Friends, lefty bloggers, socialists, I’ve got a guilty secret. I’ve been actively campaigning for the Green Party in the upcoming European Elections on June 4th. It’s been a difficult time for me politically. With the split in Respect, the failure of John McDonnell and the Labour left to leave a scratch on the New Labour [...]
IT’S TIME FOR THE LATEST CARNIVAL OF SOCIALISM! Sometimes carnivals have themes, but being a particularly uncreative spirit I couldn’t think of one. So instead I’ve decided that this weeks carnival will have a motto instead, and apologies if it’s not a particularly catchy one. I call it “everyone’s really fucking sick of the expenses [...]
It was quietly announced last week that the Minister for Culture, Andy Burnham MP, is to uphold English Heritage’s initial recommendation that the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, should not be listed.
Robin Hood Gardens means little to those who don’t live there and is, alas, held in even less regard by those [...]
The proms have always promoted new music. Every year there are a whole bunch of new commissions alongside UK premieres, and this is an important for the musical culture of Britain. Whilst many of the most hardcore new music fans won’t listen to this stuff at the proms on account of the fact that they [...]
Unity is a difficult thing to come by these days. Protests are generally mounted by the same old hacks, or simply by those whose livelihoods depend on it whilst others (especially in cases of industrial action see such protests as an inconvenience.) But in times like these, when unemployment is sky-rocketing, we can be fighting [...]
When I want something to laugh at, I often find myself reading the blog tory MP Nadine Dorries. With her repeated evocations of ‘common sense’ she comes across as a thick version of William Hague (late 1990s version). Particularly entertaining, however, has been her response to the questions put to her over her expenses.
A [...]
Solly’s in Golders Green is something of an institution. Within London’s Jewish community it’s famous, and on the strength of its excellent food, it really does deserve to be. Yet today’s revelations in the Jewish Chronicle make it difficult for anybody with a vague sense of social justice to spend their money there.
JC journalist James [...]
Several months back the Conservative Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley hit the headlines when he appeared to suggest the recession will be good for people.
‘On many counts’, he said ‘recessions can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with [...]
In yesterday’s London paper the guest columnist, Mike Barnard, publicised the launch of a campaign to reinstate London’s rise festival. The background, for those who don’t know, is this: for about a decade, London – with financial support from trade unions – hosted a massive annual anti-racist music festival. When Boris came in he decided [...]
“He thinks we’re all bloody bourgeois” scoffed Austen Ivereigh, as he puffed on his Montecristo in a trendy bar in King’s Cross, whilst reading aloud David Broder’s response to yesterday’s Strangers Into Citizens demonstration. “This looks like it was written thirty years ago,” he chortled to himself. Ivereigh is a founder of the Strangers into [...]
