The left and the crisis in the financial markets
What’s going to happen next in the global financial markets? Talk to senior bankers – and I have been doing just that today – and most will admit they simply don’t know. There’s a minority view that the fundamentals are strong enough to haul through. The IMF is still predicting 5.3% growth in the world [...]
Scottish Labour left mulls leadership bid
Jack McConnell – leader of the Labour Party in Scotland – announced his resignation earlier this week, following Labour’s defeat in the Holyrood elections last May. Staunch Brownite finance spokeswoman Wendy Alexander (pictured) has thrown her hat into the ring. The other two likely contenders, Andy Kerr and Margaret Curran, have ruled themselves out, paving [...]
The new social class in China
China’s state-run news agency reports that about 50 million people now form what it openly describes as a “new social class”. Most of them own private enterprises. Collectively, these people manage about 10 trillion yuan worth of assets, and pay nearly one third of the country’ taxes. It is interesting that Xinhua doesn’t give this [...]
Business interests of Conservative MPs
A story from today’s Financial Times: David Cameron’s front-bench MPs and peers hold more than 115 paid directorships and other outside jobs, in addition to their political roles, research by the FT has revealed … The shadow cabinet has 32 remunerated outside roles (counting the six Lazards directorships held by Andrew Mitchell, shadow international development [...]
Politics and principles: John Biffen and Ron Brown
John Biffen and Ron Brown – two British MPs from the 1980s who have both died of late – were politicians of totally different stripes. Biffen was an Oxbridge-educated middle-class English Tory rightwinger from the shires, Brown – pictured left – exemplified that layer of Scottish working-class opinion plainly influenced by CPGB Stalinism. I’m not [...]
Nice work if you can get it
Fancy spending four weeks in the Netherlands getting caned and being paid for it? This is a genuine advertisement from a website for journalist jobseekers. Spelling/punctuation as in the original. Sadly I’m too old to apply for the vacancy. Maybe I could sue the company under the age discrimination laws: Ricochet – Looking for journalists [...]
Respect holds Shadwell
Result of last night’s by-election for the Shadwell ward in Tower Hamlets, courtesy of Victor in the comments box on an earlier post: Rosie Francis Clarke (Liberal Democrats Focus Team): 98 votes William Duncan Crossey (The Conservative Party Candidate): 476 votes Michael Jeremy Keith (The Labour Party Candidate): 1415 votes Harun Miah (Respect): 1512 votes. [...]
A short course in Marxist economics
I’ve almost given up entirely on reading what passes for the ‘Marxist economic analysis’ offered on the websites and in the publications of UK far left groups. Most of them seem to have been predicting imminent capitalist collapse ever since I became politically active over a quarter of a century ago. Some academic writers are [...]
Foot and mouth: What is to be Done?
Obviously one of the tricks of the blogging trade is to pretend that you’ve got a worked out opinion on everything that makes the headlines. But the truth is, I have no expertise whatsoever in animal diseases, and accordingly, not a clue as to the correct Marxist line on foot and mouth outbreaks. Orthodoxy on [...]
The social impact of Blairism
Rosemary McKenna – Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East – is to step down at the next general election. After entering parliament in the Labour landslide of ten years ago, she is in no doubt that a decade of Blairism has transformed the postwar new town and associated former mining communities that she [...]
