British Marxists, Jews and world war two: response to Colin Shindler
SOAS professor Colin Shindler can’t quite bring himself openly to state that British Marxists would have collaborated with the Wehrmacht had Germany invaded Britain in 1940. So he implies it instead, resorting to the transparently shoddy device of putting a question mark after each de facto accusation contained in his essay for the Jewish Chronicle last week. [...]
A letter to Occupy London
BEING the wrong side of 50, I was secretly quite chuffed when The Occupied Times of London, a publication produced at the St Paul’s and Finsbury Square camps by the Indy Media team, asked me to write a piece for them. You can read my contribution here. Bookmark It
The class politics of standardised mortality rates
BRYNCETHIN? It’s some village near Bridgend, apparently. Never heard of it until this morning, to be honest. Wouldn’t like to guess as to how you pronounce the name. However, the place finds itself in the news this morning, after data released to parliament revealed that the age-adjusted death rate per nominal 100,000 people is 1,499. [...]
Has the Metropolitan Police really changed?
SIR William Macpherson’s famous observation back in 1999 that the Metropolitan Police was ‘institutionally racist’ did not come as any particular revelation to me. That is because the Met is the closest thing I have to a family business. My grandfather and two uncles were all London coppers in decades gone by, and there have [...]
Psycho Stapleton probably didn’t have a gun licence
ANYONE who can calmly give his name as ‘Psycho’ when facing murder charges in a magistrates’ court is unlikely to be too diligent in his compliance with state stipulations for the possession of firearms. So while this is pure guesswork on my part, it may well be that Kieran Stapleton did not have a licence [...]
Political predictions for 2012: open thread
HAPPY New Year, readers. Rather then write anything substantial myself today – I am still feeling a tad delicate after somewhat exceeding government drink unit guidelines last night, to be honest – I will instead open the comments box for any reflections people may have on likely developments in the year ahead. Here at home, tensions [...]
