Words that we will never hear again will continue to resonate the caustic hypocrisy of Tory politics. ‘We’re all in it together’, a piece of flagrant brazenness when it was first trailed by Osborne in 2010, has now become a millstone around the Tory neck. Everything they have done in the last two weeks contradicts [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Class’
Better to be a banker than on workfare if you do something wrong
Mar 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Penalties, as the current bonus season reveals all too clearly, are still a matter of class. If you’re a young person 16-24 on a work experience programme promoted as ‘voluntary’, and you drop out even for good reason, you stood to lose two weeks’ benefit (until the government was forced to back down by public [...]
University access: Les Ebdon will make no difference
Feb 21st, 2012 by David Osler.The Daily Telegraph is aghast at yesterday’s appointment of Les Ebdon as head of the Office for Fair Access, openly voicing its fear that he will force ‘our’ best universities to take ‘less well-qualified candidates’. I’m not quite sure just who the personal pronoun applies to in this context, but if the writer of those words [...]
A new class politics
Feb 20th, 2012 by Owen Jones.The recession has brought class inequality back into view by exposing the unjust distribution of wealth and power in Britain. Labour must tackle this with a new class politics of stronger trade unions and a more representative parliament. During the long boom of the nineties and noughties, it was possible to at least pretend class [...]
Where the real division lies
Feb 16th, 2012 by Richard Leonard.Politics is a choice between left and right – tackling inequality, injustice and poverty and a redistribution of power on the one hand or relying on trickle-down and the free market on the other. And the goals of the wider movement of which my own union GMB is proudly part have always been international. We are [...]
The class politics of standardised mortality rates
Jan 5th, 2012 by David Osler.Bryncethin? It’s some village near Bridgend, apparently. Never heard of it until this morning, to be honest. Wouldn’t like to guess as to how you pronounce the name. However, the place finds itself in the news this morning, after data released to parliament revealed that the age-adjusted death rate per nominal 100,000 people is 1,499. That compares [...]
Being gay is a class act
Jan 1st, 2012 by Owen Jones.Recently, a close straight friend made a slightly startling, off-hand comment. “Being gay is more common among middle-class people, isn’t it?” He hadn’t thought it through and, when I challenged him, he felt a bit silly. But he was merely expressing a commonly held prejudice – that there’s something a little bit bourgeois about rolling around with [...]
The future of the left
Nov 28th, 2011 by Len McCluskey.Unite meets in Brighton this week in most troubling times for our country. Faith in the institutions forming the pillars of national life – from the political class to the press – has collapsed. Fear stalks the global markets, and yet our political leaders seem incapable of steering a course out of the despair. Bookmarks Hide Sites
Social class, more than generation, dictates work prospects
Nov 17th, 2011 by James Bloodworth.It is very much in vogue at present when talking about young people to refer to them in the context of a generational stitch-up. The post-war generations – or more specifically the ‘baby boomers’ – are said to have left the rest of us high and dry, with little in the way of job prospects [...]
Private school parents are wasting their money
Oct 14th, 2011 by Owen Jones.Our comprehensive schools are under attack and barely anyone in public life is defending them. As part of an ideologically charged campaign to strip the state of all but its most basic functions, the Tories are fragmenting the education system by building a patchwork of privately run free schools and academies. Forced into retreat, champions [...]
