New Labour, big business and Sir Philip Green
Bhs and Arcadia boss Philip Green – pictured left – is the latest top businessman to pick up an honour from New Labour, after being awarded a knighthood last week. Let’s pause and reflect on this one. This is the man that last October decided to award Arcadia shareholders a £1.3bn dividend. And you know [...]
Elsewhere in the blogosphere
Meanwhile, on other blogs … Will seems to have taken exception at the new array of bloggers and commenters at the once-great Harry’s Place: ‘Dear me. What a bunch of stupid or pompous or ignorant or, let’s just use a shorthand phrase — middle class wankers with lots of time on their arses– If you [...]
Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist Party and class politics
Ian Paisley- pictured left – and his Democratic Unionist Party is usually regarded as the voice of Northern Ireland’s protestant working class. But you want a more accurate take on the social interests it serves, there’s a particularly revealing story in the FT this morning: ‘Northern Ireland politicians pressed Gordon Brown to cut corporation tax [...]
Independent trade unionism in Iraq
Most of the pro-war left puts great stress on the democratic credentials of the al Maliki government, and frequently argues that the 2003 invasion – sorry, ‘liberation’ – of Iraq opens the way for free trade unionism in the country. Wrong. Meanwhile, most of the anti-war left – blinded by its hero-worship of ‘the Iraqi [...]
Livingstone and the Reuben brothers: the clue’s in the name
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone – pictured left – has been fully exonerated for his suggestion that property developers the Reuben brothers – born in India or Iraqi-Jewish parents – should “go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs”. Peter Keith-Lucas, inquiry officer at local government watchdog the Standards Board for England, [...]
Cliffism auf Deutsch
Florian Kirstner – leader of Linksruck, the German offshoot of the British SWP, until his expulsion in 2001 – reveals to German leftwing newspaper Junge Welt the recruitment tactics mandated by none other than the late Tony Cliff himself (pictured above): ‘Linksruck hatte immer etwas von einem leninistischen Pfadfinderbund. Das war Ahmed und mir bei [...]
One big union. Not.
GMB members have voted not to go through with the superunion merger with the T&G and Amicus. Can’t say I blame them, really. In principle, the old IWW slogan ‘One Big Union’ gets it pretty much right. But I can understand activist concern at the prospect of moving from the extensive regional autonomy traditional in [...]
Old school ties
All that 1970s retro-chic class politics nonsense went out with glam rock, didn’t it? Every last Paul Smith besuited man jack of us is tippling from the same bottle of Oddbins New Zealand sauvignon blanc, sitting back as house price inflation lifts our net worth without us lifting a finger. Right? Wrong, it seems. Not [...]
Gordon Brown on Islamic finance
Muslims. They’re not just good for shooting in the chest at 4.00 am in the morning for no particular reason, you know. Sometimes you can make fat profits out of them, too. Here’s Gordon ‘son of the manse’ Brown at a conference on Islamic finance in London yesterday: ‘Gordon Brown addressed the gathering by declaring: [...]
Blair’s ‘passionate defence’ of New Labour
Are you a trade union or Labour Party activist who feels frustrated with Tony Blair? How unfair of you. That sort of talk hurts our prime minister, you know. Consider this report of his speech to the GMB union conference yesterday, as reported in the Independent. The message is clear. He’s not accountable to us. [...]
