The good, the bad and the gimmicky
The new proposals announced by the Prime Minister yesterday in the Government’s draft Queen's Speech were the usual New Labour-style mix of the good, the bad and the gimmicky, says an Independent leader. The good ideas were reform of banking regulations and the national savings scheme for the low-paid. The most glaring of the bad ideas is Government "help" for first-time buyers, in the form of a £100m subsidy for shared equity programmes. And then there were the gimmicks. Mr Brown wants parents' councils to oversee schools. What exactly are existing parent-teacher associations for? But perhaps the most significant aspect of yesterday's announcement was what it played down. The Prime Minister said very little about the economic storm clouds looming over the nation. Considering that the situation is so alarming, this omission seems perverse.
Leader The Independent
The Mole: Bill after Bill - but none set Labour hearts glowing 
Enron government
When the Treasury and Chancellor can no longer say 'no' to demands from the prime minister for political fixes and wheezes, the country risks Enron government - or, to put it more politely, the rule by pressure groups and lobbies, writes Anatole Kaletsky. After all, if Mr Brown's fiscal rules could be ignored so easily this year to accommodate a £2.7 billion tax cut to satisfy Labour backbenchers, why shouldn't they also be ignored to satisfy fuel-tax protesters and pensioners and underpaid public sector workers and bankers demanding bailouts and homeowners struggling with their mortgages and multinational companies threatening to pull out of Britain and farmers complaining about the weather and indeed you and me, since we would all prefer to pay less tax and get more out of government? Anatole Kaletsky The Times
The nasty party - Labour
The ferocious Labour campaign for the Crewe by-election has rebranded its chief adversary "Tory Boy Timpson", writes John Harris. Volunteers have been stalking him dressed in top hat and tails; now, there comes a very nasty leaflet titled "Tory candidate application form". Question four is altogether sinister. "Do you," it asks, "oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?" So, the essential Labour strategy is clear enough: not to concentrate on anything progressive or inspiring but to run instead on a mixture of the Dunwoody bloodline, utterly witless class warfare, and the politics of fear. One wonders what the more shrill aspects of the party's campaign will do for Crewe's community relations - but there again, it's doubtful that such thoughts are troubling many Labour high-ups. Misanthropic nastiness, after all, seems to be a central plank of the government's fightback.
John Harris The Guardian
Privacy invasion
Privacy invasion
I'm as prurient as the next person, says Decca Aitkenhead , but even the cheap allure of voyeurism has its limit, and I think we might have reached it. The serialisation of new post-Blair political memoirs has turned into such a carnival of disclosure that it's becoming quite difficult to absorb each fresh intimacy without starting to feel slightly ill. Really, who seriously wants to picture the Blairs in bed at Balmoral, keeping each other warm and getting carried away? If there is anything to be learned from the publication of these vignettes, it is that unless we want David Cameron and his cabinet to be writing about their bowel movements by the time they're voted out of office, we should stop criticising Gordon Brown for being "too private".
Decca Aitkenhead New Statesman
People: Kelly family hits out at Cherie Blair
Medvedev's challenge
Medvedev's challenge
The best approach to Mr Medvedev, Russia's new President, will be to heed what he does, not what he says, says the Economist. For example, if he gave parole to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch imprisoned without even a pretence at a fair trial, dropped Russia's belligerent posture towards Georgia, began to open up state-run television to alternative voices, and initiated a crackdown on corruption, then it would be right to respond in a friendly fashion. But hard evidence is needed before taking such a step. Above all, Western leaders must be united. Medved means bear in Russian—and the worst way to respond to a bear is to display overt weakness or to scarper in different directions. Leader The Economist
People: Russia waits for Medvedev the normal
Fight overpopulation with oestrogen
At the turn of the 18th century, there were 600 million people on earth. At the turn of this century, there were 6.6 billion, writes Johann Hari. The overpopulation lobby say this will inevitably leave more and more people chasing after a diminishing amount of resources on an ecologically-ravaged planet. They say that this global swarming is driving global warming. Can you really celebrate the pitter-patter of tiny carbon-footprints? The answer has to be feminism. Where women have control over their own bodies – through contraception, abortion and general independence – they choose not to be perpetually pregnant. The UN Fund For Population Activities has calculated that 350 million women in the poorest countries didn't want their last child, but didn't have the means to prevent it. We should be helping them by building a global anti-Vatican, distributing the pill and the words of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Johann Hari The Independent
Freud's contempt
Lucian Freud's painting has become smudgier and heavier over the last 60 years, says A N Wilson. What has made progress is the visible contempt with which he holds the women who have thrown themselves at him, and the foolish (usually male) punters, who have got out their cheque books and seemed hypnotised into adding noughts at the mere mention of his name. The traditions he follows are not those of the great mainstream of Western art, which is a humanist tradition. From Giotto, the pioneer of the Italian Renaissance, to Picasso, whatever dark places of the human soul have been unearthed by artists, they have loved the human body and the human race. Freud's tradition might look sophisticated, but it derives from cartoons and lavatory walls in its determination to shock and in its low and exploitative contempt for humanity. A N Wilson Daily Mail
People: Freud's Big Sue sells for a hefty $33.6m
