4/22/2005|||111416007445303652||||||

ROSE-TINTED

James Wolcott rubs his hands over a list of omens - including Hugo Chavez’s latest PR campaign - suggesting the Right’s days are numbered. We’ll see. I suspect that if there’d been such a thing as left-wing bloggers in, say, 1981, they'd have been crowing (just as I would have been - mea culpa) about the imminent demise of Reagan and Thatcher. A couple of weeks ago, Wolcott was looking forward to the end of the Blairite side of the axis of righteousness. No mention of TB now. But a Venezuelan strong man is dishing out copies of “Don Quixote”, so all’s well with the world.

At the Guardian, meanwhile, Polly Toynbee goes into Marie Antoinette mode on the subject of crime ("a vast industry of mendacity has a vested interest in scaring people witless...")

But maybe those reassuring statistics don’t tell the whole story.

UPDATE: More background information on the real crime figures in this election briefing from the Civitas think-tank.

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2005/04/rose-tinted-james-wolcott-rubs-his.html|||4/22/2005 09:54:00 am|||||||||

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