Some voters are really fucking stupid. There is evidence of this. First, we have a Tory government. Second, Nick Griffin is an MEP. Third, Jedward didn’t win XFactor. Third Estate readers, on the other hand, are an intelligent bunch. This is why we’re asking you to vote for us in this year’s Total Politics Top [...]
This is a guest post by Isabeau Doucet On Jul. 12, six months to the day after January’s earthquake, the Haitian government held a ceremony behind the crumbled National Palace. Before assembled dignitaries from embassies, NGOs, and Haiti’s bourgeoisie, President René Préval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive draped medals of honor on prominent figures ranging [...]
The general lesson learnt by political England from its experience of pauperism is none other than that, in the course of history and despite all administrative measures, pauperism has developed into a national institution which has inevitably become the object of a highly ramified and extensive administration system, a system however which no longer sets [...]
Confirmation bias – the tendency for people to be more receptive to evidence that favours their pre-existing beliefs – is a well-known problem in evidence-based argument. But I think there’s a converse difficulty which is far less discussed. Call it ‘confirmation blindness’ – the tendency not to pay attention to evidence that confirms our deeply-held [...]
There’ve been some interesting posts around about the launch of the Big Society, from Harpy Marx and Anna Raccoon’s pieces on how it’s all to be funded, to the typically naive optimism of Left Foot Forward. Ed West at the Telegraph has an interesting spate of religion-bashing, though not half so daft as the knee-jerk [...]
Lot’s of excellent stuff being written at the moment, so I thought I would offer you a little update on what’s caught my eye in and around the red blogosphere. Socialism is the real Big Society, A Very Public Sociologist declares, as he addresses David Cameron’s flagship idea with style and eloquence. Seriously though, why [...]
When my time finally comes, and I find myself in hospital dying from my abject failure to observe the Jamie Oliver list of approved lifestyle choices, I will have little interest in speaking with any hospital chaplains. As an atheist, I would probably gain little from speaking with somebody who believed I was about to [...]
You would not believe, to hear them, that they were at heart of new Labour project for at least a decade,” she said. They were members of the Cabinet for the last five years. And yet, at hustings after hustings, they tell you ‘they disagreed with this, they disagreed with that, they don’t know why [...]
It would be a bit like Gary Glitter worrying that his very good name had been damaged by a story that his hair was really a wig. The remnants of the New Labour elite – now campaigning to take over the leadership – are in a tizz. They are deeply concerned that Peter Mandelson has [...]
In response to the appalling front page of the Daily Express last week, which managed a heady cocktail of anti-immigration and homophobia, a group of activists, foremost among them some friends and comrades of mine, organised first a facebook group and then a demonstration. As I write this they are demonstrating outside the Daily Express [...]
