Category: Politics
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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…
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Christmas lights on the beach
Dear Home Secretary, Fairy lights are on the trees and the lamp posts in the town centre, and the coloured lights are appearing in the shops and the windows of everyone’s houses, but these lights are the ones people of Hastings took to the sea-front, as a farewell message to the families who drowned in…
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Transports of delight!
Oh, what an original idea! Gather up all these alarming, inconvenient people and send them to some far-flung corner of the world we have a bit of control over. It worked before, didn’t it? That’s why Australia is what it is. Come to think of it, lots of UK citizens who hadn’t been marked as…
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VIRUS WARS
Where do you lay the blame? The current mood across the nation is what some drivers call ‘hoot first, brake second’. If something goes wrong, the first thing do is decide whose fault it was and have a go at them. Most people agree, now, that the national response to COVID went badly, badly wrong.…
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Who is best placed to get the Tories out?
We know, we know – Jeremy Corbyn is still the most popular option among Labour voters. I do think we should all support those good people who are trying to reinstate their MP in the Labour Party, even if we have rejected and reviled the Party in its current form. His reinstatement as a Labour…
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The slings and arrows of outrageous social media
When you set up a forum or a social media group, the software sets out a series of steps for you which assume an authoritarian hierarchy. It assumes you are ‘the administrator’ – although you have the option of setting up further administrators. Then it asks you to specify the moderators (sort of electronic grand…
Kay Green 