Davis suggests that it is time Americans tropicalise the national vision of

Davis suggests that it is time Americans “tropicalise” the national vision of “the city on the hill”.More worrying is the open bigotry that emerged in the 1990s, particularly in California. There the battles over Proposition 187 – which allows for the expulsion of undocumented immigrant children from schools and the denial of prenatal health care to undocumented pregnant women – can be seen as part of the backlash. In 1998, the state’s Proposition 227 – ensuring an English-only policy in schools – led to the dismantling of bilingual programmes and the criminalisation of Spanish-speaking teachers.In Magical Urbanism, Davis is not the urban prophet he was in his last, harrowing book, Ecology of Fear. Rather, he is in diagnostic mode, telling us home truths about shifting demographics, pointing to choices that have to be made. A polemical long essay, pithily synthesising recent studies, Magical Urbanism succeeds brilliantly at what it sets out to do. It explores “the consequences of putting Latinos where they clearly belong: in the centre of debate about the future of the American city”..

Ivan Massow, the millionaire businessman who left the Conservatives for Labour this week, suggested yesterday that the Tories offered him a peerage by in a a last-minute attempt to stop him defecting. Ivan Massow, the millionaire businessman who left the Conservatives for Labour this week, suggested yesterday that the Tories offered him a peerage by in a a last-minute attempt to stop him defecting.
In his first interview since his surprise decision was revealed by The Independent on Wednesday, Mr Massow told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme that he rejected the offer because the Tories were trying to use him to convince voters they were a compassionate party. He accused them of speaking to the public “in rabid tones.”Although he refused to say whether William Hague had personally offered to make him a Tory peer, Mr Massow said: “If you are token acceptable face of some kind of compassionate conservatism that doesn’t actually exist within the party machinery, if you are being used as a tool to encourage people to vote for you because they believe maybe you are becoming more open-minded and more tolerant, then it’s not something I think I should have taken.”The Conservatives have denied Mr Massow was offered a peerage and his claims will fuel his war of words with the party of which he had been a member since he was 14.Mr Massow, 32, admitted he may well have ended his political career by switching sides, saying few people changed parties successfully “It is a kind of suicide jump very often So I had to be aware of that before I did it,” he said. He hoped that his decision would “allow people to focus on the fact that we have to put angry politics behind us and we can only tolerate a party who will bring compassion, tolerance and inclusion to the table if they want to govern Britain.”Mr Massow said his decision took three years to come to fruition. He said the recent tone of the Tory party, and its comments on asylum and Section 28 – the law that prohibits local authorities, including schools, from promoting homosexuality as a normal way of life – were “out of touch with contemporary, diverse Britain.”He admitted he may have looked like a “self-publicist”, as the Tory vice-chairman Steven Norris called him, but pointed out that until yesterday he had written only one article about his defection – in The Independent – and not given any interviews.

He believed his move attracted attention because he was “a catalyst for what lots of people have been thinking about the Conservative Party”.Mr Massow, who is gay, said he had tried to show the party why it had lost the 1997 general election: “They were out of touch They didn’t have a heat, they didn’t have any compassion… Maybe I was trying to bully the Conservative Party into changing.”After a while you give up trying to flog a dead horse… I was just sick of defending them on issues such as asylum and Section 28. I was sick of listening to the constant conversation they were having with the general public in rabid tones. I could see no reason to lend my name to them any more.”Asked if he could have joined any other party, he replied: “Some of the criticism levelled at me has been that you join a party because it is a tribe like a football club and you are supposed to stay with it through thick and thin I just don’t agree with that.”. Scotland could break away from the rest of the United Kingdom and align itself with Scandinavia unless the Government radically reforms itself, a Whitehall planning paper has predicted. Scotland could break away from the rest of the United Kingdom and align itself with Scandinavia unless the Government radically reforms itself, a Whitehall planning paper has predicted.
A report from officials in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) suggested that many departments should cease to exist in a new “joined up” system of government, to prevent England becoming an isolated, protectionist country.

But the predictions were ridiculed yesterday by John Edmonds, the general secretary of the GMB general union, who said they would be “more at home in the script of a Hollywood disaster movie”.The DTI, whose Future Unit produced the paper, which is intended to forecast the implications of globalisation, said it had not been seen by ministers. The report was based partly on a series of high-level policy discussions.The paper set out three scenarios for the possible results of globalisation, which the DTI said had already led to huge increases in trade and falling transport costs.In the first scenario, the Government would fail to keep up with the demands of a changing world and the markets would grow, unchecked by regulations. The Civil Service would be increasingly unable to attract “the brightest and the best” and the Government would be continually out-smarted by business.The second, most optimistic outcome, talked about the need for a “knowledge society”, where a slimmed-down government restrained the market, and where existing departments were replaced by groups of specialists and “joined-up” project teams.In the third, most gloomy scenario, the Government’s future structure would not be inclusive enough.”Scotland is threatening to break away, seeing its future with the Nordic countries rather than the UK. The DTI, however, is larger, because the complex tariffs and other protective mechanisms which it devises and operates are seen as an important part of a revived English national identity, protecting our jobs.”The report also said the third scenario would lead to a large, alienated underclass and low economic growth.”The United Kingdom is engaged in continual lowintensity trade wars both inside and outside Europe and soft security threats mass on the borders of the EU,” it predicts.Despite his attack on the apocalyptic visions in the paper, Mr Edmonds said it recognised a genuine need for reform. “It shows that the case for an overhaul of the way the Government functions is now being made in the Government’s own back yard. Ministers have been keen to call for the modernisation of almost all other areas of society. Now, the time has come for them to begin to put their own houses in order The DTI would be a very good place to start.”.