Strike statistics for 2006
The lead story on page four of the Financial Times this morning reads ‘Working days lost to strikes soar’. Finally … the upturn? Not quite. True, the total number of strike-days in Britain last year rose to 754,500. That’s obviously a massive increase on the 157,400 seen in 2005. But the small print makes it [...]
Tories demand Iraq inquiry
The Tories are pressing for an inquiry into the Iraq war. The Tories are right to press for an inquiry into the Iraq war. Hypocritical, given their historic complicity in arming the Saddam regime and their parliamentary support for the venture in the crucial vote. But nevertheless, correct on the narrow issue at hand. If [...]
Lord Woolf and the ethics of BAE
Lord Woolf – former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales – is to head up an ethics committee at BAE, the British-owned arms manufacturer with the closest of ties to the British state. Other members of the great and the good are likely to be announced as participants shortly. Inevitably, the initial reaction is [...]
Synchronicity: George Galloway and BAe
The attorney general has denied claims he ordered the existence of secret payments to a Saudi prince be concealed from the anti-bribery panel of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The MP for Bethnal Green and Bow has insisted he did not know whether donations given by a Jordanian businessman to his charity – [...]
New Labour, civil liberties and the war on terror
It can’t be that long before we run out of civil liberties for New Labour to crack down on. The three successive Blair administrations have effectively torn up the Geneva Convention on refugees, and repeatedly contravened the substance and spirit of the European Convention on Human Rights. House arrest, arbitrary and punitive deportation, a shoot [...]
Peter Hain and the Americanisation of British politics
I signed up for email updates from the Cruddas campaign. But I’ve got no idea why a series of ‘News at Benn’ missives from Team Hilary keep arriving in my inbox. Still, at least emails are an inexpensive means of campaigning for the Labour deputy leadership. Some candidates seem to be better resourced than others: [...]
British Day: what Kelly and Byrne forget
If you want to see how the average Briton responds to the imposition of a politically-themed bank holiday, you only have to look back to this year’s first May bank holiday Monday just a few weeks ago. It was a Labour government that introduced the occasion back in 1975, officially so that the labour movement [...]
Taxation, venture capitalists and cleaning ladies
I hadn’t realised it until I picked up the Financial Times this morning, but high-earning venture capitalists pay a lower marginal rate of tax on most of their income than workers on the minimum wage. Even some of their own number find that indefensible: Nicholas Ferguson, one of the most prominent figures in Europe’s private [...]
Can Pablo Picasso save the Parti Communiste Francais?
Can a windfall from modern art masterpieces save a second west European Stalinist party? Anita Halpin – chair of the Communist Party of Britain – last year pocketed over £20m from the sale of an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted, restored to her because the Nazis had stolen it from her father. The CPB is likely [...]
Star Star: socialist politicians and celebrity culture
Celebrity – at least in the modern sense of the word – is a recent phenomenon, created by the movie, television and popular music industries. It now constitutes an organised system, which remains in place even as individual celebrities come and go. The cult of personality may have been one aspect of Stalinism, but it [...]
