Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Mini-hiatus

Little to no blogging over the next few days, I'm afriad. I'm in East Lothian tonight, speaking at a St Andrews dinner, thence to Hawick to bid farewell to a cousin who is emigrating to Melbourne (an order for Boxing Day Ashes tickets has already, fear not, been placed) and then have a deadline to meet on Sunday. So, talk amongst yourselves peeps: now that counter-terrosim police have taken to arresting opposition politicians for the crime of embarrassing the government, is this government the worst we've endured in more than 50 years or merely one of the worst? Meanwhile, American readers are invited to speculate upon arguments in favour of, and against, a government bail-out for the Detroit Lions.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and readers. In celebration, I offer this Culture11 piece on why Thanksgiving is comfortably the most civilised holiday of them all. Then again, the competition ain't stiff, is it?

Wednesday

Alex Massie

To the barricades!

There's something splendid about this. Brent Whelan, an American in Paris, runs, as you do, into yet another demonstration. There was the... sound truck and chants, flags and banderoles, a regular labor action. But I missed the front of the cortège where the leafleters and signs were, so I couldn't tell what it was about. So I asked a guy on the corner, who told me, "It's the archaeologists."  And that's just who it was: several hundred archaeologists marching down the street, shouting and chanting, demanding that the government withdraw plans to disperse the headquarters of its national archaeological service from Paris. Only, I think, in Paris. And long may this remain the case. There's a serious point here too, however: everyone wants to sty in the capital.

Alex Massie

Kingsley’s Rules

Roger Scruton reviews Kingsley Amis's Everyday Drinking, now happily reissued: At the start, Amis announces certain 'general principles' to be followed in creating drinks, all of which can be derived, by natural drinkers' logic, from the first of them, which holds that 'up to a point [i.e. short of offering your guests one of those Balkan plonks marketed as wine, Cyprus sherry, poteen and the like], go for quantity rather than quality'. Spirits prevail over the stuff that might soften their impact, as illustrated by the Lucky Jim, which consists of 12 to 15 parts vodka to one part vermouth and two parts cucumber juice, and there is a drink for just about every ordeal that Kingsley's ordeal-filled life could be expected to present.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Department of Hackery

One of the things that distinguishes a good columnist from the ordinary, run-of-the-mill shill is the ability to treat their own party's failings as severely as they would condemn the blunders committed by the other lot. Similarly, there's something to be said for the rigour that consistency demands. Polly Toynbee may be correct (though I'd wager she isn't) that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling played a blinder on Monday, but does anyone imagine that if it was a Conservative government presiding over this recession she would write anything as, I don't know, cheerful and complacent, as this? Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs.

Alex Massie

New Labour RIP

I've too much respect for my friends at The Times to ask if Rupert Murdoch dictated that this Peter Brookes cartoon appear on the paper's front page today... The Thunderer's leader column makes it pretty clear, I think, that the Times will not be endorsing Labour at the next election: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both promised reform of public services that might have allowed the quality of services to be maintained at a lower rate of spending. In the absence of that reform, high spending and the maintenance of a large public sector workforce became the only way of maintaining servive levels. Yet such spending has proven unsustainable. It is this which led Labour to its fateful decision.

Alex Massie

Letter from a Florida Prison

Conrad Black: The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved. Yup.

Alex Massie

Never mind me mate, what about the other mob?

Commenting on this post Ian Leslie - aka Marbury - argues that we're on the brink of a new era and that just as Callaghan was right to appreciate that one era had ended in 1976, so Darling and El Gordo may be correct to suppose that another has been shipwrecked now. Maybe. Look, I'm not sure this will work, and if it does work it might be partly by accident and yes I know that Brown hasn't really earned his authority over the last ten years. This is a gamble. But taking a gamble at this stage is better than doing nothing and hoping things will return to normal, as the Tories propose. They won't. Well, are the Tories really proposing "doing nothing"? Granted, their proposals haven't been especially persuasive either.

Alex Massie

Quote for the Day

Chris Dillow - always worth your time - casts a weary eye over a number of government policies and concludes: What this shows, I think, is that New Labour’s claim to believe in technocratic, evidence-based policy is a sham. They are not technocrats at all, but either priggish moralists or cowardly panderers to mob prejudice. Quite so. And as he says, we may need a revolution. Lord knows, however, where that might come from.

Alex Massie

Best, Brightest, Fabbest Cabinet, like, Evah

I'd been meaning to write something about how all the cheering at the supposed brilliance of Obama's cabinet picks was reminiscent of the huzzahs that greeted George W Bush's peronnel choices. But Ezra Klein has beaten me to it: "Isn’t it amazing," asks Krugman, "just how impressive the people being named to key positions in the Obama administration seem? Bye-bye hacks and cronies, hello people who actually know what they’re doing. For a bunch of people who were written off as a permanent minority four years ago, the Democrats look remarkably like the natural governing party these days, with a deep bench of talent." That certainly feels true. But the Bush administration started out with a fairly deep bench. Colin Powell as Secretary of State.

Alex Massie

Sexy Horse Noises!

Another lovely obituary from the Daily Telegraph (of course) that is, as always, written with panache: Nick Mills, who has died aged 54, was a country vet with a practice which took him across the world as an anaesthetist for wild animals, an insurance adviser to the racing industry and a "sex therapist" to thoroughbreds at stud. Among the famous racehorses he examined before they were purchased or put out to stud were Epsom Derby winners such as Galileo and Benny the Dip. When the 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem showed a lack of interest in the opposite sex, Mills made several journeys to Japan (where the horse was standing) and drew on his research with the Cambridge University veterinary school.

Monday

Alex Massie

Should We Be More Like Bonobos?

I dunno. But perhaps we should try and ignore our warrior-chimp ancestry and learn from the blessed, peaceful bonobos. At least that seems to be the idea behind Sex & War: How Biology Explains War and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World. Yes, I know what you're thinking: another trendy but implausibly sweeping sub-title. Nonetheless, I heartily* recommend this book and suggest it may make an ideal christmas present for more people than you might think. Wired interview with the authors and book extract here. *Have you read the book, Massie? No. So why the recommendation? Because one of the authors, Thomas Hayden, is a friend, silly.

Alex Massie

Could You Go A Chicken Supper, Bobby Sands*?

Exciting fast food wars update: faithful reader MT alerts me to something I should have known myself. Not only is the British embassy in Tehran located on Bobby Sands Street, there is a Bobby Sands burger joint in hip and happening Tehran too. Andrew McKie has also considered the ideological implications - nay, temptations - of the chip shop wars. As he suggests: "Fish supper, chicken supper. A theological and geopolitical minefield. This calls for a book, really." Quite so. *Explanatory note: During Bobby Sands' hunger strike fans at Glasgow Rangers and Heart of Midlothian, among, I think, other clubs, would sing, to the tune of "She's Coming Round the Mountain", "Could you go a chicken supper, Bobby Sands?/Could you go a chicken supper, Bobby Sands?

Sunday

Alex Massie

The Days of a Do Nothing Presidency, Alas, Are Gone

Gail Collins, short of an idea for a column this week, clutters-up the NYT op-ed page with the fanciful suggestion that George W Bush stand down now and let the cool new guy takeover. Well, fine. Whatever dreams tickle your fancy. Collins also drops this in, however: “Doing nothing is almost the worst thing a president can do,” said the historian Michael Beschloss. This is almost the worst advice you could give a President. Doing stuff is often the problem. One of the better things about Candidate Bush in 2000 was his apparently modest agenda. Of course, it didn't work out that way. But with the exception, one might argue, of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration's sins have been ones of commission not omission.

Alex Massie

A Protestant fish for a Protestant people?

I've had occasion to salute the glories of the Scottish fish and chip shop before - where else can you obtain a deep-fried kebab pizza? - but when it comes to naming chippies, I'm not sure there's many that can beat this Belfast emporium: That's right folks: For Cod and Ulster, where the King Billy's Family Feast will only set you back £16.90 (of course!). In an ecumenical touch - in keeping with the patina of the times -  they do however serve a Gerry Adams burger.

Alex Massie

Who’s Not Coming to Dinner?

Christ, I'm glad I* don't eat at the restaurants Thomas Friedman frequents: So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.” Of course, maybe he's right... Still, Friedman says that "What ails us right now is as much a loss of confidence...as anything else.

Friday

Alex Massie

Meet the New Boss, Not So Different From the Old Boss?

Sure, last month Barack Obama was an un-American, terrorist-coddling, muslim threat to every American Ideal every true-blooded, stout-hearted, tub-thumping patriot held dear. Now, however, things are a little different. We can seem more clearly these days, now the nonsense has receded. Ross Douthat offers a prediction: Among right-wing hawks, there will be strange-new-respectful talk about Obama's centrist instincts, his Scoop Jackson-ish tendencies, his Reaganesque blend of idealism, pragmatism and strength. Meanwhile, the rest of the right-wing coalition will be getting steamrolled. Quite so. Viewed from outside the United States, the foreign policy "debate" in Washington is a curiously curtailed affair.