Why Labour should not run Alan Sugar for London mayor
IF NEW Labour really does see celebrity status as the only requisite qualification for running the greatest city in the world, it might as well just cut to the chase and check out whether or not any or all of Girls Aloud would be up for the job. Better that than a man whose background [...]
Fred the Shred vs an NHS nurse: who gets too much pension?
ONE OF the following gets paid far too much pension at far too young an age, and is therefore an unacceptable drain on the public purse; choose the correct answer from (a) Fred the Shred or (b) a nurse in the National Health Service. It hardly takes a brain the size of Gail Trimble’s to [...]
New Labour and social equality: as good as it gets?
ASK MOST Labour supporters why they prefer a Labour government to a Tory government – at all times and in all circumstances – and the notion that only Labour government can bring about a more egalitarian Britain will almost certainly come in somewhere near the top of the list. What, otherwise, is the point of [...]
Why Jade Goody was never going to be as bright as Gail Trimble
JUST as once it was hip to be square, these days it is clever to be dumb. At least that is what Harry Mount argues in the Daily Mail this morning, in a piece that contrasts the public perceptions of Jade Goody and Gail Trimble. Ms Goody – by far the better known of the [...]
The middle class riots of 2009: a riot of one’s own
IT’S THE kind of prediction that I will only finally believe when I see the footage of barricades comprised of burning designer handbags hastily thrown up in Tunbridge Wells and Leamington Spa. But given just how intimately the Guardian knows the mood of Hugo and Sophie Sixpack, let us suspend disbelief, and consider with due [...]
Sorry, but Abu Qatada deserves the compo
‘PREACHER of hate’, ‘truly dangerous individual’, ‘Osama Bin Laden’s ambassador in Europe’; if rhetoric alone were sufficient to secure a criminal conviction, Abu Qatada would currently be in the early years of a very long stretch. Luckily for all of us that live in Britain, any amount of declamation or hearsay is not enough to [...]
Two cheers for Hugo Chavez
HUGO Chavez is plainly not the Lenin of our days, but then neither is he a standard issue Latin American caudillo, either. Yet there is something about his style of government that renders commentators on both left and right incapable of objective assessment. Perhaps the problem is that too many people take all his talk [...]
Alfie, Chantelle and Maisie Roxanne: thoughts on free market morality
IN A limited sense, the rightwing commentariat are bang on the money; yes, the case of Alfie Patten, Chantelle Steadman and the daughter born of their one-off adolescent legover does tell us much about morality in Britain today. It’s just that it doesn’t point to quite the things they would have us believe. The evasion [...]
David Freud defection: workfare isn’t working
AT LEAST seven former Tory MPs – some of them hardline rightwingers in the Thatcher years – have defected to New Labour in recent years, collecting an impressive haul of ministerial portfolios and peerages on the way. My guess is that no more will be coming over, and that the traffic will now be in [...]
Morning Star strike: what should the left say?
I AM constantly amazed at how popular journalism remains as the career of choice for many young graduates. Do yourself a favour, kids, get into chartered accountancy or something sensible instead. OK, it might still be fun for a handful of big name columnists, who get ego-boosting photo bylines and six-figure salaries simply for expressing [...]
