PETA are a bunch of prurient woman-hating jackasses who care far more about grabbing headlines than they do about animal welfare. That much has been beyond doubt for some time. Their latest foray into public life, however, is in some ways a new low even for them. In response to concerns raised by six animal welfare [...]
Many will have enjoyed the sight of Tory minister Chloe Smith being humiliated on yesterday’s edition of newsnight. According to popular legend Jeremy Paxman is something of an anti establishment hero. By his sharp wit, and dogged persistence, he is able to bring the powerful to account. Unfortunately, the reality is a little more complex. [...]
So the tower housing Big Ben is to be renamed Elizabeth Tower, at the request of MPs. How craven the commons has become. One could be forgiven for thinking that the queen’s four palaces render sufficient glory unto our monarch to satisfy our royalist compatriots. Indeed one could be forgiven for thinking that the Palace [...]
It is difficult to overestimate the relief many Egyptians will have felt yesterday, upon learning that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi had formally triumphed over the “military’s candidate” Ahmed Shafiq, in the country’s presidential election. Neither candidate represents a future worthy of the Egyptian people. Both are committed to neo-liberalism and sustained inequality. Meanwhile the [...]
This is the view of blogger extraordinaire on all things law-related David Allen Green on the Jimmy Carr tax avoidance affair: Tax avoidance is a failure of law, and it is lawmakers who should be blamed.No one is obliged to volunteer more tax than the law demands. — David Allen Green (@DavidAllenGreen) June 18, 2012 [...]
Those words of death slip so smoothly along the tongues and out the mouths of international bureaucrats of the Troika. “Austerity” sounds like a description of the blank inner walls of a Lutheran chapel. In the German psyche, at least, the images collide: iconoclasm, the rational destruction of the Greek polis, becomes the call for [...]
When workfare was first brought in, I was disappointed by Labour’s failure to oppose the policy, yet I did not scream “betrayal”. This was an issue on which the room for for manoeuvre was genuinely limited. The sheer popularity of the measure – a function of widespread public hostility to the unemployed – made it [...]
Yesterday cleaners, students and activists from the IWW demonstrated outside LSE, in protest at the ill treatment of the university’s cleaners. Right now LSE is planning to cut cleaners hours. Since there are no plans to cut the amount of mess that needs to be cleaned up, this will mean cleaners working more intensely for [...]
Soon after it emerged that unpaid stewards at the Jubilee had been made to sleep under London Bridge, I tweeted the following prediction: I wonder how long it will be until Brendan O’Neil explains that opposition jubilee slave labour is just middle class paternalism — The Third Estate (@thethirdestate) June 6, 2012 Brendan, after all, [...]
“Trade not aid” remains one of the most fashionable slogans in world of international development. The slogan expresses the idea that the developing world is held back by the protectionist policies of the developed world, and that instead of sending money, we should focus upon measures that enable the developing world to trade its way [...]
