two decades.
Leading article: Blair's moral failure
Published: 25 February 2007
There is a long tradition in this country of scepticism about moralising politicians. It is a tradition to which this newspaper gave voice in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq
Leading article: The victory of Croke Park
Published: 25 February 2007
On this side of the Irish Sea, it is perhaps difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Wasn't this just another Six Nations match?
Leading article: For Queen and country, calm down!
Published: 25 February 2007
Is that the Chariots of Fire theme swelling from the sub-woofer? Are we being summoned to a rendezvous with our national destiny in Los Angeles tonight? Well, we are all for optimism and confidence, England expects and all that. But we also recall the words of another great British hero about trying on the crown before it is quite time for the big show.
Leading article: Missile defence and a relationship that is no longer quite so special
Published: 24 February 2007
Leading article: Banks vs the free market
Published: 24 February 2007
This week, consumer power in Britain reached a new level of maturity. The number of people who have downloaded template letters from consumer web sites demanding refunds of high street bank charges went past one million after the issue was highlighted by The Independent.
Leading article: Princely sum
Published: 24 February 2007
How nice it must be when your mum is one of the richest women in the country. Not to mention being the Queen. Actually, let's leave the head of state bit out of it. The thing about the Queen is that she can spend £1,000 a month from the privy purse on whatever she likes and not be criticised for wasting public money, because it comes from inherited dosh.
Leading article: Bridge the pay gap - it is outdated discrimination
Published: 23 February 2007
Yesterday was declared Equal Pay day by the Party of European Socialists. By coincidence, Wimbledon, that last bastion of conservatism on the international tennis circuit, announced that it would pay equal prize money
Leading article: Wanted: a credible candidate
Published: 23 February 2007
The announcement by Michael Meacher that he intends to stand for the Labour Party leadership makes it a little more likely - though by no means inevitable - that Gordon Brown will face a challenge to succeed Tony Blair
Leading article: A foreign withdrawal for home advantage
Published: 22 February 2007
It is, of course, welcome that a part of the British military contingent in southern Iraq is to come home
Leading article: An echo of the bad old days
Published: 22 February 2007
The victory of Romano Prodi's "Olive Tree" coalition over Silvio Berlusconi last year was always rather slender. Mr Berlusconi refused to recognise his defeat for three weeks after the polls closed
Leading article: Consumers have power to change our culture
Published: 21 February 2007
A survey of 25,000 people for the BBC confirms what has been painfully apparent for some time: British women have a major body image problem
Leading article: A study that must not be shelved
Published: 21 February 2007
Professor John Hills' report on the future of social housing provides an expert analysis of one of this country's most intractable problems
Leading article: Unsavoury smell hangs over high street banks
Published: 20 February 2007
Britain's high street banks are under an unusual amount of pressure from the regulators. The Financial Ombudsman Service claims that the banking industry's voluntary code of conduct is failing to give consumers adequate protection. And the Office of Fair Trading last week called for banks to give customers 14 days' notice before any levelling any penalty charges.
Leading article: The rape of the seas
Published: 20 February 2007
The madness of the over-fishing of our oceans shows no signs of abating. A research paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco yesterday shows that, as fish stocks in coastal waters become more and more depleted, trawlers are moving further out to sea.
Leading article: Blow up
Published: 20 February 2007
Celebrity news: Alan Bennett has come out against wind. He will be performing a one-man show next month in support of a campaign against the erection of a series of 360ft-high turbines on the moors above Oldham.
Leading article: Quick fixes are no cure for chronic problems
Published: 19 February 2007
Mr Blair was largely right when he said that gun violence was "a specific problem within a specific criminal culture" - and, he might have added, confined mostly to specific urban areas. But it also reflects problems that require more than the quick fix of longer sentences and one-off saturation policing.
Leading article: Time to ask questions about Condi
Published: 19 February 2007
In Mr Bush's first term, she was accused of ignoring the intelligence that preceded 9/11. Her recent diplomatic moves in the Middle East have mostly been late and unsubtle. The breakthrough in the North Korea talks was achieved without her.
Leading article: A capital idea
Published: 19 February 2007
London's congestion charge zone is extended today into Kensington & Chelsea, in the teeth of objections from a vocal proportion of residents and businesses. The precise strength of the opposition has been hard to gauge - those who felt strongly felt very strongly indeed and made their hostility known far and wide.
Leading article: Save the children
Published: 18 February 2007
David Cameron has been given a rough time since our revelation last Sunday that he was disciplined for smoking cannabis at Eton College. But the criticisms have come from unexpected quarters, and have been for unexpected things. It has been encouraging that almost no one has said how terrible it was that he tried cannabis as a 15-year-old. It is the kind of thing that young people do, and always will, even now when we know more about the psychological dangers. Instead, Mr Cameron has been criticised for hypocrisy, for insisting that the law must be enforced when he got away with a telling off and copying out lines of Latin for what was, after all, a criminal offence.
Leading article: We can't blame popular culture for society's ills. Nor can we ignore it
Published: 17 February 2007
Leading article: Too little, too late
Published: 17 February 2007
There was certainly cause for encouragement from this week's informal Washington climate change conference. Delegates from G8 countries as well as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa concluded with an agreement that man-made climate change is "beyond doubt". They agreed, too, that developing countries, as well as rich countries, must accept targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. There was also a consensus that a successor to the Kyoto protocol on climate change must be in place by 2009.
Leading article: These routes are made for walking
Published: 17 February 2007
Natural England, the Government's conservation advisory body, has recommended creating a statutory right of access to Britain's coast. This decision has been criticised by the National Farmers' Union as a recipe for confrontation. The NFU wants to increase access though local solutions and partnerships. But that will always result in landowners throwing their weight around.
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