As the Labour leadership contest enters its final leg, party members will be receiving their ballots in the post today. But while the national media is zooming in on a two-horse race between the two Milibands – one the candidate of continuity, the other of modest change – The Third Estate talks to Diane Abbott, [...]
This piece is part diary, part analysis, about the Edinburgh Climate Camp, and I’ve *tried* to write it in a way that’s of interest to people with no knowledge of the camp as well as people who went along. If you want to know why we went to Edinburgh, give my pre-camp post a glance. [...]
The animal rights movement in this country has a bit of a PR problem. I am sure it has some reasonable, well adjusted individuals within its ranks. Yet it also seems to harbour quite a number of demented window lickers, who come to the fore when incidents like the cat-in-bin scandal occur.
I am [...]
Guest post by Roland Miller McCall
Australia went to the polls today after the most mundane election campaigns anyone can remember. Neither Labor nor the Coalition opposition has engaged with the big issues nor proposed a vision for Australia’s future. In recent days the debate has descended into high farce with the defining issue of a [...]
For the last two years or so, I have been engaging in a dastardly plot to destroy the Tory party. Yes, by writing silly outraged-liberal letters to my Conservative MP – to which she must respond – on matters she ultimately doesn’t care about, I’ll hopefully waste enough Tory time and resources to destroy the [...]
In a week’s time, about 1000 people from across the country are going to set up a protest camp in or near Edinburgh. Targetting the Royal Bank of Scotland, it’ll probably be the first big protest against a major bank that the UK has seen in this crisis.
In 2008, RBS wasn’t just the biggest [...]
Ok, false alarm, it’s not quite breaking news. People have known this for years. But I think, following today’s little outburst in The Independent, it’s worth reiterating. Julie Burchill is an idiot. Quite why a paper which is, by and large, aimed at intelligent, liberal minded progressives, chooses to print the journalistic equivalent of an [...]
This week’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California is obviously welcome news. Amending California’s state constitution to state that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” is nakedly discriminatory and Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to strike it down should be applauded.
There is, though, something else that’s important to [...]
There’s an excellent piece by Andy Newman on Socialist Unity about why Afghanistan could prove to be a bigger defeat for America than Vietnam.
The key point is his identification of Iraq and Afghanistan as being part of the same conflict. It’s easy to forget about Iraq with the media’s eye so focussed on Afghanistan. Remember [...]
Today seemes to be a bit of a Theresa May special on The Third Estate. But not all of it’s negative. Who’d have thought the Conservatives – the party which brought us Michael Howard and the Criminal Justice Act – could actually be better than Labour on civil liberties? Well, looking back at the last [...]