The National Policy Forum has made the strange decision to group culture with the environment and energy. Meanwhile, transport is placed, not completely without justification, with local government and housing. However, as transport is a major consumer of energy and a transport policy will be essential to fighting climate change, I decided to address it […]
Posts under ‘As I Please’
A Riot of Our Own
Apr 1st, 2017 by Mark Perryman.8th April is the 40th Anniversary of The Clash’s debut album. Mark Perryman asks what the 1977 punk and politics mix was all about. The birth of punk for most is dated on or round 1976 with the November release that year of the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK with both music and movement kickstarted […]
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Cohen versus Corbyn: The fucking praise of fucking folly
Mar 20th, 2017 by David Osland.It has been a while since I last read How to Win Friends and Influence People, but I do not recollect Dale Carnegie advising Sunday newspaper columnists to win over readers by branding them “fucking fools” who need to change their “fucking minds”. But such is now the level of debate in the Observer, which yesterday carried […]
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The Audacity of Osborne
Mar 20th, 2017 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.I hear tell of George Osborne applying for the Evening Standard vacancy only after other people came to him for advice on their applications. What a charmer. Still, his landing the editorship of London’s biggest free sheet is as shocking as it is audacious. How is it someone barely able to string a sentence together, […]
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What kind of centenary celebration does 1917 deserve?
Feb 10th, 2017 by Mark Perryman.A century ago, 23rd February 1917, Russian women marched out in protest from the St Petersburg factories where they worked to defy Cossacks armed with swords and took control of the city’s streets. In less than a week they had been joined by hundreds of thousands of other workers. The St Petersburg Military Garrison mutinied […]
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Review: After the eating and drinking, the sporty?
Jan 5th, 2017 by Mark Perryman.A selection of 2017 sporting reads by Mark Perryman for the post-festive recovery period There’s nothing like Christmas to put on an inch or two where we don’t want to. Sitting in front of the TV for hours, days even, on end doesn’t help much either. For many, a New Years resolution to add more […]
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Christmas Book Review
Dec 12th, 2016 by Mark Perryman.Mark Perryman provides a seasonal round-up of the best books to cheer up the radical spirit From #chaoticbrexit to the triumph of Trump via the summertime Labour coup, 2016 will be a year to forget for many who cling on to an optimism that a better tomorrow remains not only necessary but possible too. The […]
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Where have all the poppies gone?
Nov 11th, 2016 by Mark Perryman.Ahead of the England vs Scotland game Mark Perryman responds to FIFA’s Poppies ban The last time England played Scotland in a competitive match at Hampden Park, in November, 1999, it was preceded by none of the manufactured row about whether the teams should have poppies embroidered on their shirts. The tabloids were more interested […]
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Our Front is Popular: The 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street
Sep 16th, 2016 by Mark Perryman.Mark Perryman revisits 1936 when anti-fascism was the cause home and abroad ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ The notorious Daily Mail headline is just one chilling indication of the very real threat Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists posed in the mid 1930s. Inspired by the successful rise to power of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler […]
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The Social Democratic Team GB v. Freemarket English Football
Aug 23rd, 2016 by Mark Perryman.Mark Perryman outlines what Great Britain’s Olympic success does and does not mean Team GB’s second place in the Rio medals table is nothing less than staggering. It is only 20 years ago that the squad returned with a solitary Gold from Atlanta ’96 clinging on to 36th in the table. This sporting nation is […]
