Just made it to Germany today for my first holiday in ages, and there are some things I like about it. 1) People smoke on overground stations. Back in England I have smoked on virtually every overground station in London (being careful not to stand near any non smokers) but everyone else keeps to the [...]
Today two red tops carried pictures of a couple of England players laughing, and expressed outrage that they could laugh at a moment such as this. Clearly if they had any respect for their fans and their country they would wait at least a week before cracking any jokes. Meanwhile one of the narratives to [...]
An interesting discussion has been taking place about the routes of New Labour’s illiberalism. In a piece limited by an evident lack of understanding about the history of the Labour movement or of British marxism, Francesca Klug argued that traditional Marxist influences in the party were to blame. (Francesca says that Marxists were uninterested “in [...]
Like most readers of this blog, the Budget made me pretty angry – the VAT increase and tighter controls on benefits combined with the cut in corporation tax make a complete mockery of the claims that this Budget was ‘progressive’ in any sense, and millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people in this country [...]
There was a lot that was horrible about the emergency budget. The pay of all public sector employees on 21k a year or more wasa frozen for two years. With prices expected to rise by over 7.3 per cent over the next biennium, this represents an enormous real terms pay cut – equivalent to taking [...]
Some friends of mine have told me to watch the Channel 4 Dispatches show on the banks, aired last week, but still available online. It took me a while to get through – I kept falling asleep in the long segments of zooming in and out of buildings, the dark filter shots over the London [...]
How many times in the last two weeks have we had some poxy journalist or other tell us that hard times are good for art? How many of them think that the endless queues at Job Centre Plus will be the inspiration for a New New Objectivity movement, or that the broad pretentiousness of the [...]
For such a huge event, cant we get half time commentators who say something a bit more incisive than “England need more confidence and self-belief”. Some people who aren’t necessarily ex-footballers. And by that I mean no disrespect to ex-footballers, but surely there is some value in widening the pool.
Generally speaking we try on this blog to avoid getting involved in more tedious debates on the left blogosphere, and generally speaking it’s a good policy. However, I wanted to comment on something that’s been bugging me for a while. It’s a common offence, particularly amongst the commenters on Socialist Unity, but is often replicated [...]
“But Arabs are semites too!!” It has become a staple of internet discussions. Someone will refer to anti-semitism. And then somebody else will say that so-and-so can’t be anti-semitic because “arabs are semites too”. They think they are displaying their erudition, yet in fact they are dispaying their stupidity. Clearly words acquire their meanings socially [...]
