Saturday Night Music Club: Davis and Coltrane
Kind of Blue era Miles and Trane. Doesn’t get any better than that, does it? Love the way Davis uses Coltrane’s solo as an excuse for a fag break, too. Bookmark It
Saturday Night Music Club: Robert Cray
Tonight’s SNMC is supposed to be a guest post from young blogger Kit, provisionally titled ‘A Guide to House Music for Old Farts’. But it still hasn’t arrived. So, for the benefit of blues-loving OFs everywhere, here’s the very great Robert Cray doing his classic number Smokin’ Gun. I’d give my right arm to play [...]
George Galloway: near miss
Friday night. Stroppy meets me after work. I buy the girl a Jack Dan and Coke in a trendy bar in Hoxton and we discuss the plan for the evening. Ruby Murray, suggests she. Being Hank Marvin, I don’t need my arm twisting. Not long afterwards, we are sitting at the window table of an [...]
RMT: John Leach elected president
It’s a really good day for lefties being elected to things today. According to a press release from RMT, tubeworker John Leach has been voted in as the union’s new president, beating Ray Knight by 6,865 to 5,141 after the redistribution of votes from three eliminated candidates. Bristol-based Alex Gordon, another leftwinger, was elected unopposed [...]
National Union of Journalists: in dispute with Sheridan and Byrne
When Tommy Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne quit the Scottish Socialist Party three months ago, they also pulled out of the collective agreement under which the SSP’s caseworkers, researchers and parliamentary assistants are employed. The two Solidarity MSPs also withdrew £48,000 from the pooled account that paid the wages. As a result, the jobs are under [...]
Derek Wall gets Green Party top job
Congratulations to Derek Wall – a regular in the comments box on this blog – on being elected one of the Green Party’s two principal speakers, effectively making him its joint leader. This is great news for the left. Derek, an open ecosocialist, won the poll for the position by 767 votes to 705, ousting [...]
Alan Milburn and education vouchers
Education vouchers. Some crackpoint idea devised by Milton Friedman, which the Tory right sniffed around years ago before giving up on as a bad job? No. The latest policy proposal for New Labour from Alan Milburn. I have been racking my brains to think of other discredited or just plain dumb Thatcherite ideas the Blairite [...]
Iraq: what is to be done?
The terrible news just in that at least 132 people have been killed in a series of car bombs in Shia districts of Baghdad. Greater or lesser atrocities such as this are now happening on a daily basis. What is now happening in Iraq underlines the political inadequacy of the positions the main camps on [...]
John McDonnell: manifesto for London
With the London Labour Party Conference due to take place this weekend. Labour leadership contender John McDonnell – former deputy leader of the Greater London Council before Thatcher abolished it, of course – has launched a ten-point manifesto for London. The centrepiece of the programme is a revival of the GLC’s famous ‘Fares Fair’ policy [...]
Be nice to your boss today
Britain’s business leaders are feeling unloved by the politicians right now. Of course, trade unionists among you will wonder how this can be, given the raft of business-friendly policies New Labour have introduced over the last nine years. From subsidising low pay with tax credits to opening up the public sector through the Private Finance [...]
