Tagged with Class

Young Labour leaders ridicule member for working in a restaurant

Young Labour Labour Students Next GenerationThis is the text of an open letter to Labour Party General Secretary, Iain McNicol

Dear Iain,

My name is Jake. You’ve only met me once so I doubt that you’d remember this particular bespectacled Labour-supporting 19 year old. Anyway, hello. I currently work in a restaurant in Waterloo. I enjoy my job. It’s sociable, fun and enables me to continue living in one of the most vibrant and diverse (and expensive) cities in the world. Like thousands of other people, I have to work hard to survive and thrive here. I’ve been a Labour Party member, volunteer and activist for 5 years.

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Too fat to work – meet your new hate figures

Benefits Britain: Too Fat to WorkThose lovely folks over at Daily Express TV have hit on a relatively untapped vein of hate. Marry together your idea of the undeserving poor sponging off the hardworking tax payer with fat people and you have the perfect scapegoat: someone who cannot work because they are obese. Channel 5’s Benefits: Too Fat to Work is an exercise in demonology dressed up as concern porn, and befitting the quality publications of the station’s proprietor the facts of the matter – such as only 12,000 people out of a population of 60m plus are officially deemed “too fat to work” – cannot be allowed to get in the way of an hour long exhortation to mock, condemn, and hate so we can feel better about ourselves. Continue reading →

UKIP and the perils of professionalism

UKIP have the oUKIP+Rosettepposite problem to the Conservatives. The Tories are a tuned machine being tested to destruction by the clods in the control room. UKIP on the other hand have a leadership who, in the main, know what they’re doing but are cursed with a jerry-rig thrown together from whatever rusty parts they find lying around. And so we’ve had a kipper in a winnable seat resign after “chinky/poofter” gate. Another expelled for “jaw-dropping racism“, and the purge of Neil Hamilton and the suspension of Winston McKenzie’s branch. So, belatedly, UKIP are trying to professionalise the operation by marginalising the deluded and damaged, and dumping the bigoted and terminally dim. Good luck with that. Continue reading →

Our corrupt, self-protective, unaccountable Establishment

Bowler HatBy 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 Management with a multi-million salary, was exposed as a chiselling fare dodger who had cheated Southeastern Railways out of £43,000 over several years, but because he was allowed to make an out-of-court settlement he avoided prosecution and wasn’t sent to prison. What ordinary employee would have have been allowed such a getaway? The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) feebly admonished him as “falling short of the standards we expect” – can you imagine that being said to a burglar who had raided houses for several years and got away with £43,000? The FCA is the same toothless body which is supposed to be holding the City to account after a decade of stupendous financial crime, but has yet to send a single City grandee to prison. Continue reading →

Is Scotland’s Radical Independence movement a Class act?

1503917_811111418930048_8232632660068068253_nThere was a touch of class about last weekend’s Radical Independence conference (RIC): slick presentation, businesslike suits, and bold stage-lighting that shone a pinkish tint on the pale faces that packed the Clyde Auditorium one bright November day. If the job was to give RIC a new sheen, the organisers can be pleased with the result. There is a fresh coat of varnish on the rough jigsaw of local events, campaign groups, political parties, and mass canvasses that was pieced together into a recognizable brand over the course of two frenetic years’ campaigning.

No question, RIC has reasserted its institutional and radical identity after the referendum defeat – but there remains a lingering doubt that a gloss of leftish optimism and the pinkish glow of high-power bulbs concealed the superficiality of this new left-wing populist movement. Did a classy style conceal the classless substance running through RIC’s veins? Continue reading →