A thug wearing a suit is still a thug, and a crime is no more acceptable when it is committed by a “respectable” member of society than when it is carried out by what the right-wing press like to think of as the criminal classes. Yet the concept of one law for all, while an […]
Tax avoidance ought to be as socially unacceptable as drink driving
Dec 19th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.
A minimum price for booze? That’s just middle class puritanism
Nov 30th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.David Cameron has labelled the British culture of drunkenness a “scandal”, and the Daily Mail has described binge drinking as “creating a generation of aggressive and out-of-control women”. If the scaremongers are to be believed, Britain is sinking into a bog of alcoholism of the sort depicted by William Hogarth in the 18th century. Not […]
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Israel/Palestine and why the conflict needs less ideological posturing
Nov 24th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.Almost all of those with an overtly ideological take on the conflict in Israel/Palestine come across as slightly deranged. The justification offered by supporters of each side is that it is their faction that is in the right, their faction that is acting in self-defence, and that it is the other side which is motivated […]
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War is never glorious, so why do we bully those who protest against poppy culture?
Nov 15th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.The surest way of finding oneself on the wrong side of our moral enforcers is, with words or with actions, to have caused a sacred group or individual of great national esteem “offence”. From this starting point your fate is very much dependent upon whom it is you have had the misfortune to upset. Celebrities are […]
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Why the gentrification of journalism matters
Oct 26th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.Newspapers are in trouble. That much is clear. The Guardian and the Observer lost £44.2 million last year as growth in online revenue failed to match Guardian News & Media’s (GNM) investment. Last week GNM was even forced to issue a denial after it was claimed that print editions of its papers would soon be […]
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Socialism and blasphemy: all authority should be ridiculed
Sep 15th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.Violent protests have spread across the Middle East and North Africa in response to an anti-Islamic film, The Innocence of Muslims, that was posted on YouTube. To call the film a piece of third-rate dross would be too lenient. Aesthetically the film is patently awful, and features a cast who can’t act and a set […]
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Railways are too important to run on greed
Aug 21st, 2012 by James Bloodworth.In the novel Catch 22, one of the central characters is an entrepreneurial war profiteer by the name of Milo Minderbinder. Caught swindling his fellow countrymen, Milo likes to evoke the “historic right of free men to pay as much as they have to for the things they need in order to survive”. When Milo’s profiteering […]
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Dennis Skinner: incorruptible and unapologetic
Jul 31st, 2012 by James Bloodworth.Dennis Skinner, the veteran 79-year-old backbench Labour MP, was in trademark form as he was overheard talking about plans to publish members’ expenses online. “I’m not going to be putting my expenses on the internet,” he complained emphatically to friends. “I wouldn’t know how. I’ve never sent an email and don’t intend to start now.”
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Piracy: as much a part of the ‘I want’ culture as Carr’s accounting
Jul 2nd, 2012 by James Bloodworth.At some point during the last 10 years or so, the idea that everything that can be taken for free should be taken for free has become widely accepted.
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When did looking down on others become the national pastime?
Feb 24th, 2012 by James Bloodworth.I don’t know about you, but before I tuned into the Channel Four show I had no idea what a big fat gypsy wedding was. I assumed it must be something to do with gypsies and weddings, obviously, but I failed to grasp why such a program would ever make it on to television. Lots […]
