Paying close attention to politics you become immune to the dollops of lick spittle and cretinous behaviour that comes with it. Yesterday, however, didn’t only take the biscuit but dribbled great dollops of gob over it. Remember when the Dear Leader died and great numbers of presidents and prime ministers queued up to praise his rancid […]
Posts under ‘Civil Liberties’
The economics of hypocrisy and why the sheikdoms have to go
Jan 24th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.
The snoopers’ charter raises its ugly head again
Jan 14th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Bang on cue, Cameron this week reiterated what Andrew Parker, head of MI5, had demanded just before, that in the light of the Paris killings the UK security services needed more surveillance powers. Whenever there is a terrorist incident MI5 never misses an opportunity to demand ‘more resources’, closely followed in tandem by Cameron and May. […]
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World leaders and hypocrisy: Nous sommes a bunch of Charlies
Jan 12th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.It’s not often state-sponsored demonstrations take place in a liberal democracy, but that’s what today’s Unity March in Paris was. That isn’t to deny it was a genuine popular upwelling of people disgusted by Wednesday’s atrocity. No amount of establishment handwringing can bring 3.7m people out onto the streets if the sentiments weren’t truly heartfelt. […]
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What makes someone murder cartoonists?
Jan 8th, 2015 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.The attack on Charlie Hebdo was an atrocity calculated to outrage, to intimidate, to silence critics of Islam, and to remind the West that terror attacks can strike at the heart of its capital cities. It has provoked an outpouring of anger and solidarity with the victims, and not a small amount of stupid bigotry. […]
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On Charlie Hebdo and defending liberty – a dose of multiculturalism would help
Jan 8th, 2015 by Jon Lansman.Today we express solidarity and sympathy with the remaining staff of Charlie Hebdo and the families and friends of their 12 colleagues brutally murdered yesterday. It was an appalling attack on the freedom of speech, including the right to criticise, to satirise and to lampoon which we believe are essential features of democracy. Furthermore, in […]
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Our corrupt, self-protective, unaccountable Establishment
Dec 29th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.By chance several events in the few days before Christmas highlighted poignantly how the British Establishment – the small political-economic-financial elite who went to the same public schools and the same universities (usually Oxbridge) – automatically close ranks to protect each other when they come under pressure. Jonathan Burrows, a former MD of Blackrock Asset […]
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Government duplicity on torture from Blair to Cameron: eleven evasions
Dec 16th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.The whole narrative of the UK government’s response to the brutal revelations of US rendition and torture at Guantanamo and ‘black sites’ spread across E. Europe, the Middle East and Asia has been one of subterfuge, deception and downright lying, in sharp contrast to the determination of the political class in the US to get […]
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The paedophile next door – moving beyond condemnation?
Nov 26th, 2014 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Are we living at peak paedophile? No, we passed that a few years ago. But we do live in a culture saturated by paedophile panic. You’re practically not allowed to have contact with kids unless cleared by the Disclosure and Barring Service. Nary a day goes by without a paedophile somewhere getting banged up. We’ve had dear […]
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The Stansgate title should not be revived, nor the pretender “elected” to the Lords
Nov 20th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Tony Benn was devoted to his family, and so far as one could tell, it was always reciprocated at least in his lifetime. The devotion took many forms but I am concerned here with the impact of that devotion on the family’s public face and on political matters. In a family in which four generations have […]
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Workers of the world unite against the new generation of trade deals
Nov 18th, 2014 by Adrian Weir.David Cameron’s ringing endorsement at the G20 of the proposed EU-US trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), was perhaps predictable but also has opened up the topic of TTIP and its like to greater public awareness. Until Brisbane discussion of this new generation of multi-lateral trade agreements was very much a topic […]
