Category: Politics
-
The G-police* and the gender-wars

You cannot stop the women. All you can do is make their lives difficult and harm your reputation by being seen bullying them. These are the armies you are trying to fight (do you want to pick a side?) Mothers, sisters and allies 1. The confabulators Almost all women and girls – the vast majority…
-
UBI or bust

A few years ago now, we in Hastings had a visit from Guy Standing, talking about various aspects of the New Economics. One of the ideas that interested me was UBI (universal basic income). I see it doing the rounds again now. Our own borough council have recently been taking steps to get involved, with…
-
A message from Mrs Mouthy

We were all anxiously talking about the founding of a People’s Assembly for our town: It’s the People’s Assembly Against Austerity. The purpose is to facilitate a group coming together in each and every town in the country, to defend our services and demand the resources to provide for our people and our environment. It…
-
Why? We wail, Why?

Why does politics spiral into ever darker pits of cruelty and lies? In an interview by Freddie Sayers (link at the end of the article), author Kate Clanchy, who has recently been the victim of a huge row about what’s racist and what isn’t, has made a good attempt at explaining why some political questions…
-
The Mermaid of Black Conch

Life, eh! When you’re tired – years and years tired – of the struggle, of the battering of socialism, of feminism, of the average person’s chance to even earn a crust; when you know you’ve got too bitter and stroppy to do any good, and all but withdrawn from the fight, and a friend passes…
-
Politics: the viral divide

I begin to think the virus blame-game is even more misleading than the rest of the political hot potatoes put together. Sham lockdown When the whole masks and lockdown thing started, many of us thought it impossible to ‘stop’ a virus in a crowded country where many people still had to go to work. Many…
-
Why sign that petition?

In many ways, the petition text does not actually touch on the issues that most people see as the ‘Sir Tony’ problem. I’d say there’s a big one, and an earth-shatteringly enormous one – but I keep changing my mind over which is which. Here they are, in no particular order… The ‘rescind Blair’s knighthood’…
-
Sorry, we broke the revolution?

I have a great view of the pincers of sexism from here just now. When we talk about gender being oppression, we’re not just talking about different dress codes. There have been ructions recently within feminism over women working with right wing organisations – particularly when trans-Atlantic link-ups have blurred people’s view, and led to…
-
2022: Sisters, the campaign starts here

“This is the year our collective righteous bloody-minded refusal to shut the fuck up finally broke the impenetrable wall of ‘no debate’” – Jane Clare Jones on Twitter, 31st Dec 2021 Click here to read the whole message. So we have won the right to have the debate. Now, we need to win the debate.…
-
A note on pronouns that contradicts a previous post I did on pronouns

Like the vast majority of people, I used to politely use whatever pronouns people wanted me to use. That goes right back to my teens in the 1970s, when I knew gay people, and camp entertainers, who were male, but liked to be called ‘she’. Why would one not go along with it? As to…