It’s safe to say that relations between the police and the activist left – the revolutionary left in particular – are generally somewhat less than cordial. So with that in mind, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of reaction yesterday’s news of eye-watering cuts to officers’ wages and the possibility of a [...]
In what some boring chauvinist somewhere is almost certainly calling ‘a victory for common sense’, the European Court of Justice yesterday ruled that car insurance providers can’t charge men higher premiums to men simply on the grounds of their sex, overturning years of flagrantly anti-male discrimination by the insurance industry. Or, if you prefer, unelected [...]
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 [...]
(A response to Paul Mason’s own theses, an excellent piece at Idle Scrawl). 1. The problem with most analyses – Mason’s included – is that it discusses economics and technology, but only as something which can be contemplated, and not as something which can be changed. The actual everyday practice of the people involved in [...]
“There’s always a bigger fish.” – Qui-Gon Jinn Paul Krugman on his New York Times blog notes a symptom of just how far the West has regressed in the distribution of income: so much of America’s wealth is concentrated in the top 1% of the income scale that those only just below actually feel insecure about [...]
Scene in Twickenham train station: well dressed woman in mid-thirties shouting at gigantic pink railway employee through three inches of Perspex. Woman’s daughter has phoned mother in tears after being fined for travelling on the wrong ticket. Woman: You people have no idea customer service, you just sit there you fat lump Railway employee: I’m [...]
Bloody hell. Homeless charities point out that the government’s Housing Benefit cuts are going to double the number of people sleeping rough because of not being able to pay their rent. And the government’s response to these findings? In response to the charities’ concerns, the minister responsible, Lord Freud, said he did not recognise the [...]
This week it was announced that the Independent Living Fund for disabled people would be shut down by 2015. This is a guest post by Martyn Sibley, a fundraiser with disability charity Scope, on what this will mean to him. You can easily google what the Independent Living Fund is, their history and for policy [...]
Much as it pains me to admit it, some of the stories in the rightwing press about people on the social housing list being placed in mansions in Hampstead or being paid six-figure sums in benefits are probably true. I haven’t investigated any of the stories in detail, and I’m well aware of the propensity [...]
About this time last year I wrote a long and slightly rambling piece on the ethics of wearing poppies, and while this is a post on the same topic, I’m going to do my best not to repeat myself too much. Rather than focus on the relative merits of red and white poppies and what [...]
