On the ideology of Anders Breivik
St Petersburg: IF MY experience of the time it takes to read a 1,500 page book is typical, not one of the myriad opinion pieces so far penned on the ideology of Anders Breivik can possibly be based on close textual study of the ideas advanced in his now notorious manifesto. As the rush to blame [...]
Lenin’s tomb
Hotel National, Moscow: WHEN I visited the USSR, the world’s second superpower was in such disarray that it could not manage to keep the Lenin mausoleum open to the public. In capitalist Russia, the shrine to the great revolutionary is just another tourist attraction. Seeing that I staying am just over the road, I have [...]
Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Hotel National, Moscow: LAST time I was in Russia, it was still the USSR, and even the tourists could see that Actually Existing Socialism was falling to pieces. The shops had little to sell, and you couldn’t get a beer anywhere. On the streets, you got constant hassle from people trying to sell you a fur hat [...]
Catholic Herald: still defending General Franco
AROUND 114,000 people ‘disappeared’ in the fifteen years after General Franco overthrew the elected government of Spain, which he proceeded to rule as a one party state for almost four decades. While his memory is still revered by sections of the Spanish far right, he nowadays finds few defenders in this country. Yet Britain’s most upmarket Catholic [...]
Hackgate: notes on political crises
WESTLAND didn’t bring down Thatcher, Major took on the Maastricht Bastards and lived. Not even the combination of illegal war against Iraq, the Kelly suicide and cash for peerages was enough to force Blair to quit. Prime ministers, it seems, invariably ride out a little local difficulty. I do not see anything in either the [...]
Why hedge funds do better than bent bookies
HEDGE funds have got one major advantage over bent bookies. In their case, race fixing is entirely above board. Let me expand on this point, by way of an analogy for what has been happening in the Irish, Greek, Portuguese and Italian economies of late. Let’s say you take a bet on a horse to lose [...]
OrangeFest 2011: it’s still about hating Taigs
SUPPOSE the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging decided to organise a comeback gig in the shape of a white supremacist rally in Soweto. Naturally, the South African government would be concerned about the potential for public disorder. So would the best solution be to market the event as a touchy-feely, all-inclusive, fun day out for all the family? [...]
BSkyB deal: the class politics of media ownership
IF THERE is a qualitative difference between having a dominant interest in BSkyB and outright ownership of the satellite broadcaster, it pretty much escapes me. But Rupert Murdoch has decided that outright ownership is what he wants, and until recently, that was exactly what it looked like he was going to get. This is a man [...]
Is it OK to hate News International again?
BACK in the late 1980s, it was official Labour policy for MPs to refuse interviews with News International publications. Not that ambitious young politicians, such as home affairs spokesperson Tony Blair, took any notice of the ban whatsoever, you understand. But it’s the thought that counts, right? Now that the full ugly reality of the [...]
Bombardier redundancies: does anybody care about Derby?
THANKS to my job as a business journalist, I can reel off facts and figures on topics from projected GDP growth in the Russian Federation to the outlook for tanker chartering rates. But I couldn’t tell you much about what they do in Derby these days. There’s no reason why I should know that, of [...]
