League tables and charts ranking countries according to things like "freedom" or "power" seem increasingly ubiquitous. Washington-based Freedom House has released its annual "Freedom in the World" survey, which grades countries on a 1-7 scale (1 being "most free") in two areas—political rights and civil liberties. Meanwhile, Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have put out their "Failed States Index 2007," which ranks 177 countries in order of "vulnerability to internal conflict and societal deterioration." (Sudan tops the list, followed by Iraq, Somalia and Zimbabwe.) Over at the University of Michigan, researchers on the "Correlates of War" project have adopted a historical approach, charting the major countries' share of power throughout the 20th century using pie charts.
Are such projects useful, or merely interesting gimmicks? Despite their apparent rigour (they are invariably accompanied by extensive descriptions of methodology), there is a basic problem with attempting to divorce an abstract quality like freedom from the specific context in which it operates. How does life in Serbia compare with Saudi Arabia? A rating on a 1-7 scale doesn't begin to capture it. This perhaps helps to explain why some of the results in Freedom House's survey, in particular, seem so odd. China scores a 7 and a 6 for political rights and civil liberties—putting it on a level with Zimbabwe—while Russia is judged as unfree as the Congo. Can this really be true? There is a danger, perhaps, that such projects can become a way for irrefutably "liberal" countries like America to implicitly rebuke their largest rivals.
Intercept evidence
Watch out for a move early in the Brown era to make evidence from telephone tapping usable in court. A review is likely to be set up, led by three or four senior legal figures. Intercept-based information about terror suspects, without the ability to convict them, has led to legal anomalies such as control orders. But in recent years, a wide consensus has emerged—embracing even civil liberties groups like Liberty—which favours using intercept evidence in court. The security services have been against the idea, partly out of fear of revealing their working methods, but also on resources grounds: preparing a court-ready transcript of an intercept that has been running for several years is very costly. One of the ideas that the review will consider is pre-trial agreements for the use of edited transcripts.
First Drafts
In recent years, some bloggers have appropriated the traditional right of journalists to compile the "first drafts" of history. Prospect's new blog, First Drafts, combines the two crafts to produce not a rolling 24-hour commentary on the events of the day, but instead a third arm of Prospect editorial output (after the print magazine and the website, which features regular exclusive content).
First Drafts aims to do something a little different from most blogs, particularly those produced by already existing media outlets. You'll find regular mini-features, like Tom Chatfield's Species of Speciousness—which takes newspaper pundits to task for their more egregious errors of logic—a right of reply slot for book authors who feel that they've been given a rough ride by reviewers, and descriptions by Prospect's editors of books and articles they've been reading. Regular readers will also be glad to see the return of Harvey Cole.
But most importantly, First Drafts gives readers an opportunity to engage in debate and to respond directly to articles in the magazine—to judge by the ever-growing size of our mailbag, there is a real appetite for this sort of thing. Look out for specific posts on all the major articles in this issue of Prospect, and let us know what you think of them.
Migrant fiction
For anyone who thinks that British writers are not engaging with the edgy side of modern life, the recent spate of novels about migrants should stand as a corrective. We've had Marina Lewycka's Two Caravans, about fruit pickers, Rose Tremain's The Road Home, the tale of a Polish migrant worker, and Fadia Faqir's My Name is Salma, about an asylum-seeker from the Levant. Expect more on this score: agents are competing to find the next big thing in migrant fiction. Their holy grail is an "authentic" novel by a newish arrival—not someone like Lewycka who, though Ukrainian by birth, has lived in Britain for more than 50 years.
Supreme court
Following Andrew Adonis's plea in the April issue of Prospect to send the reformed House of Lords to Manchester, shouldn't the new supreme court also be heading out of London? Nearly £60m is being spent on renovating Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square to house the court, which should open in 2009. Leading Tory MP Andrew Tyrie is one of many who is baffled by the lord chancellor's insistence that the court be no more than a mile from central London.
Indy out of Europe
Part of the Independent's stated mission when it launched in 1986 was to be Britain's pro-European paper, providing serious coverage of events in Brussels. The paper has mostly kept to this brief—but now, following the recent departure of its European correspondent Stephen Castle, it has closed its Brussels office. Another small nail in the coffin of the European dream?
Gordon and Charles
Gordon Brown and Prince Charles have a famously cool relationship, but are also oddly similar. They both belong to a rare breed—children of the 1960s who look awkward in jeans. Our July competition invites you to think of a Gordon policy to reconcile the two men (not compulsory retirement for monarchs). Mail info@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Wellcome home
Britain has a new national museum: on 20th June the £30m Wellcome Collection finally opened its doors. Across nine gleaming storeys, it promises to combine art, science and history—Gormley, da Vinci and Warhol feature alongside Aztec sacrificial knives, amputation saws and a DNA-sequencing robot, as well as a café, bookshop and extensive library.
There's also a members' club, complete with private room for drinks, reading, thought and talk. Prospect's September issue will feature a special report on the collection, and we'll be offering readers the chance to win free club memberships. Until then, go see for yourself, and let us know what you think.
Broadway blues
British theatre, according to the Observer, has "never had it so good"—a judgement that, on the face of it, was resoundingly confirmed by the recent Tony awards in America. Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia won seven awards, including best play. And other recent transfers from London—Frost/Nixon, Journey's End, Coram Boy—notched up a string of nominations and wins. But despite the critical success, the box office tells a different story. Poor ticket sales led to Coram Boy—a tale of 18th-century orphans that was a massive hit in London—unexpectedly closing in May, while David Grindley's production of Journey's End also closed early—just hours before picking up the Tony for best revival.
Lockerbie blushes
There will be red faces throughout the Scottish legal establishment in late June when a special commission delivers its report on the conviction of the so-called Lockerbie bomber. A Libyan, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, has been languishing in a Scottish prison for the past six years, after being the only person convicted of the attack on the Pan Am jumbo in December 1988. But the commission is expected to refer the case to the high court, and Megrahi could then be released. So what went wrong with the prosecution—which took 13 years? Answer: it looked in the wrong place. Most experts are convinced that the bombers were from Syria and Iran. Libya became the focus of attention only halfway through the trial (some say through CIA pressure). At least now there is a chance to get to the truth behind Europe's worst terror outrage.
Is the RFH's new acoustic overrated?
It is hardly surprising that Larry Kierkegaard's re-working of the Royal Festival Hall's acoustic has, on first hearing, won the approval of concertgoers and critics, writes Stephen Everson. The sound is astonishingly different from what it was two years ago. Where it was dry and unyielding, it is now vivid and immediate. At Alfred Brendel's recital there in mid-June, it immediately seemed as if an acoustic veil between the piano and the audience had been lifted. Throughout the opening Haydn sonata, one could hear subtleties of articulation that would have been lost before.
For some, that impression will have lasted through the recital. But in my case it evaporated well before the end. For while some aspects of Brendel's technique were revealed as never before at the RFH, his musical personality felt constrained. In Beethoven's Op 110, the series of increasingly violent repeated chords before the final section of the fugue lacked all force. This is a passage that Brendel, of all pianists, can make terrifying, but here it seemed interpretatively flat. In two of Schubert's Impromptus, the hall simply would not allow him to harden his tone to capture the crucial moments of anguish. This was not Brendel's Schubert, alive to all the music's emotional complexity, but a composer of the salon.
It is as if someone has subdued all the lower frequencies, with only pretty sounds now allowed to make it through. Brendel's own frustration seemed all too evident. This has to be fixed. When he returns in June 2008, it will be catastrophic if the RFH still lacks an acoustic in which he can be properly heard.
