Jacob Zuma and the South African left
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma – simply ‘JZ’ to his supporters, and pictured left – seems set to take the leadership of the African National Congress. That, in turn, effectively guarantees him the South African presidency in two years’ time. This is important to both the South African and international left, not because of who or what [...]
New Labour and the nationalisation of Northern Rock
There was Railtrack, I suppose. But generally speaking, the current government has had no truck with such crypto-communist Old Labour notions as common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Unless the interests of the financial markets are at stake, of course. It looks like the erstwhile bearded Trot himself is about to [...]
What the private equity boys really think about you …
This ‘joke’ map of London is doing the email rounds in the City this morning. Very droll. Bookmark It
Social mobility and the end of the post-war consensus
The standard case against any form of redistributionist or egalitarian politics is that Britain today is – more or less – a meritocracy. Never mind if you’re old man’s a dustman and he wears a dustman’s hat; he probably made a killing after he bought that council flat of his, after all. OK, so the [...]
Survey: some bosses ‘not nice’
Workplace surveys, gotta love ‘em. Here’s a prime example of the genre, reported in this morning’s Financial Times under the headline ‘Rise in dictatorial company managers’: British managers are becoming overbearing and dogmatic at the expense of productivity, a report from the Chartered Institute of Management claimed on Tuesday. A follow-up to a 2004 survey [...]
BAA: who wants to buy a sofa at an airport?
I’ve long regarded airports controlled by private sector monopoly BAA as essentially overgrown shopping malls with the odd runway attached. But it looks like Heathrow’s terminal five – which opens next March – doesn’t make much pretence of being anything much more than a glorified Bluewater Centre with good airline connections. Here’s Nick Ziebland, ‘retail [...]
What might bring democracy to the Middle East?
After it became absolutely clear that the WMDs just weren’t there, the US and Britain hastily erected ‘democratising the Middle East’ as a flimsy ex post facto justification for the invasion of Iraq. All of a sudden, the war was no longer about punishing Saddam for the al Qa’eda links it later turned out he [...]
Darkness on the edge of Brown
What happens if Gordon Brown – pictured left – loses the next election? That’s not a done deal as yet, of course; but it’s easy enough to concoct a scenario for an Old Etonian takeover of Number Ten in 2009 or 2010. A few more dodgy donor revelations, a few more fluffed PMQs, a 20% [...]
New Labour and rights for part-time and temporary workers
New Labour has no more persuasive and literate defender in the mainstream press than Johann Hari. The Boy Wonder – who has now repented of his initial support for the invasion of Iraq – regularly uses his column in the Independent to make the case that however bad Labour social policies look on the surface, [...]
Khansaheb Civil Engineering: business backer of the SWP
Respect’s 2007 financial statement – filed with the electoral commission – revealed that the ‘unity coalition’ returned a cheque for $10,000 from a Dubai construction company as an impermissible donation. Little more was heard of the story since. But the new edition of the East London Advertiser takes up the tale. According to the local [...]
