A bit of de-mob happy blogging
Ok I know most of our articles are politics and news related, but it’s Friday, and it’s nearly christmas, and this is like the best thing ever.
Why JFS’s arguments are a crock of shit
Some of our more regular readers may remember a piece I put up a few months back about the JFS case. Today the supreme court voted, 5-4, against JFS, to say that they could not discriminate on the basis of ethnic origin. Fucking good job. Anyway, as soon as this judgement came out, the right-wing [...]
There is nothing prudent about letting unemployment spiral
According to the Latest figures unemployment is currently hovering at just below 2.5 million. By now the national, and party political, debate about how we deal with the recession has taken a certain shape. It is, many would have us believe, a choice between pain relief and prudence. While both major parties compete to promise [...]
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen?
With Christmas looming what better way to bring peace and goodwill to all men (other than those who own energy companies/ lobby firms/ former governors of Alaska) than striking a global deal on carbon emissions at Copenhagen? Sadly, it looks as if the developing world will end up with a lump of coal in its [...]
Join the Libel Reform Campaign!
Hey, remember that time a couple of months ago when Trafigura tried to stop the Guardian from reporting what was said in Parliament? Want to stop the rich and powerful from using the threat of expensive court cases to bully writers, scientists and academics into censoring themselves? PEN and Index on Censorship have teamed up [...]
WTF Academy
In the final article of my series on the death of educational theory, the discussion turned to Academies. These are the new private finance initiative schools that have been springing up in cities over the last few years. They have their problems, particularly with teachers being taken off the national pay scale, challenges to unions [...]
Good News
The world may be getting warmer, but, for one day at least, it looks as if hell is getting colder. What’s that? A piece of good news from Copenhagen? No, my friend, not one piece, but two! Not only is Europe pledging €2.4bn a year to help developing nations cope with the cost of climate [...]
Obama Receives Peace Prize
Barack Obama received his much debated Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today. One has to wonder exactly what part of sending 30,000 additional troops into a destitute nation, which has been occupied by the world’s greatest superpower for the last eight years, constitutes peace. Obama himself recognised the irony of receiving the prize whilst his [...]
The infantile politics of good behaviour
David Miliband was in trouble last week. So much so that it made the front page of BBC News. Had he failed to deliver on one of his policy initiatives? Were the public getting fed up with him setting CO2 reduction targets for 2050 and not 2010? Nope. The furore arose from his appalling confession [...]
Hearsay
“You’ll never guess who I had in the back of my cab the other day…” It was revealed today in The Daily Mail that the claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes came from an Iraqi cab driver. So now we know why they call it ‘the knowledge’… The [...]
