Category — Britain

It’s common knowledge on the left that Christmas is a pernicious racist-imperialist construct, an unholy alliance of Catholicism, Coca Cola and capitalism whose only function is the exploitation and repression of the international working classes. Well, bollocks to that. Christmas is a right laugh, a time for family, friends and frolicking whether you do the God thing or not.

But if we want those doey-eyed little ones looking up at us to have a future free from acid rain, hurricanes and summer floods, it’s time for a festive fightback. No, I don’t mean making common cause with the fundies, but what better day than the feast of Santa Lucia to publish a cut-out-and-keep guide to an enlightened Winterval.

Here are fifteen ideas to get us started; feel free to add your own below.
[Read more →]

Consider this:

A kidney patient who travelled to the Philippines to search for a live donor has defended his decision to become a so-called “transplant tourist”.

Stories like this hit the bullseye of the inherent tension between ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ ways of looking at the world. [Read more →]

I’ve never been much of a joiner. Even though I’ve worked as a writer/journalist for a few years, I only sent my form off to the NUJ last month. The Union, the Tartan Army, the Tufty Club… and, er, that’s about it. Still, I have given recent thought to joining my local Green Party – so I read Dave Osler’s recent piece: Green Party: vehicle for the British left? (and there), with interest.

Like Dave, I doubt the Greens can build a systematic left-wing alternative to Labour, now properly classified as a ‘centre-right’ not a ‘left’ party. But I do believe the popularity of mainstream greenish politics offers something. A ‘moment’, perhaps, for slipping something with a progressive flavour in with the recycling. A reasonable place to look for inspiration is Sweden. [Read more →]

Blackpool, Blackpool, everywhere, nor any drop to… This time, drinking over here, Hamish Howitt, pub landlord:

“I’m not pro-smoking just pro-freedom. “Having a pint and a cigarette in a pub is one of the last great enjoyments left for the working classes. “

You have to like the cut of his mainsail. It makes you wish he was right, but alas he’s 180 degrees wrong. Calls to liberty – working class or otherwise – are spurious on this one. As much as hard hats on a building site, or breathing apparatus down a mine, smoking legislation is about workplace safety. I suppose any staff who object to a pub pea souper could always work somewhere else. Your average Victorian mill owner would have agreed.

Tell that to the student working off his overdraft, or the single mum who needs employment that fits round school hours, or the 50-something asthmatic roadie who’s plain forgotten how to do anything else. Or any number of other constructs a hack-philosopher might invent. Can any of these make a meaningful choice, a free weighing of the alternatives, before selecting their place and conditions of work? That we don’t always have a real choice is a cornerstone of left thought; it’s all about the power, stupid. Asking: “Who has it; who doesn’t; how does that change things” is what separates liberals from the ‘I want, I want, it’s soooo unfair’ breed of prep-school ‘libertarians’. (That’s a misnomer, of course; these chaps are nowhere near as concerned about liberty as they are about property.)

In any case, there’s nothing special about private property that gets us off our obligations to each other. This is no more a case of liberty at threat than are the Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2002. You’re not allowed to poison your staff, not even minimum-wage workers. There’s an easy, costless way to internalize your externality: get off your backside, take three paces to the door and smoke outside. You could use the exercise.

First posted at Liberal Conspiracy.

What’s most fascinating about this lament to socialism perdu is the central thesis:

It is axiomatic, since the death of socialism, that governments must everywhere retreat… Liberalisation, privatisation and global policies of “small government” (except in the areas of defence and law and order) have led to a withdrawal by governments from areas of concern, which, until recently, had been seen as their primary functions.

He’s 180 degrees wrong. In fact, the state is hungrier than it’s ever been. [Read more →]

One word absolutely not on the lips of political hacks, not even Tory political hacks, is… Abortion. Not this week, not any week. It’s impolite conversation inside the beltway.

But a post here last year (picked apart here) attracted over 250 comments. Just publishing the word is pure Google-juice. Everyone in the real world has an opinion, so why does nobody in political Britain want to discuss abortion in public? It can’t be that 186,274 (2001 data; pdf) annual terminations don’t warrant justification or inquiry. [Read more →]

Two stories from the afternoon of 11th September, 2001 that you won’t hear anywhere else.

1. I’m standing in Throgmorton Street with my face pressed against the glass of a private banking building. The TV in the corner opposite the reception desk shows the collapse of a tall grey structure. It’s the WTC, North Tower. The channel is Sky News. At the bottom of the screen the LSE stock ticker is scrolling. The prices are changing.

2. I’m in the mail room of Tower 42, the basement of the building formerly known as the NatWest Tower. It’s forty minutes later. Rumours are going around that several airliners are missing over the Atlantic, perhaps heading for London. The workers in the 183m of building above have been told to evacuate. To go home. “Why are you all still here,” I ask the postroom workers. “We’ve been told we have to stay.”

First published at The Sharpener.

I can’t be the only one to have noticed the vogue for quiz shows designed to reproduce, repackage and reinforce existing class relations for primetime TV. The latest incarnation is Poker Face:

Each show will see six new contestants face five rounds of questions. Throughout the game they will know exactly how many they have right and how much money they are accumulating… However they have no idea how well their fellow contestants are actually faring… At the end of each round one person must leave the game. [Read more →]

I don’t often write about the NHS. I don’t ever complain about it: my local GP and hospital are both excellent (and have been, unfortunately, well-used by my family). I figure if they can get it right here, in one of Britain’s poorest boroughs, it can be done anywhere. The NHS surgeon that saved my daughter’s life, in Georgeous‘s constituency next door, is no more salubriously sited.

But the best blog post I’ve read all year has given me a nudge. [Read more →]

It’s easy to sneer. In fact, maybe I’m stuck on sneer. So, today, I’m going to try and sound positive about something apparently ridiculous. About this:

Forcing school leavers to do three or four months of community service could help bring people together, Tory leader David Cameron has said.

Mr Cameron is making the case for his National School Leavers’ programme in a speech to voluntary group leaders.

This could work. More: it looks at first glance like a great idea. [Read more →]