I was thinking this week about the working day, and about how it has been transformed in recent decades. I’m sure that there is plenty of sociological work on this of which I am not aware, but thought I would sketch a few thoughts about developments since the time of Marx, if only to start [...]
Mandelson made me chuckle today. A couple of hours after shareholders approved Kraft’stakeover of Cadbury’s he met with Kraft’s CEO. Speaking to the BBC about the meeting he expressed his “dissapointment” that Kraft had failed to give him specific commitments about keeping jobs in Britain, and told of his determination to get firmer, more specific [...]
The key headlines of the past few weeks have focused on pre-election measures and proposals aimed at trying to square the multitudinous circles of simultaneously getting the UK’s spiralling debt under control, creating a more equitable system, not cutting key public services, and reforming the financial system in a meaningful way in the midst of [...]
‘Tis the season for rampant consumerism, and given that I live within spitting distance of the new Westfield shopping centre in London – a place where people actually put on their ‘Sunday Best’ to worship at the temple of ‘fashion’ – I have more than my fair 12 days share of festive reminders. I’m not [...]
When discussing economic inequality, we on the left need to be very clear about precisely what it is we’re objecting to. As I’ve said before, I have a vague plan at some point of writing an extended post about this, and one of these days I might get round to actually writing the damn thing. [...]
Guest post by Carl Packman
In my opinion, that famous neo-Hegelian thinker Francis Fukuyama – the man responsible for the predication in the late eighties/early nineties that at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end-of-history had loomed upon us, and it had shown free-market capitalism to be the victor over socialism – has gone from [...]
The Obama administration will be breathing a sigh of relied today as the House of Representatives narrowly approved the President’s flagship health reforms. A battle still remains in the Senate, of course, and amongst the crazed zealots in the country crying ‘freedom’ whilst attempting to deny millions of the poorest Americans the right to basic [...]
The recession seems to have become a pantomime this week. At every opportunity the Chancellor tells us: “it’s behind you”, then the Office of National Statistics (ONS) yell: “Oh no it isn’t!” So are we in recession or aren’t we? There’s an easy answer to this – some of us are and some of us [...]
What with the postal strike and Nick Griffin on Question Time totally dominating the news agenda, quite a few interesting news stories didn’t really get the attention they deserved this week. Perhaps the most notable of these was the breathtaking arrogance displayed by Goldman Sachs vice-chairman (and Tory peer) Lord Griffiths on Tuesday night.
I have [...]
When I was a child autumn was my favourite time of year – a time of conkers, new stationery and better TV. However, as an adult, I have learned to dread the approach of autumn because it now heralds an ancient evil…
Like many self-employed people autumn signifies the underfoot crunch of scrunched up receipts, unforgivably [...]
