Young people and ethnic minorities will be most affected by Olympic dispersal...
The “out of sight, out of mind” attitude to policing.As the Olympics get underway, Stratford is unrecognisable from the place it was a year ago. The previously run down east London area, mainly...
View ArticleQuote of the day
Nine-times Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis on Mitt Romney's shambolic trip to the UK."Seriously, some Americans just shouldn't leave the country," Carl Lewis told The Indpendent. #RomneyShambles indeed.
View ArticleWho runs Britain’s energy policy?
A smaller cut in wind power funding comes at the cost of a commitment to decades more of dirty and expensive gas.Who runs Britain’s energy policy? We have a Department of Energy and Climate Change –...
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Top five racist Republican dog-whistles
Sometimes, there's more to a "gaffe" than meets the eye.After an excruciating few days, the Romneyshambles is finally coming to an end as Mitt departs Britain, tail between his legs. It really has been...
View Article3:30 on an Olympic Friday? Great time for Michael Gove to bury news
Teachers at academies will no longer need qualifications. Interesting that the Department for Education chose today to remove requirements for teachers working at academies to have Qualified Teacher...
View ArticleRed Desert - review
Antonioni's 1964 film depicts a familiar landscape. Some people have suggested that mental illness is a kind of adaptation to the sort of circumstances that will arise in the future. As we move towards...
View ArticleWell Salt Lake City isn't too happy with David Cameron either, so there
Utah hits backFollowing Mitt Romney's charm offensive, David Cameron went a bit Flashman on him, saying, in response to the Presidential hopeful's comments on the "disconcerting" preparations for the...
View ArticleMorning Call: pick of the papers
The ten must-read comment pieces from this morning's papers.1. Britain is an easy date. So how did Mitt Romney mess up so badly? (Guardian) The Rommneyshambles tells us much abut one man's lack of...
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Olympic opener: madcap Britishness or "multicultural crap"?
How Danny Boyle's vision went down.Apart from some dyspeptic grumbling on Twitter from Toby Young and a spectacularly ill-judged tweet from Tory MP Aidan Burley ("Thank God the athletes have arrived!...
View ArticleBack to the soil
The Simpsons, Woody Guthrie, Gone with the Wind and Neil Young – and what they tell us about America's obsession with its land.The novelist John Cheever once wrote of a “sense of sanctuary that is the...
View ArticleDamp squid: the fall of Niall Ferguson
The Scots-American we can do without.I Whatever happened to … Professor Niall Ferguson, and this year’s Reith Lectures? "A bit of a damp squib," reported my daughter Alison from think tank country....
View ArticleHow energy co-operatives could help keep bills down
Isn't it time we got more for our money?Centrica, owners of British Gas, one of Britain’s biggest energy companies, has once again posted very good profits - made out of our individual energy needs....
View ArticleCharmingly incoherent
An opening ceremony for a "self-analysing" people. Last night’s Olympics opening ceremony provoked some interesting comments on Twitter. Highlights include the Spectator journalist Harry Cole...
View ArticleThe Olympic opening ceremony shows why lefties should embrace pageantry
The NHS, the Windrush - this was a Britain to make us proud.Elizabeth II, long to parachute over us, plummeting from a helicopter with James Bond, is what will live longest in the memory, perhaps. (It...
View ArticleMorning Call: pick of the papers
The ten must-read comment pieces from this morning's papers.1. The biggest relief of all: it wasn’t Beijing (Sunday Times) (£) If you want storytelling and emotional spectacle, you come to Britain,...
View ArticleI’m wired, therefore I exist
But has your existence started to belong to others?Today if you are not often wired, you do not exist. Like radio and television in other times, the internet has become not only an indispensable tool...
View ArticleWork capability assessments: the fightback
Disabled people win right to judicial review. Encouraging news out of the High Court on Thursday for opponents of the loathed Atos' work capability assessments (WCAs) : the court granted permission to...
View ArticleThe Olympic spirit?
Cyclists banned from Newham for the duration of the Games. For your average left-winger (like me), grandiose patriotic events are usually characterised by post-imperial malaise, myth-peddling and...
View ArticleRock 'n’ roll and flowery shirts
Pakistan, before it was overtaken by General Zia’s Islamisation programme, had a swinging, chilling vibe and a vibrant intellectual scene."Good and bad, this too will pass" is the way that so much is...
View ArticleNot everyone is happy about the Olympics
Protesters march against the corporate takeover of the Games.It's a bright, sunny July afternoon and the descendants of victims of a 19th-century genocide march while performing their traditional...
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