Big Jim – he lays it all to waste

24 Jul

[ezcol_2third][/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end]I don’t as a rule get involved in animal rights stuff. Too often the self righteousness is a turn-off, and there’s only so much you can do with one lifetime anyway. That said, there’s something here – the way … Read More »

Corbyn kicks off in Salford

24 Jul

The Lowry Hall, Salford, where on Saturday Jeremy launched his campaign for a leadership he should not, ten months after securing the biggest mandate in the Party’s history, have had to defend. Labour now has more members – half a … Read More »

Trident – a class perspective

23 Jul

So much falls into place once you realise that for Big Capital, profit trumps nation every time. Trident’s a case in point. For it or agin, without a class perspective we really haven’t a clue. “Our” big banks, including HSBC and Barclays, are … Read More »

Eagle is downed, but not by sexism

20 Jul

Is there a prize for the most featherheaded Guardian analysis of Labour’s crisis? In the face of fierce competition over the months since Corbyn’s election, I shortlist Anne Perkins for this piece yesterday. Eagle shot down? Well that’d be on account … Read More »

Meanwhile on Saltburn Pier …

19 Jul

… the Yorkshire Knitters have struck again. This hiker has to be out of his woolly mind to go up on Ilkley Moor without a hat. Is he not aware of the consequential chain such folly will trigger? Decades ago, David Hockney cited a … Read More »

From bitter searching of the heart

16 Jul

A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front … Read More »

Is this England? Ask Chaucer!

10 Jul

I’ve been re-watching This is England. Not the movie, set in 1983, but the Channel 4 mini-series it spawned: This is England 1986 .. 1988  .. 1990. They’re on catch up at All 4 and if you never saw them, find … Read More »

Power of the press

1 Jul

One aspect of the torpedoing of Boris by Gove and his missis, Sarah Vine, is this line in her email to hubby: Crucially, the membership will not have the necessary reassurance to back Boris, neither will Dacre/Murdoch, who instinctively dislike … Read More »