Category: Politics
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Spoonfuls
I am going to found a media corporation, just like all the others. I’m going to call it Spoonfuls. For every court case, dispute, scandal or other human flurry that gets noticed, I will pick a woman or sometimes, for variety, a slightly goofy beardy man, and put that person’s photo in the news every…
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If you were honest, what would you say?
Or Janice’s Goats ***Long Read *** I used to think I lived in a free country – born in the UK in the 1960s, it was a long time before I questioned the idea. Even when I discovered it wasn’t entirely true, I was still aware that as countries went, our country in the 20th…
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The gender-critical stance: a review of the basics
***Long read*** originally written for those thinking about Coming Out on the 19th The core principle: sex and gender There is ‘sex‘ – our species is naturally divided into male and female: not just us though. We are one type of the huge biological group called ‘mammals’. There has never been any doubt. Women and…
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What are prisons for?
When I was younger, most people who weren’t on the fairly far right politically thought prisons were a safe place to put people who were a danger to others. Knowing that there are very few women who are seriously a danger to others, I went along to a meeting about prisons recently and discovered that…
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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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Local politics – identity v solidarity
If there is anything like a progressive alliance in May, or at the next General Election, it’s going to have to be based on something better than party politics. Last week, I wrote a piece calling for independent candidates for next year’s council elections (well, any elections that happen next year really) because it seems…
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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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Crosscut your community
In November 2021, the news hit Hastings that a group of refugees had drowned trying to cross the channel. It hit us hard, because being a southern coastal town, the victims of failed attempts tend to wash up on our shore. This has never been a problem we are able to ignore. Local reactions are…
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What is a safe country?
Our politicians are talking about safe countries. They say refugees need to claim asylum in the “first safe country” they reach. In today’s news, we’re told that the UK and the Netherlands have agreed that refugees arriving here need to be “returned” to the “first safe country.” Sounds logical doesn’t it? But who decides what…
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Left Books Forward
Heads up – this looks like a political post, and it is – but mainly, it’s one of my ‘Books for Christmas’ soapbox posts… We in Hastings were quite surprised when we heard that Momentum was an organisation for wild young Trots. We in Momentum Hastings thought we were a group of all sorts of…
Kay Green 