Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Why don’t you just cancel the bus service?

It's good to see that not every sector of the economy is knee-capped by the "credit crunch". So hurrah for NHS Lothian who are advertising this exciting opportunity: Job Title: Health Promotion Specialist: Physical Activity (Walking, City of Edinburgh) Band 5: £20,225 - £26,123 per annum Fixed Term – 3 Year Contract Ref: CO/AL/094 An exciting and challenging opportunity has arisen to take forward work in Partnership with City of Edinbrugh Council and Paths to Health to increase physical activity levels of whose who live and work in Edinburgh through walking. You will establish good working relationships with NHS Lothian, City of Edinburgh Council, Paths to Health and partner agencies to develop and implement an action plan to increase walking levels in Edinburgh.

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Rendition Problem

Ross Douthat has a very interesting, honest post about torture here. (With subsequent posts here and here.) As if by magic, National Review appears with an editorial defending the Bush administration's approach to interrogation here. I don't find it especially persuasive, and doubt you will too. Conor Friedersdorf has more too. Amidst the debate on torture and "torture-lite" (or "enhanced" interrogation), one element of US policy is often overlooked: Extraordinary Rendition. To some extent you can argue about policies applied at Guantanamo and CIA black sites around the world, but there's no denying, I think, that Extraordinary Rendition amounts to anything less than state-sponsored torture.

Alex Massie

Canterbury and Downing Street

Gordon Brown may be a son of the Manse, but it's the Archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, who has picked up a presbyterian cudgel with which to whack the Prime Minister. To wit: The Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the government's fiscal stimulus package on Thursday, likening it to "an addict returning to a drug." Then again, it hardly matters. It's not as though many people listen to the Church of England anyway....

Alex Massie

The Threat from Australia

Adapt and change or die is the mantra of the day. And not just in economics neither. Here, for instance, is the Australian rugby coach Ewen McKenzie, currently in charge at Stade Francais, arguing that the experimental rules used this season in the southern hemisphere be adopted in europe too: "I understand the debate, change is difficult," he warned. "But we are now in the entertainment business. Kids have all sorts of technology in their homes now so we as a sport have got to do things to make them get off their bums and come to watch our game, especially when the weather is cold. "That means you have got to keep thinking of new ways. The traditionalists will still come, but one day they will die out and will have to be replaced.

Alex Massie

Is Gordon Up For It?

Iain Martin asked a good question today: Despite being at or near the top of his profession for two decades, the PM has no track record in fronting election campaigns. There are so few images of his public electioneering because he has done very little of it. Curiously, amid the speculation about the possibility of the PM going to the country as early as February (the 26th is the date the Tories have circled with blue pencil as a possibility), there has been virtually no consideration of a rather important question: will Prime Minister Brown be any good in a general election campaign?

Alex Massie

Kennedy Reveals All

So Caroline Kennedy is kind enough to explain why she thinks she should be appointed the next Senator from New York: "I come at this as a mother, as a lawyer, as an author as an education advocate and from a family that really has spent generations in public service," she began, in response to a question about why she's running, saying this is "a time when nobody can afford to sit out." Personally I'd be wary of trading upon her grandfather's public-service career, but then again perhaps she liked the old bastard. Clearly, however, she's decided that there's no point ignoring the dynastic/entitlement issue and has chosen, instead, to double down on it.

Alex Massie

Department of Correction

Ah, it's that time of year again! Yup, the splendid blog Regret the Error rounds up the most entertaining newspaper corrections of the year. Some of my favourites: The Daily Mail was among the newspapers to report that David Gest contracted herpes from Liza Minnelli on their wedding night. Not so! In articles published on 23 and 26 May 2008, we gave the impression that Mr Gest had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and alleged that he had Liza Minnelli’s dog killed without her knowledge. This was wrong. David Gest has never had a sexually transmitted infection and did not have Ms Minnelli’s dog killed. We apologise to Mr Gest for any embarrassment caused.

Alex Massie

The Media Campaign

Ouch! The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. Staff members were encouraged to ignore new Web sites like The Page, written by Time’s Mark Halperin, and Politico, both of which had gained instant cachet among the Washington smarty-pants set. “If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, would repeat mantralike around headquarters. He said his least favorite words in the English language were, “I saw someone on cable say this. . . .” Actually, I think that's a little unfair on Politico, but there's something to this nonetheless.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Obama: Not a Danger!

Now that we're getting used to the idea of President Barack Hussein Obama, it's easy to forget just how quick he's risen to the summit of American politics. The other day I came across a pack of playing cards that I picked up at CPAC in 2006; produced by Human Events, it's titled "The 52 Most Dangerous Liberals in America" (the Aces are Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and George Soros) and features most of the usual suspects in Gore, Carter, Krugman, Dowd, Huffington, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman etc etc. The person missing? Yup, Barack Obama who, according to Human Events, was considered less of a threat to America's future than Alan Colmes...

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Torture Team

Dick Cheney in an interview with ABC News: CHENEY: On the question of so-called torture, we don't do torture. We never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously. We checked. We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful -- wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did.

Alex Massie

Paying Tribute to the New Emperor

One of the odder characteristics of a certain strain of British right-wing thinking is the terror that British Prime Ministers might ever disagree with the American president. It's almost as if there's a fear that if Britain takes an different view then Washington will chuck us overboard and find a new european friend with whom to play. (Sometimes that's the Germans, though at the moment the French might be thought the more likely rivals). Such fears are, I suspect, overdone. Still, here's Con Coughlin today: But the quid pro quo for a bigger American military commitment to Afghanistan is that Washington's European allies - which includes Britain - step up to the plate and commit more resources of their own.

Alex Massie

Senate Selection

Joe Klein on the self-styled Worlds' Greatest Deliberative Body: The point is, that the Blagojevich fiasco and now the Kennedy play have turned the selection of new Senators into a skeevy travesty. The best way to change the story would be go in the exact opposite direction--go completely high-minded. He suggests some worthy folk, but nothing so high-minded as, you know, an actual election. Sure, it would be expensive but all the pols are telling everyone they should spend some more money, so consider this a stimulus for the political consultancy industry - a trade that's been badly battered by the bursting of an inflationary bubble in the first week of November... Anyway, the selection of new Senators has always been a "skeevy travesty".

Alex Massie

The Lessons of Madoff

Actually, as Megan explains, the lesson of Bernie Madoff's scam is that there really aren't any lessons that can be drawn. As she puts it, "Everyone just screwed up". That leaves us in the unsatisfying position of having no-one, apart from the remarkable Mr Madoff, of course, to blame. Sometimes stuff really does just happen and there aren't any deep and meaningful lessons to learn or "underlying" or "contributory" villains to blame. As Megan says, this disconcerts, since it deprives us of the endlessly satisfying consolations of sweet vindictiveness and righteous indignation. A con-man is a con-man is a con-man. His status as such does nothing to advance the case against George W Bush or Milton Friedman or the market or anything else. Me?

Alex Massie

Name That Child

Turns out there is a list of approved hipster baby-names. (I assume there's a comparable British list somewhere?) James Poulos lists his favourites but unfairly targets Magnus for opprobrium. Nothing wrong with Magnus,  it being a fine, sturdy old Norse-Scots name. On the other hand, it probably sounds daft in Americaland. Anyway, the best hipster infant names are clearly: Elvis, Dashiell, Orson, Dixie, Matilda and Iris. And the worst: Kai, Roman, August, Atticus, Kingston, Dexter, Lennon, Mamie, Pearl and Sullivan (sorry Andrew!). Bonus: Piper is one of the names on the list! Just as well this didn't come out during the election isn't it? Might have undermined Sarah Palin's claims to be representing "Real America". On the other hand: who knew there were hipsters in Wasilla?

Monday

Alex Massie

The Afghan Conundrum

Joe Klein has been to Afghanistan, so that puts him one up on me. Still, having spent some time pointing out the (widely-acknowledged) complexity of the situation in Afghanistan, Klein concludes his piece with this sweeping pronouncement: The first step toward resolving the war in Afghanistan is to lay down the law in both Islamabad and Kabul. The message should be the same in both cases: The unsupervised splurge of American aid is over. The Pakistanis will have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade.

Alex Massie

Respecting the Office

I think I've mentioned before that President George W Bush was said to find the British press corps lack of respect for his office somewhat grating. Unlike our American counterparts, British journalists declined to stand to attention when Mr Bush strode into the East Room or sauntered out into the Rose Garden for yet another press conference with ACL Blair. If the President was not disgruntled by this discourtesy he was certainly, as they say, far from gruntled. The contrast between this and his cheery "For the record, it was a size 10" rejoinder to this week's shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad is striking.

Alex Massie

How to cut your own throat

Via Megan McArdle, I see that the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are taking a novel approach to the malaise that's crippling newspapers across America (and Britain): make it much more difficult for people to buy your product. At first you may think that this is so counter-intuitive that it must be brilliant. But it's not: it's every bit as stupid (I think!) as it sounds. The Motor City papers are apparently only going to deliver papers to their readers' homes three days out of every seven. The theory, as I understand it, is that all this printing and delivering is too expensive to be justified on lighter advertising days such as Monday and Tuesday. In future, then, Detroiters will have to find a news-stand to buy the paper or, of course, read it online.