Category: Politics
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Different century, same result – nameless corpses

When it comes up in conversation – or worse, as it does all too often, in confrontation, it’s always difficult to explain the distinction between traditional, class-based left politics and the post-modernist, identity-based kind (often called ‘progressive’). Trying to do so can seem like a pedantic intervention, and often gets those who don’t know much…
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Justice delayed…

I believe the crisis in our politics has reached a stage now where there’s a real danger of good people going to jail for their efforts to stop bad politicians breaking the law. People from Hastings gathered at the Magistrates Court this morning in support of three of our local Palestine Solidarity Group who were…
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Is this the weirdest book review I’ve ever written?

First off, I’ll need to apologize to the friend who lent me the book. It is not as new as it was. I have wrestled with it, I have wept over it, there was even a stress-related incident with a strawberry jam sandwich. I am not normally like that with books but this was that…
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Skeptics keep their eyes tight shut

I didn’t know these people existed until last year… The first I heard of them was when their Brighton group fell prey to the ‘thou shalt not question gender ideology’ people in Brighton. They had planned to discuss one of the burning issues of our times, and had invited Hannah Barnes and Helen Lewis to…
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Well done Hastings part 2

Picking your enemy at random is stupid but directing people’s anger onto your victims is downright criminal. Wednesday was great – Hastings came out in huge numbers to prevent trouble on our streets. It worked brilliantly. Trouble turned up, here and there in twos and fours, saw us, said “nah, there’s f**** hundreds of them,”…
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Well done, Hastings!

It’s great to feel proud of your town, your country, your people and right now, that’s exactly what I feel. I was confused yesterday. As just about everyone knows, some twit put out a list of dates and places where, I suppose, they were hoping to instigate race-riots or, as some said, to misdirect anti-racists…
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Choose your phobia and start shouting

I was working on a piece about feminism and Palestine when the story about women and the Olympics took over everyone’s passions. I did get one blog out about that… …when the race riots in the UK took over everyone’s passions. Oppression Olympics There is no question in my mind, from what I’ve seen, that…
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Why would anyone want to be a councillor?

I decided to go to a Borough Council meeting last night. Walking back afterwards with a member of Hastings Jews for Justice, who’d come along to find out what happened to the latest attempt at a ceasefire motion for Gaza, I said I’d be writing about what happened that evening and she asked me if…
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Mysterious holes in history

“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire There are gaps…
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This strategy must be questioned

Well that saved me a bit of bother! I had been planning on spending this morning putting together a piece about how worried we should be about what happened in Clacton – not because a certain person finally made it into parliament (although I agree that’s a shameful thing) but because it was so obviously…