Leading Articles
Leading article: A belated awakening to Middle East obligations
Published: 07 January 2008
Given how central the Middle East has been to US foreign policy in recent decades, it is remarkable that it has taken George Bush the best part of seven years to make his first visit to Israel as President.
Leading article: Welfare reform comes at a cost
Published: 07 January 2008
The Conservatives are rolling out a programme of benefit proposals that owes much to the "tough love" approach of recent welfare reforms in the United States and some European countries. Yesterday David Cameron spoke of introducing more rigorous checks for recipients of incapacity benefit. Today we report his plan to limit the number of job offers a benefit recipient may turn down before forfeiting the job seeker's allowance. Mr Cameron will present the whole package tomorrow.
Leading article: Surplus baggage
Published: 07 January 2008
From today, travellers from British airports will get some of what they have been lobbying for since new baggage restrictions were introduced a year last summer. Out goes the one-bag limit for cabin luggage, especially hated by business travellers who found it hard to fit a laptop in their single bag – and by many women who could not see why such a basic necessity as a handbag should count as a second bag. In comes ... well, this is where the change is not quite as wonderful as it might seem.
Leading article: Nuclear power is a distraction
Published: 06 January 2008
Remember that excruciating picture last autumn of the Prime Minister greeting Margaret Thatcher for tea at No 10? You can bet that Gordon Brown does. For that photo-call – then hailed as a brilliant tactical coup by jubilant Brownites bent on destablising the Tory party – is now increasingly seen as helping to turn the son of the manse's glorious summer into his winter of discontent, persuading the public, together with the on-off election, that the Prime Minister was as opportunistic as his predecessor
Leading article: One state down and a presidency still to play for
Published: 05 January 2008
Leading article: Wanted... new hands on an old trophy
Published: 05 January 2008
The standing of the FA Cup has never recovered from Manchester United's decision a few years ago to opt out in order to take part in the money-spinning but meaningless World Club Championship.
Leading article: Youthful pleasures
Published: 05 January 2008
What is the country coming to? Last year the headquarters of Methodism applied for a licence to serve alcohol. Now we learn that the Youth Hostel Association – that last resort of the impecunious leisure-seeker – has obtained permission for almost 100 of its 250 premises to sell strong drink. And not just at cocktail hour, but around the clock.
Leading article: A test of the Government's environmental credentials
Published: 04 January 2008
The decision Gordon Brown makes on whether to proceed with Britain's first new coal power station in two decades will make or break his environmental reputation
Leading article: A dispiriting anniversary
Published: 04 January 2008
The 60th anniversary of Burma's independence from Britain is very far from being the occasion for mutual celebration it could, and should, have been
Leading article: Food for thought
Published: 04 January 2008
After the Christmas excess comes the payback. In the past few weeks, millions of people will have groaned a little, reached for a packet of indigestion tablets and wished they had not eaten that last mince pie. Thousands more will have consulted their GP for a prescription.
Leading article: The marathon has begun, and the world is watching
Published: 03 January 2008
Voters in Iowa will tonight fire the starting pistol for one of the most open and potentially thrilling US presidential races for decades
Leading article: What a way to run a railway
Published: 03 January 2008
A new year has dawned and, with it, the realisation that our rail system is hopelessly inadequate
Leading article: Where there's a will...
Published: 03 January 2008
Any writer knows that wills make for good drama: all that jockeying for position, the sycophancy, the threats of exclusion, the anticipation and, inevitably, the bitter fallout. But last year, truth surpassed fiction in two cases. Golda Bechal left her £10m fortune to Kim Sing Man and his wife, Bee Lian Man – the owners of Ms Bechal's favourite Chinese restaurant, The Lian in Witham, Essex. And in New York, the US hotelier and property magnate Leona Helmsley left $12m to her pet Maltese dog, Trouble.
Leading article: A strong currency and a powerful Continent
Published: 02 January 2008
When the euro was launched six years ago there were many who did not give the new currency much of a chance. It was written off in some quarters as an ill-fated economic experiment. Some commentators argued that a single currency could never be stretched to cover such a range of divergent economies.
Leading article: The wrong sort of medicine
Published: 02 January 2008
Gordon Brown signalled yesterday that he is preparing to give the National Health Service a 60th birthday present in the form of a "constitution". Excuse us if we do not join in the celebrations at this news.
Leading article: Power surge
Published: 02 January 2008
Have you ever experienced a power cut? If the answer is yes you will doubtless feel a pang of sympathy for the 87 residents of the Isle of Eigg. The inhabitants of the tiny Hebridean island have been in the midst of a power cut for more than a century now.
Leading article: The year a nation drank from the healing well
Published: 01 January 2008
Northern Ireland has so often been a source of negativity that it is well worth reminding ourselves that in 2007 it proved a source of huge good cheer. In the course of the year it successfully underwent, in the words of its poet Seamus Heaney, its "great sea-change on the far side of revenge ".
Leading article: A crude subversion of democracy
Published: 01 January 2008
Kenya's election result has opened the floodgates to a wave of violence. Yesterday there were running battles between armed opposition protestors and police in the slums of Nairobi and Kisumu. More than 100 Kenyans have been shot dead by police, including (according to some reports) women and children. The violence has been exacerbated by the tribal rivalries between the Kikuyu supporters of President Mwai Kibaki and the Luo constituency of his main challenger, Raila Odinga.
Leading article: Why, oh why?
Published: 01 January 2008
It's becoming something of a New Year ritual. For almost a decade, the website www.edge.org has been asking a selection of eminent thinkers and scholars to answer a single question and publishing the results on 1 January.
Leading article: The polls are volatile, the challenges are immense
Published: 31 December 2007
The leaders of Britain's three main political parties all face particular challenges in 2008, but it is Gordon Brown who goes into the new year with the most ground to make up.
Leading article: President without moral authority
Published: 31 December 2007
When Mwai Kibaki won a landslide victory in Kenya's presidential elections five years ago, the country's future seemed bright. Daniel Arap Moi's corrupt 24-year grip on power had finally been broken in the country's first truly democratic election. And the new President, a trained economist, had campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket. Mr Kibaki seemed to be the leader to unleash Kenya's economic and human potential.
Leading article: Wise words
Published: 31 December 2007
'If you have a garden and a library," wrote the great Roman orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero, "you have everything you need". In an age of Ground Force and Alan Titchmarsh, we seem to have the gardening side of that equation covered. But on the libraries front, we are faring much less impressively.
Leading article: Pain cannot mend broken children
Published: 30 December 2007
The circumstances in which physical restraint is used on children in Secure Training Centres are probably beyond the imaginations of most of us. These children are among the most vulnerable in society; they are often violent and frequently the victims of abuse
Leading article: The stakes are too high for Pakistan to veer off the road to democracy
Published: 29 December 2007
Whether al-Qa'ida was responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the intentions of those behind this murder are hardly difficult to discern: to destabilise further the Pakistani state; to push Pakistan out of the American orbit; to force the political parties and the Musharraf government to turn inwards and against one another; and, as a result of all that, to see the parliamentary elections planned for 8 January deferred indefinitely.
Leading article: Property booms and busts
Published: 29 December 2007
Falling house prices, to which we must now suddenly become accustomed after a decade which has seen property values treble, are usually taken to be "a bad thing". And, indeed, conventional economic analysis suggests that there are plenty of reasons to worry.
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