‘The truth will out’. It’s a simple, very appealing notion – and it’s perhaps one of the most pernicious fallacies in contemporary political discourse. Wherever there are people with wrongheaded ideas, from members of the BNP to climate change deniers, you can bet that sooner or later there’ll be someone (or more likely quite a [...]
In capitalism’s early life Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. Chris Harman thinks a different horror staple is appropriate for the system’s later years. Far from being the sophisticated, sentient vampire count, it is better compared to the mindless, [...]
I’m a Guardian reader. Middle-class, well educated, long-haired and liberal, I don’t exactly dispel the stereotypes associated with the paper whose readers think they ought to run the country. Nor, as one of those lefty, anti-war, environmentalist types who grew up worrying about the state of the world, should it come as any surprise that [...]
Guest post by Andy Yee “If we are serious about the ambition of a nuclear-free world we will need statesmanship, not brinkmanship,” Gordon Brown said today as he told the UN General Assembly that Britain was preparing to cut its nuclear arsenal and warned Iran and North Korea of further sanctions. North Korea’s missile launch [...]
A while ago The Third Estate carried a piece by Salman, Roland and Ambika detailing the socially destructive impact of meat consumption. The authors argued that a great deal of grain which could be used to feed humans was being used to feed animals, and more importantly that the process was wasteful: grain can feed [...]
Guest post by Oli The government’s chief legal adviser, Attourney General Patricia Scotland, was fined £5000 today and forced to make a public apology for employing an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper. Sad to say, I first discovered this story via the front page of the Daily Mail. That a positive case for immigration is [...]
September 21st is the UN’s international day of ceasefire and non-violence and, in honour of the event, I am pleased to report The Third Estate has started no new wars today. Instead, I shall grace you with a very, very old poem I wrote many years ago on September 21st. PEACE ONE DAY From the [...]
Pay audits are a start – but the real way to end gender inequality would be to increase paternity leave I’m getting to that age now where friends of mine are starting to have children on purpose. Personally, I don’t want them. Certainly not at the moment – my flat is so tiny they would [...]
My original plan for this week was to write about spending cuts and the right’s hysteria over government debt, but after Touchstone, Seumas Milne, and especially Duncan’s recent posts did a much better job than I could ever hope to, I decided against it. So, after seeing this story in today’s Independent, I’ve gone for [...]
It’s that time of year again. The silly season has ended, Parliament is getting ready to return from recess and, with swine flu beginning to look like a fuss about not very much and the worst of the recession said to be over, the British media is beginning to turn its attention to the party [...]
