Books and articles

Still captive: intellectuals, fear and conformity

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 13 July 2010 - 7:25pm

Tony Judt, though struck down with ALS, is doing some great stuff at the moment, and here's a fantastic post on the NYR blog, looking at the modern applicability (or otherwise) of Czesław Miłosz's magnificent study of intellectual conformity, The Captive Mind

Tough decisions

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 25 June 2010 - 1:49pm

IpsosMORI Social Research Institute have short new piece out, giving ten bits of advice to those involved in public sevice reforms in this era of cuts. Tough Decisions (PDF) is good in itself, but all the better for referencing our Democracy Pays white paper on the front page.

Meow and the Daily Show horizon

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 22 March 2010 - 6:53pm

Today, I laughed out loud at this paragraph in Charlie Brooker's attack on the newspaper coverage of meow:

Europe's economic and foreign policy government

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 1 March 2010 - 5:54pm

Herman van Rompuy is not known as a charismatic politician but, if you have time to read it, he gave a very thoughtful speech yesterday at the College of Europe in Bruges.

In it, he talks about the role of the European Council (rather than the Eurozone ministers or the Parliament) as Europe's nascent "economic government", and the difficulty of creating co-ordinated foreign policy among 27 state actors with different histories and outlooks.

On economics and the eurozone, van Rompuy said:

The bad manners of dissolving Parliament

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 25 February 2010 - 9:29am

Assuming the General Election in the UK is on 6 May, the election will be called on 12 April. The constitutional and ceremonial practice of calling an election involves the Great Seal of the Realm, royal proclamations and lots of other historical flummery. The political calculation, since the dissolution date is in the hands of the Prime Minister, is sharper.

Oscars switch from FPTP to AV - will it change the result?

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 24 February 2010 - 12:43pm

You know you're a real political geek when you care more about the voting method used to select the Oscars' best picture pick than you do about the films themselves. Yes, I am talking about myself.

Even so, I suggest that you read Hendrik Hertzberg's article on the topic in the New Yorker.

Aaronovitch interview on conspiracy theories

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 4 February 2010 - 12:57pm

David Aaronovitch is interviewed in Salon today, talking about his book - new in the US, out for a little while here, which is called Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History. Sample quote:

Eurabia: No such thing

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 8 January 2010 - 10:37am
The Brookings' Institution's Justin Vaïsse takes apart the Eurabia myth in this excellent short piece inForeign Policy. He points out the concept's stylistic links to fear of "Eurocommunism" in the 50s and general anti-European and anti-internationalist sentiments on the American right, and correctly positions Melanie Phillips as "on the fringe far right" in European debate. Here's some of the good stuff:
If these books insist so much on the future

Cameron and Europe

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 10 December 2009 - 1:47pm
No time for blogging today, but here's an interesting short paper (pdf) from Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, talking about how a Cameron government, and David Cameron himself, will handle European issues.

Compulsory civic service

Submitted by Anthony Zacharzewski on 7 December 2009 - 8:37am
James Crabtree writes a long article, which is worth reading, following up on his idea of compulsory civic service in the light of recent work by DEMOS. I have a few philosophical problems with the idea of compulsory civic service, not least the idea that it is the State's responsibility actively to define what its citizens should do, rather than to prohibit what they ought not to do. That said, James's piece makes me a little better-disposed to the proposal, not least b
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