Bellfield, Wright and Dixie: killing women for kicks
When a man murders a woman – or two women, or five women – simply to gratify some unimaginable sexual urge, what can the left say about his actions and about what should happen to him as a result? Despite the recent headline-grabbing trials of Levi Bellfield (pictured), Steve Wright and Mark Dixie, I haven’t [...]
Freudian slip: New Labour and welfare reform
Sir Sigmund Freud wanted to help selected clients from the Viennese bourgeoisie overcome their neuroses; his great-grandson wants to get two million British proles off incapacity benefit and into badly-paid jobs. Even given the four generations between them, that is big time mission creep for any family. New Labour has hired former City banker David [...]
Mr Speaker’s misdemeanours: taking the Gorbals Mick
Having other things to do all day than watch BBC Parliament, I have no idea whether or not House of Commons speaker Michael Martin – pictured left, in a frock that is simply faaaabulous, darlings – is actually any good at his job. Given the diminishing amount of time some of them spend anywhere near [...]
Labour, libertarianism and supercasinos
PLANS to allow a supercasino to be built in Manchester are to be scrapped, Gordon Brown is set to announce today. Expect multiple pronouncements from the newspaper rent-a-moralist squad, praising the son of the manse for his Presbyterian rectitude in overturning the decision of his meretricious Romanist predecessor. Then read the small print; even though [...]
Socialism, capitalism and the politics of economic meltdown
Trotskyism successfully predicted 12 of the last two recessions; I stopped taking far left commentary on economics seriously many years ago, after realising just how far ‘slump around the corner’ had become a staple of perspectives documents for many groups. There was talk aplenty of economic meltdown after the stock market collapse of 1987, the [...]
Bridgend suicides: anomie in the UK
They seemed like normal enough kids, living in a normal enough town. Yet 17 young people in Bridgend have topped themselves over the last year, a youth suicide rate more than six times what should statistically be expected. Pictured left is one of them, 17-year-old Natasha Randall, who hung herself in her bedroom. Reports stress [...]
Diana and Dodi inquest: death of a princess
Some people would have us believe that Britain’s head of state is the lynchpin of the international drugs trade. Others maintain that the House of Windsor indeed ain’t no human beings, but actually shape-shifting lizards from another dimension. So the idea that Prince Phillip ordered the assassination of Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed (pictured) [...]
How to help working class students
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock – in one of his better speeches – famously asked why he was the first Kinnock in a thousand generations of Kinnocks to get to university. That’s a sentiment with which a certain layer of middle class people from working class backgrounds can strongly identify. Unlike my parents and grandparents, [...]
Cuba after Castro
Stay in one of the five star hotels, and Cuba is a fabulous place for a holiday. Sit down by that swimming pool and bask in the Caribbean sunshine, light up a cigar from beyond the wilder shores of Freudian symbolism and knock back cocktails blended from the finest rum on earth. And if it’s [...]
Northern Rock and the case for extending social ownership
£25BN HERE and £25bn there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. It has been absolutely apparent for at least five months that nationalisation represents the only realistic means of safeguarding the astonishing sums of taxpayer cash shovelled into Northern Rock to rescue the bank from the consequences of managerial incompetence. Finally Alistair Darling has [...]
