UK
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Groping in the Dark: Jack Straw and the Irrelevance of the Left By Carl Rowlands
No-one knows exactly how many people have moved to the UK from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Baltic countries. Despite this, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said that immediately admitting workers from the 2004 EU accession countries into the UK labour market was, in his words, a ‘mistake.’ Blithely untroubled by… Continue reading
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The BBC and Government: time for some more light? By Brian Winston
The unwritten conventions of the British Constitution, anyway very much a concept cut from whole cloth by 19th century Vinerian professors of English Law at Oxford, are scarcely of a piece with the low political horse trading that has gone on at every BBC Charter renewal since the first in 1936. A BBC veto is… Continue reading
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Britain’s poorest summonsed to court to pay council tax arrears By Allison Smith
In London’s Labour Party-controlled Southwark borough alone, more than 5,000 residents were summonsed to court in October and forced to pay past due council tax plus court fees. In the Labour-controlled borough of Brent, 3,500 summonses were issued to the poorest residents. This is being repeated across the country. The Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Hull… Continue reading
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Israel — Just Another Hapless British Colony By John Kozy
When Israel is seen as an English colony, England has to be seen as primarily responsible for all of the horrors committed by its “colonists.” In fact, England and France must be seen as primarily responsible for the horrors committed by all the West in the Middle East at least since 1857, the end of… Continue reading
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Israel — Just Another Hapless British Colony By John Kozy
When Israel is seen as an English colony, England has to be seen as primarily responsible for all of the horrors committed by its “colonists.” In fact, England and France must be seen as primarily responsible for the horrors committed by all the West in the Middle East at least since 1857, the end of… Continue reading
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Dead Poppies: When Remembrance Becomes Militarism by Lesley Docksey
The ‘Remembrance’ poppy grew out of WWI and became a symbol for that dire and catastrophic war. Catastrophic, that is, for those British men who died (725,000) leaving widows and orphans behind, or the 1.75 million wounded, half of whom were permanently disabled and unable to work or support their dependents. The British Legion was… Continue reading
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Left Unity: A Report from the Founding Conference By Richard Seymour
Based on the votes, I would estimate that somewhat over 400 people gathered in Bloomsbury on Saturday to launch the new left party first suggested by Ken Loach some months ago. The attendees were disproportionately veterans of the Left, older and white, but there were a lot of them. Continue reading
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What archives? UK ordered destruction of ‘embarrassing’ colonial papers
Britain systematically destroyed documents in colonies that were about to gain independence, declassified Foreign Office files reveal. ‘Operation Legacy’ saw sensitive documents secretly burnt or dumped to cover up traces of British activities. Continue reading
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Join Susan George Discussing the Class War
Susan has a world wide reputation as a searing critic of capitalist globalisation and as an activist for international social justice. Her latest book, titled How to Win the Class War, is the sequel to her popular Lugano Report. Continue reading
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What lies behind Hunt’s message of the ‘bad, cruel’ NHS? By James Lazou
Hunt’s message is not about spreading hope or building a culture change in the NHS. These comments come from a minister who is only too willing to run down the NHS and its staff, ‘liberated’ as he now is of any legal duty tosecure a comprehensive health service. Hunt’s message on cruelty is yet another… Continue reading
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What does the NHS’s new IT plan really want to extract from us? By Jane Fae Ozimek
The theory behind care.data is straightforward enough. Data from all (non-dissenting) UK patients is to be lodged in a central database, from where it may be used for admin purposes, for statistical analysis by the NHS or sold on to select research companies. Continue reading
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UK Prime Minister Cameron plays the anti-immigrant card By Robert Stevens
Prime Minister David Cameron announced a raft of anti-immigrant measures this week in advance of new European Union rules coming into effect that will end restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians entering the UK. Continue reading
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Discovering the power of people’s history – and why it is feared today By John Pilger
England is two countries. One is dominated by London, the other remains in its shadow. When I first arrived from Australia, it seemed no one went north of Watford and those who had emigrated from the north worked hard to change their accents and obscure their origins and learn the mannerisms and codes of the… Continue reading
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‘Enemies within’: the Justice and Security Act 2013 By Rod Jones
The act originated in a consultative or green paper introduced by the then justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, in 2011. This was an over-the-top affair, proposing to make secret procedures available in all types of civil proceedings—not just those cases involving national security and even when the government itself was involved. It further proposed that the… Continue reading
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The Gagging Bill: Criminalising peaceful participation in public debate By Ian Leggett
The Gagging Bill is an attack on the foundations of our democracy. Far from supporting the “Big Society”, Cameron and Clegg are crushing it. The legislation has been paused in the Lords. Now it must be abandoned, says Ian Leggett. Continue reading
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Media Diversified: An Interview with Samantha Asumadu By Alice Bell
We talked to Samantha Asumadu, a documentary filmmaker, former journalist and campaigner about her project Media Diversified, which tackles the lack of diversity in UK media and the ubiquity of whiteness it both reflects and perpetuates. Continue reading
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UK government moves to clamp down on Internet, citing child pornography By Julie Hyland
A new clampdown on the internet has been authorised by the British government under the guise of the fight against child pornography. Continue reading
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NSA hacked over 50,000 computer networks worldwide – report
The US National Security Agency hacked more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide installing malware designated for surveillance operations, Dutch newspaper NRC reports citing documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 