Tibet vs Iraq: good and bad occupations?
IT MUST take a considerable degree of doublethink simultaneously to oppose the US-led occupation of Iraq and support the Chinese occupation of Tibet. That doesn’t stop some on the left giving it a go, of course. The idea of a right to self-determination is common coinage for liberals and socialists alike. If Iraq deserves that [...]
International bastards league: new political parlour game
IMAGINE a scale that runs from one to ten and measures every independent polity in the world in terms of niceness and nastiness. At one we have Sweden and Norway, because they are permanently cuddly and welfare statey and social democratic, even when the centre-right gets in. Singapore occupies the half way point with a [...]
The far left and the general election
The following article was commissioned by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty paper Solidarity. Normally I wait until such pieces appear in print before publishing them on this website, but I am seriously short of blogging time in Hong Kong, so I hope they forgive me just this once. I’ve just had the first fitting for [...]
Daily Telegraph: distorting debate on public sector pay
OPPORTUNITIES to skive, doss, mess around on Facebook in company time, spend three hour lunches down the pub, take multiple fag breaks and generally put in as little effort as is consistent with not being sacked are not entirely lacking in the private sector. Indeed, the higher one climbs the greasy pole, the more frequent they become. [...]
The brazen cheek of brazen elitism
FOR AN Old Etonian to promise a ‘brazenly elitist’ approach to state education – as Tory leader David Cameron has done this week – is nothing if not brazenly cheeky. It’s a nice catchphrase of course, chiming as it does with the popular perception that something is wrong with the system, and that sex-crazed pothead [...]
Three weeks in Hong Kong
I’M OVER the jet lag, I’ve done my first day in the office, and now it’s now evening in Hong Kong. But instead of maxing out the company credit card down in Wan Chai, I am sitting in my rented apartment at Causeway Bay, making sure that the Wi-Fi works so that I can carry [...]
Class politics and anti-racism: reply to John Denham
IT’S NOT that I approve of the game John Denham is trying to play off in trading off class politics against anti-racism, as witnessed by the speech and the statement he yesterday delivered on these topics. New Labour cannot conceivably take on the British National Party in a game of right populist pass the parcel [...]
Haiti needs democracy as well as donations
THE LISBON earthquake of 1755 claimed something like 100,000 lives, a total more or less the same as the estimated death toll from precisely the same cause in Haiti yesterday. Among the arguably less important consequences of the earlier devastation was a famous bust-up between two leading figures of the Enlightenment, over what philosophers of [...]
Unlawful glorification: the trouble with thoughtcrime
I’VE GOT a mate of Basque extraction who works in London. Behind his desk hangs a flag obviously based on the Union Jack, save that the crosses are white and green and the background red. Just for clarification, all his colleagues know that to refer to him even casually as ‘Spanish’ is making a one big mistake. [...]
It’s a little secret, just the Robinsons’ affair
ANYTHING I could possibly write about the scandal rocking Northern Ireland politics right now will obviously prove superfluous in the face of the comprehensive take already on offer from Splintered Sunrise, and this inspired satirical cover version of a certain Simon and Garfunkel classic, courtesy of comedian Keith Law. That won’t stop me airing my [...]
