The government has revised a key part of its nuclear power strategy without anyone noticing—it has closed Nirex, the independent nuclear waste body. A credible waste disposal strategy is needed if the public is to be persuaded to support a new generation of nuclear power plants. Back in 2005, that was part of the reason for removing the responsibility for disposal from the industry (companies like BNFL) and creating Nirex. Now the disposal issue, including the question of building a repository, has been given back to the industry via the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. It is all very confusing. If independence was right 18 months ago, what has changed? But if the government has not covered itself in glory, neither have the green lobby groups. They never backed Nirex as an independent entity because it complicated their claim that the nuclear industry is a military-industrial complex stitch-up. Now, of course, they cry crocodile tears.
Sweetening the arms trade
The government faces some awkward choices in the noisy row about the £10bn contract for sales of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia. According to press reports, Tony Blair has been told that if he doesn't pull the Serious Fraud Office off their investigation into allegations of BAE bribes to Saudi notables, he risks losing the contract and the 50,000 jobs BAE claims rely on it. As Prospect readers know, the arms trade is irremediably corrupt ("Hard-wired for corruption" by Joe Roeber, Prospect August 2005). But what is surprising is the extent to which senior people in parliament, Whitehall and the industry are prepared to pressure the government to flout the 1999 OECD anti-bribery convention, to which Britain is a signatory.
The trouble is that being virtuous goes unrewarded. It is generally accepted that the Brits won the £40bn Al Yamamah Saudi contract in 1986 by outbribing the French, who will gladly return the favour if BAE's sweetening is blocked. Confusingly for crusading lefties, the US's strict laws on corruption make it a good guy in this area. Yet the US opposed the UN's last attempt to launch a global arms trade control regime—which would have stopped others taking advantage of US virtue. Will someone tell us which way is up?
Clever Canadians
In early December, Stéphane Dion, the Sorbonne-educated citizen of Quebec, unexpectedly won the race to become leader of the Canadian Liberal party. The race must rank as one of the most intellectually distinguished contests for the leadership of a major western party in recent history. Dion's two opponents in the final round of voting were Michael Ignatieff, former Harvard professor, and Bob Rae, the former premier of Ontario and international conflict broker. Dion, who won in the final round of voting by 2,521 to Ignatieff's 2,084, benefited from an intense rivalry between Ignatieff and Rae. The two men were once friends, even roommates, and both studied under Isaiah Berlin at Oxford. Yet Rae refused to mandate his delegates to vote for Ignatieff, the favourite of the party establishment but not of the rank and file, who resented his support for the Iraq war and the way he posed as an American citizen in an article. As Rae and Ignatieff lick their political wounds (and struggle to pay off their campaign debts), Dion has to decide what jobs to offer them. Ignatieff in particular must remain a rival for the top job, so why not dispatch him around the world as shadow foreign secretary?
Rooney's foot
Despite his poor showing at last summer's World Cup, Wayne Rooney still seems to have the power to awe. Psychologists at Bangor University recently found that volunteers' foot control was impaired by the mere sight of Rooney on screen. Pictures of Tim Henman had the same effect on hand control. "Perceiving a highly skilled athlete inhibited similar motor behaviour in the observer," say the experimenters. Just imagine the effect of seeing England's test cricketers.
Film protest
A backlash in Belgrade, as the organisers of its film festival have decided to show for free a film that the Chinese embassy demanded be taken off the programme. Lou Ye's Summer Palace, an explicit love story set in China at the time of the Tiananmen protests, was initially withdrawn by anxious Serbian authorities. Now, with its screening going ahead at the insistence of festival president Dinko Tucakovic, China's support for Serbia in the UN on the Kosovo issue seems less than certain.
Speed chess
Fide, the chess world's governing body, is to institute drug testing in the Asian Games with a view to chess becoming an Olympic sport. Amphetamines, chess aficionados' supplement of choice, sharpen thinking and boost intellectual stamina. Rather than denying the benefits of enhancement, perhaps we should embrace them. After all, if amphetamines could have made Tolstoy a greater writer or Mozart a greater composer, humankind would have been the beneficiary.
