UK Border Agency: let’s sign up to Schengen
One of the few political positions that sections of the far left and the free market right alike hold dear is opposition to immigration controls. But I am still not quite sure whether it was the Socialist Workers’ Party or the Adam Smith Institute that sneakily managed to take over the UK Border Agency while no-one was looking this summer.
Even though I also back a policy of open borders, I never once imagined that the Coalition would implement the idea quite so literally.
Financial markets do not exist
One of the most striking aspects of the blanket media coverage of the eurozone crisis is the way in which financial markets are routinely spoken of as entities with a life of their own.
They are conceived of as capable of adhering to ethical codes, from which they have of late drifted away. Ostensibly they can experience such human emotions as tension, and even desperation, fear, panic and the jitters.
Tribune magazine: the decision to close is the right one
I was news editor at Tribune between 1992 and 1995, and it lived a hand to mouth existence even then. At a time when almost every other publication in Britain had switched to what journalists of the period called ‘the new technology’, I suddenly found myself thrown back into the era of manual typewriters. The one I was given, according to a standing office joke, used to belong to George Orwell himself.
As the magazine’s token Trotskyist, I was always somewhat at odds with the overall editorial line. But nevertheless various editors somehow found a place for my contributions, and I will always be proud to be associated with a title that – for much of its existence, anyway – instantiated the best aspects of the democratic socialist tradition in this country.
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Tony Blair: PR man for Kazakhstan
Nursultan Nazarbayev is clearly an extremely popular guy. Why, only last April, he secured 95% of the votes in Kazakhstan’s presidential elections. And just to underline how much his people love him, the name of the party which holds every single seat in the country’s parliament loosely translates as ‘Ray of Light of the Fatherland’, in honour of the big N himself.
Personally I am at a loss to fathom why Nazarbayev should feel the need to retain an expensive western public relations outfit. But inexplicably enough, he has done just that. The Financial Times reports that a firm by the name of Tony Blair Associates has landed a contract worth $13m a year to help tidy up Kazakhstan’s image in the West.
If you don’t have an FT subscription, read the rewrite in the Daily Telegraph here.
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#occupylsx: yes, but what are they advocating instead?
Yes, but what are they advocating instead? That question is rapidly becoming the standard rightwing putdown of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the similar demonstrations it has inspired elsewhere, now including London’s #occupylsx.
Hacks penning hatchet jobs on this one have two ways into the story. One option is to start by stressing widespread sympathy for the participants, many of whom are nice boys and girls from good families. It’s just that there is no getting round the fact that the financial sector pays the bills around here, and that the protestors have no coherent alternative to offer.
Liam Fox: torn
Did Australian angst rock princess Natalie Imbruglia personally broker BAE Systems’ $15.8m contract to upgrade the Chilean army’s howitzer capacity? I only ask because the lucky girl lists Liam Fox among her former squeezes, and as we know, the defence secretary can be extremely accommodating to the commercial interests of old friends.
As a special adviser to Dr Fox myself – well, that’s what it says on my business cards, anyway – I should stress here that no concrete charges of misconduct have at this point been made against him.
The poor don’t have a party
The Tories are now the party of the poor, Iain Duncan Smith told a fringe meeting at Conservative Party conference this week.
That he can even get away with such a surreal claim without attracting widespread derision underlines just how far the issue of poverty reduction no longer looms large on the political agenda.
I don’t underestimate the sincerity of a quiet man. Ever since he was forced out of the Tory leadership, IDS has devoted much of his political time to the question of welfare reform. He has been widely commended for taking the problem seriously, and for developing a new approach within a centre-right framework.
IDS was also indisputably correct when he observed that under New Labour, income inequality in this country rose to the highest level seen since 1961, the first year for which calculations of the so-called Gini Coefficient are available.
Ed Balls speech: in denial
This is the darkest, most dangerous period for the global economy that most of us have ever lived through, Ed Balls correctly insisted in his speech to the Labour conference today. But never mind; a temporary cut in VAT will soon sort things out.
I exaggerate, of course. But only slightly. At a time when the notion that capitalism is in crisis has gone from being a demented Trot cliché to an everyday topic of debate in the Financial Times, the sheer disconnect between reality and Labour’s willingness to think the potential consequences through is immediately striking. We are somewhere close to the territory that psychoanalysts refer to as being ‘in denial’.
Liberal Democrats: the contradictions of populism
Much of the rhetoric emanating from the International Convention Centre in Birmingham over the last couple of days is marked by a degree of ostensible radicalism well beyond anything heard in ministerial speeches under New Labour.
Where business secretary John Hutton proclaimed that huge salaries were something to celebrate, his successor Vince Cable attacks ‘pay outs for failure’ and calls for workers and shareholders to have an input into deciding executive pay.
Where Gordon Brown shamefully scrapped the 10p tax band – a move that left up to five million of the poorest people in Britain worse off – Nick Clegg entirely correctly advocates taking the low paid out of the income tax system altogether.
How the Tories dealt with riots in the past
If the people are turbulent and riotous, nothing is to be done for them on account of their evil dispositions. If they are obedient and loyal, nothing is to be done for them, because their being quiet and contented is a proof that they feel no grievance – Edmund Burke, 1797
The trouble in Manchester all kicked off when bogus rumours spread that a mob was besieging parts of inner London. A section of the lower orders, clearly fuelled by drink, set out on a wrecking spree, expressing their solidarity by smashing windows.
I refer, of course, to the situation in 1816, in a Britain so different from the one in which we live today that it is impossible to imagine what things must have been like for the dispossessed.
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» We’re turning The Spirit Level into a film: help us in that goal
» I love the counter-productive attitude of right-wing commentators
» Watch out for the TPA’s report arguing for more cuts tomorrow
» The resurgence of bigoted conservatism in Ireland
» What’s the point of being ‘British’?
» The tragedy behind the Sam Hallam case
» Will JP Morgan be able to walk away from billion dollar losses?
» Labour is now even more reliant on left-wing voters
» We need the minimum wage for under-21s to be raised
» Has Liam Byrne discovered his conscience over disability benefits?
» Why the jobs crisis is far worse than headline figures
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