UK
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War or prosperity? UK’s price tag for Afghan war rises to $30 billion while cutting vital social services at home
“The UK has revealed that the cost of its involvement in the war in Afghanistan has reached $27.6 billion, and may end up being as much as $32.5 billion. Meanwhile, the UK continues to slash domestic social services to reduce its budget deficit. Continue reading
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UK Waging Endless Wars: At Home and Abroad by Finian Cunningham
Austerity is here to stay in the United Kingdom, lasting until at least 2018 and more likely beyond that year. It is a shocking peremptory order when you think about it. The people are being told, “Poverty is your miserable lot and don’t even question it.” Continue reading
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Leveson’s Punch and Judy show on the press masks ‘hacking’ on a scale you can barely imagine By John Pilger
In Britain, this world of subjugated news and information is concealed behind a similar façade of a “free” media, which promotes the extremisms of state corruption and war, consumerism and an impoverishment known as “austerity”. Leveson devoted his “inquiry” to the preservation of this system. Continue reading
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Why Carney’s Appointment as Bank of England Governor Should be Challenged By Hugo Radice
Here was a giant of financial regulation, with a PhD in economics, ten years at Goldman Sachs, singlehandedly responsible for guiding Canada to the quickest post-2008 recovery among the G7 countries, and appointed in 2008 to chair the Financial Stability Board set up by the G20. So what’s not to like? Continue reading
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Books: Transitional Demands from 1695 By Carl Rowlands
In the work of John Bellers, dating from the 1690s to the 1720s, we can see the earliest calls for nothing less than a National Health Service, a peaceful European state-of-states, vocationally-based alleviation of unemployment and poverty and—bravely in such a period—a plea for the richest to be held responsible for the condition of the… Continue reading
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Blowing Up the Past, Destroying the Future By by Sarah Glynn
Since 1990, Dundee has demolished over 10,000 homes. We also have thousands of people waiting for social housing because they don’t have adequate accommodation. Their house may be unfit to live in, or overcrowded, or they may be having to sleep on a friend’s sofa. Most of the homes that have been destroyed were fundamentally… Continue reading
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Building a New World and Tearing it Down: British Working Class Housing Since 1900 By Andrew McCormack
The right to an adequate home is well recognised as essential for participation in any human society[1] and the requirements of adequacy in contemporary industrialized societies are fairly uncontroversial. Yet, whilst thousands of new luxury houses are built for the rich every year, many in Britain remain trapped in conditions reminiscent of the Depression era.… Continue reading
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Leveson and Leviathan, or What the Papers Won’t Say By Dan Hind
At the moment the press are taking full advantage of their privileged position to talk a lot of nonsense about the menace that statutory regulation would pose to a free press. The unnamed authors of a Telegraph editorial tell their readers that “the growing clamour for press regulation backed by statute threatens a priceless British… Continue reading
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Leveson and Leviathan, or What the Papers Won’t Say By Dan Hind
At the moment the press are taking full advantage of their privileged position to talk a lot of nonsense about the menace that statutory regulation would pose to a free press. The unnamed authors of a Telegraph editorial tell their readers that “the growing clamour for press regulation backed by statute threatens a priceless British… Continue reading
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Video: Palestine Activism in the UK
Across Britain growing numbers of people are acting in solidarity with Palestinians Continue reading
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Introduction: The Needs of Oligarchy by Dan Hind
The collapse of Britain’s finance-dominated economic model in 2007-8 and the scandals that followed in quick succession mark the beginning of a constitutional crisis. How this crisis is resolved will determine the future of the country. I believe that republican doctrines and habits of mind provide valuable resources for those who want Britain to become… Continue reading
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The Long and the Short of Press Regulation By Dan Hind
Free expression is important. Its importance is often couched in terms of the common good. A society in which people can speak freely is one in which injustice can be remedied, corruption punished and so on. But it is also a good for the individual. Free speech is best means by which we can discover… Continue reading
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UK hospitals going digital to fill NHS budget shortfall – report
You’ll no longer need to leave your house to visit the doctor in the UK. Video chats will soon replace face-to-face appointments in a bid to save nearly $5 billion in healthcare costs, a report claims. Critics warn the move may put lives at risk. Continue reading
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Assange: A curious position for the UK to adopt?
There is great relevance in whether or not the US are actively planning to extradite Julian Assange- this is the key aspect to his appeal against extradition to Sweden and a key element in the decision of Ecuador to grant Assange asylum. In this respect, the resolution of the Swedish case against Assange pivots around… Continue reading
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A WEEK IS A LONG TIME IN GAZA. OR, HOW THE BBC COVERED 38 CONSECUTIVE BREAKING NEWS STORIES
The BBC’s reporting on the current conflict in Gaza has been subject to claim and counter-claim of bias from pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli camps. Surely they can’t both be right. I decided to take a closer look at the BBC Breaking News twitter feed to try and determine whether there was any substance to the claims Continue reading
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As Israel assaults Gaza, BBC reporting assaults the truth By Amena Saleem
The panel, chaired by Sir Quentin Thomas, a senior figure in the British Home Office, found “identifiable shortcomings, particularly in respect of gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective and in the consistent maintenance of the BBC’s own editorial standards.” Continue reading
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UK Police ‘elections’: undo the damage – sign the petition
It’s official: last Thursday’s elections for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales had the lowest turnout of any nationwide election since 1945. Continue reading
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Book/Event: All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: Reading History From Below
The book All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal: Reading History From Below began as a discussion between two friends, Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts, about the politics of writing history. Neither are trained historians. They have assembled a critical and necessarily partial picture of the practice of ‘history from below’: historiographical tendencies which… Continue reading
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Fighting ‘Terrorism’ or Repressing Democracy? Britain’s System of Mass Surveillance By Dr. Paul Anderson
The focus of critiques of authoritarianism today lies increasingly in the use by liberal governments of ‘exceptional’ powers. These are powers in which an imminent threat to national security is judged to be of such importance as to warrant the restriction of liberties and other socially repressive measures in order to protect national security. ‘Terrorism’… Continue reading
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Gaza Under Attack – Protest
In protest at Israel’s latest escalation of violence against Palestinians whom they have blockaded in the Gaza Strip, local Palestine Solidarity Campaign groups, together with many other organisations are organising protests up and down the country. Continue reading
