Nine years after Oldham burned in horrific race-riots, we’re finally getting round to the only workable solution to racial segregation. The report into the incident concluded that de facto segregation in the community was a root cause of the incident, and a more recent report stated that “Segregation and divisions between Oldham’s communities is still [...]
This year I decided to spend May Day out on the streets. Here’s some thoughts on how it all went:
1. Kid Stalinists
Diasporic Communist parties marching with images of Stalin don’t really count as Stalinists. Many of those who turn up for the march are children brought along by their parents and community leaders, [...]
This week I want to write about three things: a film I watched (Milk), one protest I did go to (the Party at the Pumps) and another I didn’t (the Big Gay Flash Mob). What ties these things together is the idea of an activist community.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected politician in [...]
Tomorrow Alex Salmond is due to present a White Paper to the Scottish Parliament, setting out plans for a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional position. Independence isn’t going to be the only possibility it suggests, (there’s also going to be an option for what Nick Robinson refers to as ‘independence-lite’ – giving the Scottish Executive powers [...]
For all of you unionists out there, there’s an interesting-looking free conference on in London this Saturday called by SOAS UCU, SOAS Unison, and SOAS Students’ Union.
“Hands off my Workmate Conference
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Saturday 17th October 2009
10am to 5.30pm
On the 12th June this year, the School of Oriental and African [...]
It’s extremely easy to criticise the politics of cultural products if you don’t agree with absolutely everything they say. If you consider your understanding to be more nuanced, it is very easy to say that a book, a film, or an article doesn’t go far enough. The point is that not every great film is [...]
It has been announced today that just 4 of 15 proposed eco-towns are to go ahead. In the face of very substantial local opposition a host of proposed developments have been scrapped. As anybody who lives in London will tell you, new developments are desperately needed. Our cities are crowded and our house prices – [...]
There was an interesting judgment relating to faith schools today. The Jewish Free School was told by three senior judges that its admissions procedures were illegal, as the test of ethnicity amounted to racial discrimination. Now, I’ll start by saying that I think all state-funded faith schools are a fucking terrible idea. There’s absolutely no [...]
It was quietly announced last week that the Minister for Culture, Andy Burnham MP, is to uphold English Heritage’s initial recommendation that the Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, East London, should not be listed.
Robin Hood Gardens means little to those who don’t live there and is, alas, held in even less regard by those [...]
“He thinks we’re all bloody bourgeois” scoffed Austen Ivereigh, as he puffed on his Montecristo in a trendy bar in King’s Cross, whilst reading aloud David Broder’s response to yesterday’s Strangers Into Citizens demonstration. “This looks like it was written thirty years ago,” he chortled to himself. Ivereigh is a founder of the Strangers into [...]
