Category: media
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Artificial Ignorance
So, today it happened to me. I saw a Facebook ‘friend”s post, which was making a political point, based on a photo. I got the point, although I suspected her motivation was a bit odd (all that stuff about what’s feminism, what’s racism and how the heck did I get lost somewhere between the two).…
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An entirely selfish request
(A request from me that is, not Richard Medhurst, who is merely asking that random police forces could please stop arresting him and nicking his kit.) It’s like this: I’ve been reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. It’s the size of a brick, but not really the kind of brick you’d take…
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Prepare to support your trans comrades
(This is a re-edit of a post from 2022 ( original here ) republished with a few notes in brackets because — well, here we are again, Trump and all, and a heck of a lot of people have learned nothing.) No, I am not saying be ‘a trans ally’. That’s identity-politics nonsense, it’s being…
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Unbearable MPs
Hastings is one of many towns that’s been enduring an MP who can never talk about Palestine without first agonizing over October 7th. No context, no proportionality. It’s hard to see it as anything but callous, wilful ignorance and you know, I really don’t think they have any idea just how much they have destroyed…
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An open letter to Sir Keir Starmer
Dear Prime Minister, This is probably the one and only time I will send you a genuinely well meant message of encouragement, so I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that it is sincere, and is the heart-felt opinion of many Labour supporters and members, past and present. Yesterday saw the issuing…
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What journalists and reporters should be doing
On home affairs, every day, all the time, they should be asking politicians why they apply ‘austerity’, saying there is no money, when they want to take things away from people (the winter fuel allowance, for example) and then proudly announce vast sums to be spent on private, profiteering projects such as carbon capture (which…
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Outcry and Condemnation
Yesterday, at the Parliamentary Committee of the Council of Europe, Kristin Hrafnsson made an appeal that should have gone straight to the hearts of all the journalists in the UK, as well as any citizens who have managed to hang onto their moral compass, or any memory of the basic requirements of democracy and human…
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Incredibly detailed election analysis
No, please, don’t do any more election analysis! There were one or two points worth noting – this one, for example… That Starmer could call Corbyn a failure in 2019 when he got over twelve million votes, and then claim a phenomenal success on nine million in 2024 demonstrates at a stroke that most of…
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Cameron, Lord of the Manor, bringer of referendum
Header pic: detail from a Peter Brookes cartoon Do you remember those history lessons at school, where we learned about feudalism, and how it was an odd system they had in the UK centuries ago? A world where the people we now call citizens were called ‘serfs’ or ‘peasants’, and they and their work literally…
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Resolutions for 2024: What the “United Nations” can’t do, we must
I put my head out of the door in the morning on Boxing Day, and the world seemed quite quiet – fresh, and undisturbed. I stepped outside and found my street a little damp, a little scruffy, but still there. I walked down to the local shops which were not only still there but lit…
Kay Green 