Old Trots: where are they now? 4
It is well-known that my old IMG comrade John Ross – currently the evil genius behind the secretive but influential Socialist Action grouping – pulls down a six-figure salary as Ken Livingstone’s director of economic and business policy. But according to a potted biog on the Greater London Authority’s official website, his expertise has also [...]
Rich get richer: official
‘Kevin Murphy, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall school of business, estimates that average CEO pay at S&P 500 companies stands at $10.5m, taking account of options and bonus payments. That figure is four times what it was in 1993. ‘In the UK, Incomes Data Services reports that the average pay of [...]
Tactical split in the Socialist Campaign Group
Back in July, this blog reported the tactical split the Campaign Group over which candidate to advance for the Labour leadership. No great feat of investigative journalism, I’m afraid. I lifted the story from the Sunday Telegraph, which revealed: ‘The Campaign Group has split into two factions. One is led by Alan Simpson (pictured left), [...]
Sir Nicholas Stern, the environment and the left
If Britain had a serious left that gave environmental questions the priority they clearly deserve – and sadly it doesn’t – than today’s review on climate change from Sir Nicholas Stern (pictured left) would present an open goal for the strident assertion of ecosocialist goals. New Labour – and even Cameron’s Conservatives, come to that [...]
Old Trots: where are they now? 3
Wolverhampton South West MP Rob Marris richly deserves his reputation as a relentlessly on-message braindead Blairite backbencher. So hopefully he will be suitably embarrassed with the revelation – and I think that this is an exclusive – that he hides a shadowy past as a dangerous Marxist revolutionary. He has succeeded in keeping this quiet [...]
RMT disaffiliates from SSP
Press release from RMT, issued yesterday: ‘Transport union RMT’s executive has agreed to disaffiliate the union from the Scottish Socialist Party after consulting its Scottish committee and branches. ‘The union has also decided that it will not affiliateto the new Solidarity movement. ‘”It gives no pleasure to have to take this decision, which has been [...]
Old Trots: where are they now? 2
Kirk Leech – pictured left – was an old mucker of mine when we were both politics students at City of London Polytechnic, class of 1981. Contemporaries remember a charismatic and charming young man who clearly enjoyed female company. As to the exact circumstances in which he was found in the small hours of the [...]
The crisis of modern socialism – sorted
Several recent posts on this website have highlighted the seeming inability of all sections of the current UK left to modernise socialist politics. But what would a credible twenty-first century left reformism look like? Most socialist thinking remains stuck in the ideological paradigms of the second half of the twentieth century. It’s all ‘renationalise this!’ [...]
Old Trots: where are they are now?
Comrades who have knocked around the Trot left for far too long may remember Alan Johnson, previously (in his own coy words) ‘a supporter of the newspaper Socialist Organiser’, twice a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, and as late as 2003 an attendee at Alliance for Workers’ Liberty events. Professor Alan Johnson of Edge [...]
Future leaders of corporate America
A survey of Masters in Business Administration students in the US and Canada – the big bosses of tomorrow – reveals that almost 90% of them feel that companies should factor social and environmental effects into their business decisions. Or, in other words, more than 10% of the little yuppie bastards don’t give even pretend [...]
