Category: Politics
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Left, right and left behind

This article is, ultimately, about the row about ‘drag’ (!) which I think offers a good opportunity to think about the left/right confusion in the women’s campaign… Is ‘queer theory’ left wing? Is ‘gender critical’ theory right wing? How many people are sufficiently academic, sufficiently fond of critical reading and sufficiently practiced in critical thinking…
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Hey Stonewall, don’t worry – I’ve had an idea!

Stonewall – the organisation that lesbian and gay people formed to fight for the right of same-sex attracted people to live full lives, just like everyone else: they weren’t about right or left, they weren’t progressive or conservative or religious or humanist any more than anyone else was. They were just same-sex attracted people who…
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Not the Forde Report

When I was out and about in Wales, one of the things I enjoyed was taking photos of any Welsh language signs and posters, so I could check out the meaning later, and learn some new words. I took this one by accident because I didn’t know Splott was a name, so wondered what a…
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Macy Days and UK Ways

Or: What’s with ‘the hostage video’? Look what happened – first, we had a clear and refreshing statement, made by an adult women, voluntarily discussing ‘The Issue’ on a show she presumably volunteered to go on. She seems quite relaxed, and happy to chat on volatile issues like the US flag, and what a woman…
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Find the human – then find some more humans

Avanti Lentemente (forward, slowly) This is the story of a train ticket. It is quite long but it contains a big welfare issue (actually, the biggest welfare issue) and a potential time-saver (actually, a life saver) for humans everywhere. One day back in June, I turned up at Penrith station with the intention of getting…
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Place the blame, move on

Last night, I posted a Jonathan Pie rant on my social media feed, because his traditional five-minute rant had managed to include more of the salient points in our current affairs than the entire week’s output from the BBC. Tory MPs are lining up to say yes, they too have realised Boris Johnson is irresponsible,…
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A memorable week in the end times

***long read for the weekend*** July 2022, UK, planet earth Many of us do not forget we are well past the time we could have dealt with the climate crisis without cataclysmic consequences. Many of us are grappling with the cost of living crisis (that is, our government’s complete failure to address the problem of…
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HILP! HILP! HILP!

Why do we think the UK is no good at radical? A message to my country, and to my local Labour Party. We had our first revolution almost before anyone invented the concept. Just before lunch, we used to gibly say when I was at school – the Magna Carta, 12.15 (actually, that was the…
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What else is the Labour Party being useless at?

(Just to be clear – this is not an advert for any other party. We need to demand better from ALL our politicians) For most of the last five years or so, if I’d said ‘you know that toxic issue in Labour’, people would have thought ‘ah yes, the left-right thing’ or ‘ah yes, the…
