January 2009

Standpoint is published monthly by Social Affairs Unit Magazines Limited, a subsidiary of the Social Affairs Unit (Registered Charity No.281530). The views expressed in Standpoint are those of its individual authors, not those of the Social Affairs Unit Magazines Ltd and its Directors or those of the Social Affairs Unit and its Trustees and Director

Features

Four Days of Terror in Mumbai

WORDS AND PICTURES BY JONATHAN FOREMAN

January 2009

A city in the grip of rumour and recrimination - an eye-witness account of the jihadi attacks and their aftermath

It is all too clear that the Mumbai terrorists were outstanding at their vocation. This was true in a purely technical military sense - after all, as few as ten of them were able to hold off the massed might of India's security forces, including her best commandos, for more than three days. But it was also true in a more important functional sense: they were highly effective at inspiring terror. They chose precisely the right targets in a country whose institutional and cultural weaknesses they understood and were able to exploit. Though the real horror of their attacks was the murders they committed and tried to commit, they inspired massive fear far away from the symbolic targets they chose. Indeed, what I found in Mumbai during the four long days of the emergency was that the fear they provoked increased the further you got from the loci of their actual attacks.

COMMENTS: 0

Saving Gemma from Her Carers

ALASDAIR PALMER

January 2009

If ‘localism’ is to succeed, more power should be given to the people, not local government

There are now 1,645,500 people employed by local authorities in England alone. Since that figure excludes teachers, the majority of the 1.6 million are bureaucrats. Some of them appear to do very little except prevent local people from organising local services in ways that they know will improve their own communities.

Everyone will have an example of local government incompetence, inefficiency and obstructiveness. I live in the London Borough of Hackney, a local authority that for decades has been a byword for incompetence, inefficiency and obstructiveness.

COMMENTS: 1

Bearhugged by Uncle Vlad

EDWARD LUCAS

January 2009

Germany's fawning attitude towards Putin stems from a belief that Russia is the nearest thing it has to a colony

Germany's relationship with Vladimir Putin's Russia is the most puzzling and troubling feature of modern European politics. Not only is Germany Russia's biggest trading partner, it is also her biggest ally. It is Germany that has derailed Nato expansion. Germany reversed the EU's initially tough line on Russia after the invasion of Georgia. Germany prevents the Council of Europe scrutinising Russia's flawed elections. Germany forces the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to channel money to companies run by Kremlin cronies. Germany keeps Europe's energy market rigged in favour of Russian gas imports.

COMMENTS: 8

A Novel Way to Treat a Writer

SUSAN HILL

January 2009

I have been inundated with emails from GCSE and A-level students who want me to spoonfeed answers on their set texts

"Hi Sue, I'm doing your book, we have to read it and just wanna say it's the most boring crap book I ever read, so thanks a lot for ruining my life. Cheers."

"Hi Susan, we're doing your book, I've gotta do coursework only I don't understand about context, what is it, and I don't no any other gothic writers and we've got to compare you, what's gothic anyway. Pleeeeze reply asap."

"Hi. I've got this essay to do for tomoz, it's about I'm the king of the castle and does the setting play an important part in the story. Can you reply tonight and do it in bullet points so I can copy and paste it straight in. thanks you're a star in advance, cheers..."

"Hi, we have to do this essay on context with your book, and cultural context so what are those please, please explain carefully, I don't get it."

COMMENTS: 11

China's Rural Nightmare

JONATHAN MIRSKY

January 2009

As the global economic crisis hits home, Beijing faces what the country's rulers have always feared - a peasants' revolt

The waves from the subprime disaster have reached China, where the bottom has dropped out of the packing-case industry. Americans, in particular, no longer want cheap goods made by migrant peasant women in the southern Chinese sweatshops. What is also plain is the folly of Beijing's deliberate destruction of the once-prosperous rural economy. Peasant uprisings, the nightmare that has kept Chinese rulers awake since the second century BC, are already causing panic in Beijing, where the official press reports hundreds of rural demonstrations against corrupt, land-grabbing officials.

COMMENTS: 1

Honourable Conspirators

NIGEL JONES

January 2009

The officers who tried to kill Hitler were spurred on by a deep sense of shame and guilt

Leaving aside his controversial belief in Scientology, Tom Cruise is not best known for portraying spiritual characters. But as his new film,the Second World War epic Valkyrie opens in the UK at the end of the month, Cruise will be identified with the genuine article. The man he plays, Claus Schenk, Count von Stauffenberg, embodied rare qualities unfamiliar to our debased age, more used as it is to "heroes" whose sole heroism consists of kicking a ball into the back of a net.

COMMENTS: 2

Don't Worry, Be Happy

FRANCESCA SEGAL

January 2009

You want it, you deserve it! That's the misleading message of a thousand self-help guides to instant bliss

"Heaven helps those who help themselves," wrote Samuel Smiles in 1859, a no-nonsense introduction to his straightforwardly titled publication, Self Help. Helping oneself, seeking self-improvement, striving to be better - these are noble instincts, grounded in and inspired by some of the most traditional and fundamental religious tenets. The Victorians enjoyed manuals of instruction, turning to the bookshelves for advice on business, diet and marriage, but Smiles could not have imagined the monsters that have since emerged from the Pandora's box of self-help, transmuted from a small publishing niche into a multi-billion dollar a year industry. It is unlikely he'd be smiling if he could.

COMMENTS: 1

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