How to get tough on the causes of crime
Gordon Brown has today pledged cash to create 8,000 more prison places next year. I don’t know how much money that will take
But I do know that it costs roughly £40,000 a year to keep a prisoner behind bars for 12 months. So if those cells are to be filled, the implied additional annual expenditure [...]
Should the rules on workplace grievance procedure be changed?
One of Gordon Brown’s first acts as prime minister will be to scrap rules – introduced in 2004 – that were designed to speed up the resolution of disputes in the workplace. Unnecessary bureaucracy, we are told.
This is likely to be bad news for those on short-term contracts, who may no longer get access to [...]
Philosophy Football/Dave’s Part: Clash T-shirt competition
Look at these fabulous T-shirts, which form part of a range of four produced by the eurocommunist dudes at Philosophy Football to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the summer of punk.
Cool, aren’t they? You want them, don’t you? Well, Dave’s Part has gotten together with the Sporting Outfitters of Intellectual Distinction to give away a [...]
Marxism in the Anglosphere
One of the books I am reading right now is Meghnad Desai’s ‘Marx’s Revenge: the Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of State Socialism‘. That’s the jacket, pictured left. It’s currently remaindered at the Economist’s Bookshop and presumably elsewhere, and is well worth the price of two pints.
Labour peer Lord Desai is well-known as a [...]
Should unions boycott Israel?
Decisions by the National Union of Journalists and the University and College Union to boycott Israel have generated media coverage worldwide. Unison will shortly vote on the issue too.
David Cameron is in no doubt who the prime movers are, according to the Jerusalem Post. Speaking at a recent Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, the Tory [...]
The case for tougher drink-drive limits
As a non-driver, I am forced to the conclusion most motorists are not just criminals but serial offenders. They regularly lapse into illegality, talking on their mobiles while driving, exceeding the speed limit with gay abandon, and generally ignoring parking restrictions.
What are you like, petrolheads? Like the law of the land doesn’t apply to you [...]
Sir Menzies Campbell demands ‘revolution’ in social housing
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell is calling for ‘a revolution’. He’s only talking about social housing, in the context of a demand for 100,000 low-cost homes to be built per year. But then, if anything in Britain today needs a revolution, housing must come near the top of the list.
Last time I saw any [...]
The case for common ownership
Common ownership is essential for economic democracy. Let’s get away from the lie that the unfettered market economy the Tories and New Labour have worked so hard to bring into being has been a unmitigated success.
It has wrecked manufacturing industry, and reduced British workers to the lowest level of employment rights in the industrialised world.
The [...]
Labour Party: membership slumps
This just in on Press Association:
Labour’s membership has slumped to a new low, with more than 20,000 disillusioned supporters deserting the party in the past 18 months, it emerged today.
Soon-to-be-published figures will show that the number of card-carrying party members fell from 198,000 to 182,000 during the course of 2006.
That trend continued in 2007, sliding [...]
Tony Blair and feral media
After a decade of living by the mass media sword, Tony Blair – pictured left – is griping about dying by it. The media has become ‘a feral beast’ that hunts ‘in a pack’, he claims today in a speech at an event organised by Reuters.
Blair’s complaints strangely reverse cause and effect. When aspirant prime [...]
