Any other business

Before I start this piece, which is about the future of the Daily Telegraph, I should make clear that it is written by me. When I last wrote at length about the Telegraph – rather controversially, perhaps – I appear to have caused palpitations in the heart of at least one banker. The Spectator is owned by the same company as the Daily Telegraph, namely Hollinger International. And this banker, who may have been a somewhat unsophisticated individual, formed the view that anything appearing in The Spectator about the Telegraph must carry some sort of proprietorial stamp of approval, and reflect in some way the thinking of its higher management. This is completely untrue. What appears here are only my thoughts.

Investors stung by the endowment-policy and pension-plan mis-selling scandals, and in possession of poorly managed unit trusts that have failed miserably to outperform the FT-SE index, can hardly be blamed for coming to the conclusion that they might just as well make their own investment decisions rather than rely on the men in grey suits. Sadly, however, the European Commission believes that we cannot be trusted to make such decisions by ourselves. Its new Investment Services Directive contains a stinging clause that would oblige execution-only stockbrokers to assess their customers' competence before allowing them to use the service. Such obligations, the stockbrokers warn, will mean a sharp increase in the cost of trading for millions of small investors.

If William Rees-Mogg had a fan club, I would be its president. I would lick envelopes for him and update his website, which would no doubt be full of his latest geopolitical prognostications. I would arrange coach parties of the faithful so that we could travel down to Somerset and glimpse him as he paced his grounds. I would organise seminars in which various 'Mogg experts' could unveil their latest theories about his work. There is virtually nothing I would not do for him. Almost my first act on a Monday morning is to read his column in the Times. It is invariably a pleasure. William Rees-Mogg is an old-fashioned essayist who can turn to almost any subject under the sun, and write with knowledge and authority. This Monday, however, I was stopped in my tracks.

This was not a good war for newspapers. I am not so much thinking of the journalism. Much of it was excellent, though newspapers are obviously at a disadvantage to 24-hour rolling news channels, which not only provide breaking stories but also analysis from people who surprisingly often know what they are talking about. Newspapers scarcely put on sales during the war, and those that did appear already to have lost them. This is very disheartening to editors who have burnt the midnight oil, to reporters on the spot who have risked life and limb, and to publishers who have spent tens of thousands of unbudgeted pounds only to see very little sales uplift, if any at all. Exact figures are hard to establish.

One of the paradoxes of this war is that most of us do not have very much idea of what is going on. That is at any rate what I feel. There are hundreds of brave and talented journalists in Iraq who address us every hour of the day and night on television, and fill untold acres of newsprint in the press. But although I have spent countless hours slumped on my sofa watching the box (last night I tore myself away from Fox News at two o'clock in the morning), and almost as much time poring over the newspapers, the fog of war clings to me wherever I go. As I write, we don't know whether Saddam Hussein is alive or dead. The media seem momentarily to have lost interest in the progress of our magnificent soldiers around Basra.

Although much overshadowed by the war in Iraq, environmentalists, businessmen and charity workers met at the World Water Forum in Kyoto last week to discuss why 1.2 billion people still have no access to clean water. The United Nations has set a target of reducing this by half by 2015. But Michel Camdessus, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warns that the target will not be met because only $80 billion a year is being invested annually in the global water supply against the required $180 billion. Returns are too low thanks to corruption and mismanagement in the Third World. Part of the problem is that Western anti-globalisation lobbyists, who themselves enjoy clean water, have been preaching a message that water and profit do not mix.

In a speech in Ontario a fortnight ago, Leo W. Gerard made an eloquent appeal for the formation of a new 'worldwide movement for social justice to cure the ills of globalisation'.

Two weeks ago, I argued here - I hope without any suggestion of great originality - that all crises produce the same people. That is, doves, hawks and a majority which is moderate or opportunistic according to taste. Thus it was possible to compare the present crisis over Iraq with the 1914 crisis over Serbia. But great powers behave similarly too. More specifically, their component parts do. There is something which links today's United States to other great powers of the not too distant past. It is the existence, within the state, of a faction which wants to spread what it sees as the state's essence. It is the desire to expand which is the link; not that which is expanded.