DIARY
ANDREW NEIL ew York has become such a byword for law and order under the 'tough love' of Mayor Giuliani that even the trees are feel- ing safer. One young man was fined $1,000 for chaining his bicycle to the tree outside his deli every day, thereby injuring the bark. He was offered the alternative sentence of kissing and hugging the tree as an act of contrition. This he proceeded to do in the full glare of the local media. We don't yet know if the tree has forgiven him This used to be a city in which cyclists did much more than damage trees: they regularly killed or maimed pedestrians as they whisked through red traffic lights, shot up one-way streets the wrong way and recognised no distinction between road and pavement. Now they are forced to obey the highway code like everybody else. New York pedes- trians also have to behave better these days. The old offence of jaywalking has been revived: those who cross the road in the middle of a block or ignore the 'don't walk' signs at street corners risk being fined. By London standards, of course, New York is still a violent place, but by its own standards the turn-around has been dramatic: New York was regularly among the top ten most dangerous cities in America; now it barely makes the top 200. What crime remains is highly concentrated in the worst areas, which means it is not an everyday reality for most middle-class residents. The burglary rate is well below London's and, at a dinner Party of British expats,.all the young women said they now felt safer walking the streets of New York than London.
In many ways, London and New York have never been more alike. London has become more vibrant and exciting, while New York has become safer and more civilised. Nor have they ever been closer. There is, in effect, an hourly shuttle service and there is now a substantial tribe of British and American commuters who trav- el regularly between them and feel equally at home in both. New York's burgeoning British community is a great success story: /US employers have been lobbying for more work-permits to be allocated to Brits. Lon- don, meanwhile, remains Americans' favourite city in Europe by far — even more so now that our phones work, you can eat properly and there are 40 TV channels to choose from. This massive social cross- fertilisation will keep the Anglo-American relationship special no matter how often the bien pensants predict its demise. It is wider and deeper than the elite sociopoliti- cal ties which created it — which is why it Will last and prosper. It is also a formidable social and economic barrier for those who want our future to be exclusively European. The collapse of crime in New York is all the more impressive because it has hap- pened at a time when, under welfare reforms introduced by the mayor, over 300,000 have been kicked off the city's wel- fare rolls and forced to fend for themselves in the labour market. The city's economy has been performing only modestly well in the current boom, yet ending welfare dependency has not resulted in an upsurge in crime, vagrancy, begging or homeless- ness. There are far fewer threatening char- acters wandering the city-centre streets. of Manhattan than in central London, which was certainly not the case a decade ago. Labour should take heart; welfare reform works, even when the official unemploy- ment rate is quite high. But Labour will have to be far tougher than anything it has so far proposed if it is to enjoy the benefits of the Giuliani effect.
Judge Susan Webber Wright has thrown traditional Left-Right attitudes to sexual harassment into confusion with her decision to throw out Paula Jones's case against President Clinton. Sexual harassment law- suits have been a burgeoning business in absurdly litigious America, spurred on by radical feminist lawyers who regard every minor male misdemeanour towards women as a heinous abuse of their human rights which must be met by the full force of the law. Sexual harassment suits cost American companies several billion dollars every year. Most make expensive out-of-court settle- ments even though up to 80 per cent of the cases are largely bogus: they would prefer to avoid the hassle and the publicity. It has been lucrative business for unscrupulous women who want to make a quick $50,000, and, of course, for their lawyers. It has also left many men at a loss as to what should now pass for proper behaviour. When even the mildest banter with women can land you in court and destroy your career, it is not surprising that men have become increas- ingly circumspect. One executive told me that if the lift door opened and there was a lone woman in it he would wait for the next one. The Left delighted in this new sexual politics, the Right despaired of it. After Judge Wright, neither side knows what to think. The implication of her ruling is that when the President dropped his trousers, Ms Jones shOuld simply have slapped his face and walked away. After all, Mr Clinton never propositioned her again and she was unable to show any damage to reputation or career. The feminist movement would nor- mally abhor the judge's ruling, but since it has let their favourite president off the hook they are in no position to complain. The Republican Right would normally cheer the judge's common sense, but it has destroyed their best hope of bringing him down. Both sides are now reluctantly com- ing to terms with the new rule of sexual con- duct, as adumbrated by one politically incorrect wag: 'It's OK to grope, until she says nope.'
Amost every conversation with a New Yorker under the age of 50 these days involves the words e-mail, website and elec- tronic commerce. Americans have taken to the information age like no other society and lead the world in its technology and its application. The United States, which British and European pundits were writing off less than two decades ago as they lauded the corporatist economies of Japan and Germany, dominates the knowledge indus- tries of the future: around 90 per cent of the world's websites are American, 40 per cent of the world's investment in computing is made by US companies and they spend twice as much on `infotech' as European firms. Contrary to what was established British opinion for too long, new technology creates new jobs: there are 30 million extra jobs in America compared with two decades ago; Europe, in contrast, has created only four million new jobs, all of them in the public sector. The Internet is now an inte- gral part of American life. A New York granny told me that even her dog has its website (the dog doesn't use it, you under- stand: she does, to keep up to date about the breed). A Manhattan friend has had his social life reinvigorated by surfing the web to meet new girlfriends (keyword: dating). He contacts only those who include a pic- ture on their site. People are as likely to e- mail you as phone. It is America's pre-emi- nence in information technology that lies at the heart of its current resurgence: as Ger- many and Japan flounder, America is once again the undisputed miracle economy. `France had the 17th century, Britain the 19th and America the 20th,' writes Mort Zuckerman in Foreign Affairs. 'It will also have the 21st.' Triumphalist, perhaps, but on present evidence it is hard to disagree with him.
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