Entries by Michael

Nailing Tory Lies

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Ed Miliband has come out fighting in today’s Times arguing that “a great deceit designed to damage Labour has led to profoundly misguided and dangerous economic decisions”. The truth is uncomfortable for the Government. Ed Miliband writes (£): “What is this deceit? It is that the deficit was caused by chronic overspending rather than a […]

An example to us all

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Subject: Senior moment – A 98 year old woman in the UK wrote this to her bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the Times. Dear Sir, I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my […]

Politics on the brain

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Politics on the brain Conservatives are dinosaurs. That, at least, was the implication of a story on Radio 4 the other morning. Guest editor Colin Firth (himself a disenchanted Lib Dem, though Mr Darcy was undoubtedly a Tory) had asked scientists at University College London to discover whether political attitudes are hardwired into people’s brains. […]

Capitalism And The Importance of Lying

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The experience of Wikileaks has shown what has long since been known, but rarely discussed. Capitalism depends upon systematic lying. Over recent weeks we have had a succession of politicians and State bureaucrats from all the Capitalist states appear on TV, and tell us how terrible it is that their duplicity has been exposed. Of […]

Confidential occupations document – april 2009

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confidential occupations document – april 2009 The following leaked document had disappeared from the public domain due to the website which it was previously hosted on going down. It is a briefing for heads of university administrations on dealing with student occupations. It may assist activists in gaining some idea of the perspective of senior […]

Nutters on the web

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It’s a curious business. You’ve got these two nutters. One of them, let’s call him Rajiv, has culled some emails from a discussion list from which he’s been excluded for assorted ravings, and sends out plaintive missives couched in terms of eastern philosophy which no-one can understand. The second nutter, we’ll him Jack, receives one […]

An Iranian Director’s Impassioned Defense

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An Iranian Director’s Impassioned Defense thelede.blogs.nytimes.com Jafar Panahi, an internationally celebrated Iranian filmmaker who supported opposition protesters after last year’s disputed presidential election, delivered an impassioned defense of his work at his trial in Tehran last week. http://www.facebook.com

Coins on the cheap, or Economic illogic

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‘Coins fall victim to the cuts’ was the headline in the Morning Star, while the Daily Mail had ‘Coins on the cheap’. The Royal Mint, they reported, is to use cheaper metals in order to save £10m a year. Everyone else (except oddly the Luton and Dunstable Express) ignored the story, but it stuck in […]