Category: economics
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Thirty Years Ago
***Long Read*** I’ve been reading a report called Blood Sweat and Tears, about a project in the 1990s, instigated to address rising racial tensions, crime and related problems on an estate in Bermondsey. I have this temptation to make a terrible joke first, and I think I’m going to give in to it, and say…
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Make lousy politicians a minority
We could do this. Here’s how… There are millions of people in this country who, like me, have used the phrase ‘politically homeless’. They have been thrown out of, or lost faith in, their ‘natural’ choice of party. There are also increasing numbers of people who, like me, have realised there’s more to politics than…
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Transports of delight!
Oh, what an original idea! Gather up all these alarming, inconvenient people and send them to some far-flung corner of the world we have a bit of control over. It worked before, didn’t it? That’s why Australia is what it is. Come to think of it, lots of UK citizens who hadn’t been marked as…
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VIRUS WARS
Where do you lay the blame? The current mood across the nation is what some drivers call ‘hoot first, brake second’. If something goes wrong, the first thing do is decide whose fault it was and have a go at them. Most people agree, now, that the national response to COVID went badly, badly wrong.…
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Luxury beliefs versus vulnerable women
This week on the BBC, we saw a stand off by the two sides of the deepest and most harmful split I have ever seen in left politics, one that I am still waiting for many on the left to even acknowledge. I believe that the resurgence of the establishment wing of the Labour Party…
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What if it’s actually stupidly EASY to break the system?
I was just wondering, and I happen to own a blog, so… Here’s another way to look beyond the smoke and mirrors: imagine an arena set up for a big fight. On one side, there’s a bunch of people. On the other side, a pile of money. The people, obviously, can win easily. They can…
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CRISIS!
From “argh, toilet roll!” to “argh, petrol!” A mild disturbance in the supply of absolutely anything we’re used to buying every day has more political impact than, say, people losing their homes, children going hungry, abused women being locked up with male sex-offenders, asylum seekers drowning in the channel, the govt selling our services and…
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Dwellers on the threshold
List A: Things you can do without being a member of a political party Set up and promote petitions Go on demos Organise demos Organise political education and film nights Write to your MP Get up delegations to go and visit MPs for discussions Write blogs, make videos and pod casts Join an affiliated union…
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You know schools, right?
Sorry for the bar room tone of the title, but it seems to me to match the level of thinking we have been getting from our government. I have huge sympathy with the people who have been agitating all along to keep/get the schools open. I have huge sympathy with the people who want the…
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Is this the worst idea yet?
Curfews are not good It’s just being talked about at the moment but we need to make sure the reasons why curfew is not a good idea are spread far and wide. We know what works. Back in March, we shut down everything we could, got into the habit of checking on the vulnerable and…
Kay Green 