March 2004
Making a racial joke out of politics
spiked editor Mick Hume in The Times (London), on Britain's all-party spot-the-racist-joke contest.
After Aristide
Humanitarian forces are tearing Haiti apart.
The geek shall inherit the Earth
The Lord of the Rings' Oscar sweep points to a society that is happier inhabiting Middle-Earth than confronting life in the real world.
Smacking adults
A report from Canada on the debate about corporal punishment.
Britain’s homegrown identity crisis
Immigrants are not causing the confusion over common values.
The future of energy
The opening seminar in spiked's 'Facing the future' series sent sparks flying.
Technologies for good and ills
Why we have a moral obligation to develop therapeutic cloning.
Blowing whistles on what?
Why our uncomfortable culture wants to celebrate mavericks and whistleblowers.
MMR: the controversy continues
Despite Dr Andrew Wakefield's increasing isolation, broader suspicion of medical authority is keeping his campaign going.
Tears of a crowd
Patrick West’s Conspicuous Compassion is a snapshot album of the rise of public mourning rituals.
Swinging the wrong way
Do straights have a 'right' to enter a gay bar?
TV UK, 5 March
Fact and fiction about doctors and nurses.
Offside, 5 March
FIFA is tying players up in new regulations.
Lost in transformation
Michael Howard’s prescription for the reinvention of the Tory Party may cause dizziness.
The politics of the lonely crowd
Protest movements get personal.
Don’t mention the war
From WMD to the question of legality, every facet of the Iraq conflict has been publicly debated. Except one: the war itself.
What’s the big idea?
More blogging by Britain's MPs and ministers is likely to reduce politics to the level of a webchat.
Apocalypse TV
spiked editor Mick Hume in The Times (London), on the theatre of fear.
Scandal at the Spitz
Paedophile panics blur our view of Betsy Schneider's photos.
The heart of the matter
The pulse of political life shouldn't be tested by gossip about the state of the prime minister's health.
Terror for terror’s sake
Behind the Madrid bombings.
Offside, 11 March
How to write an article about football's moral decline.
Ashtray politics
Student unions haven't got the bottle to halt smoking in bars.
TV UK, 11 March
Dramatic reconstruction is bunk.
A really bad habit
Where do UK public health campaigns get off, telling us how disgusting we are?
After Madrid: a strange sort of solidarity
If people are uncertain as to who they are uniting against, they seem even less sure of what they are standing up for.
Spain: a victory for peace, or for defeatism?
The message of the Spanish elections seems to be ‘make it all go away’, ‘stop the world, we want to get off’.
MMR: the controversy continues
Despite Dr Andrew Wakefield's increasing isolation, broader suspicion of medical authority is keeping his campaign going.
Why should parenthood have to be planned?
A new survey suggests that it's a problem that 40 per cent of pregnancies are 'unplanned'.
Bring back Toby Belch
Read spiked editor Mick Hume in The Times (London), on the UK government's 'National Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy'.
Who is Big Brother?
Current debates about privacy overvalue data protection and neglect genuine privacy.
Beyond the Growth Fetish
Is money really making us miserable?
Monitoring the office
Social network analysis could be used for something more useful than spying on employees.
Worrying women
Breast self-examination scares women who think they might have cancer - but does little to help those who actually do.
‘Electable’ - but what else?
John Kerry is the 'Anyone But Bush' candidate.
Waiting for the inevitable
Europe's capital cities are terrorising themselves.
A nation of drunkards?
There is truth in every stereotype.
Offside, 18 March
United secretly love to be hated.
TV UK, 18 March
While Gunpowder, Treason and Plot played fast and loose with history, it did manage a right-on pop at sectarianism.
Handling the market
How transatlantic squabbles over the war threaten economic cooperation across the globe.
Building a ‘multiethnic’ tinderbox
Ethnic turmoil in Kosovo is the result of five years of UN and NATO meddling.
A muddled attack
Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was a last-ditch attempt to cohere itself.
Loving a lie
A new book tells the story of online relationships.
Where are the schoolgirl mothers?
There is no epidemic of teenage pregnancy, just an out-of-control concern about it.
Right on satire
Laughing while the bendy buses burn.
TV UK, 25 March
If… whatever.
Home help
Why domestic robots have failed to spark the public imagination.
Safe as houses
The UK's obsession with the plight of the first-time buyer shows that young people live in a small world.
Space invaders
If the authorities want to give public places their soul back, they should leave them alone.
Do democracy a favour
...and abolish the House of Lords. Read spiked editor Mick Hume in The Times (London).
Madrid ‘blueprint’: a dodgy document
How did an unsigned posting on an internet message board come to be seen as proof of an al-Qaeda plot to bring down the Spanish government? Brendan O'Neill investigates.
Losing the plot
'Children's geography' is a quagmire for both pupils and teachers.
Little boys in disguise
Why are twentysomethings obsessed with toy robots?
