THE MAGNITUDE OF THE CRISIS now overtaking Britain is difficult to exaggerate. A society obsessed with class has somehow to deal with the impossible fact that those on the bottom have over-ruled those at the top.
PICTURE HIM. He’s in his late 40s, tall, greying hair elegantly styled. His suit is Italian bespoke, from the immigrant tailor with the studio just around the corner from his favourite pub. His basic salary is safely into six figures (Sterling) and his bonus this year was spectacular. What does he do?
1. William, with a conqueror’s grin, Told the English: “It looks like you’re ‘In’!” But, after one thousand years, It’s…
Social democracy and egalitarianism are joined at the hip, and the longer they persist the easier it gets for working-class people to say “Fuck you!” – and walk away. Capitalism can survive many things: riots, strikes, economic depressions, even wars: but it cannot survive that.
OWEN JONES: democratic socialist, LGBTI activist and Guardian journalist: takes homophobia seriously. So seriously, that earlier this week he pulled off his microphone and stormed out of Britain’s Sky News studio in protest at the network’s treatment of the Orlando massacre.
ACCORDING TO PATRICK DUNN, the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, his church is haemorrhaging “New Zealand-born” and “New Zealand-bred” followers. He calls this Pakeha turning away from the church “Kiwi Drift”. Its effects, says the Bishop, have been masked by the recent influx of thousands of Catholic migrants.
Peace in Northern Ireland was not negotiated by idealists, but by realists. Peace in Palestine will, likewise, be the achievement of those who begin with the situation as it is, not as it should be, or, as it was.
When the Red Party courted the Green
There was little romance to be seen.
Independent critical analysis is not considered helpful. Whenever someone like Paul Henry asks someone from the Left for their opinion, the only acceptable response, apparently, is: “Hooray for our side!”
BILL ENGLISH’S LATEST BUDGET is a masterful exercise in deception. He has done everything he can to mask the effects of the most rapid expansion in New Zealand’s population since the 1970s. The monies allocated to the core centres of state expenditure – Welfare, Health and Education – barely match the rising numbers they are expected to serve.