This is a guest post by Matt Mahon Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe of the Met – played excellently on Monday by Iain Glen, fresh from the set of HBO’s Game of Thrones – was supposed to explain his ‘total policing’ policy at LSE on Monday. In fact, he flannelled for half an hour about the challenges [...]
On the Monday just passed which saw the heaviest rioting, I was getting something to eat from my local Chinese takeaway in Ealing Broadway when 40 masked and armed youths ran passed me towards the shopping centre. It was 8pm and I was relatively surprised to see the riots spread to the now baptised “leafy [...]
Two prospective building sites in London are, I think, totemic of our current economic climate. The Heygate Estate and the Broadgate Estate, though very different, show two sides of the same coin. The Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South East London, was completed just over 30 years ago. Now, however, it has been completely [...]
When explaining the Conservative vision of the ‘Big Society’ to the public, Cameron and co. have always emphasised the role to be played by the voluntary sector (after all, most people would agree that charities are generally a good thing). The state, they claim, often ‘crowds out’ other non-government organisations that are better suited to the task of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
