Never before in UK history has so much been owed to so many by so few

It is worth bearing in mind that a government is not the country, it is not the people, it is not society and, most especially, it is not community or the daily reality of people’s lives. Good governance is like grease on a bearing, never to be confused with the bearing itself, which actually does […]

Life yearns to live

I am not sure how I feel about the world we now live in. We’re in a dead end street of political fuckery that looks like a bunch of morons planning the end of the world. Our children take a day off school to protest about the suffering planet that is their home and they […]

The peddlers of deception are the enemies of life

In the early nineties I reached a tipping point. It was during the pre-Christmas period and I was drunk. I was watching commercial television and was galvanised out of my seat by a particularly inane, enraging, advert. I grabbed a carving knife that I’d been using to cut up pizza and, yelling some blistering language, […]

EU or not EU? That is not the question

Since the EU referendum what has become horrifically clear to me is that Brexit is a Tory neoliberal wet dream. My own view had to undergo a sea change after the referendum. I voted leave because I am deeply uncomfortable with globalisation and neoliberalism in the EU, I feared, and still do, that globalisation will […]

Britain’s heart is broken

Image: © Guardian How do I know that Britain’s heart is broken? I know it because I am living it and living with the grief of it moment by moment. I know it because my own heart is broken. I know it because I see who and what broke it. I’ve seen it since 2010, […]

Homeless and stateless under capitalism and the tyranny of money

One of the most significant things that has occurred in the modern world, especially in cities, is that people are forced to rely on others for almost everything they need to survive and this becomes a mental and physical trap of dependency which people unavoidably, but unintentionally, fall into. We find jobs working for someone […]

Living with lies and surviving

In an interview with Deutsche Welle’s, Germany’s public international broadcaster, reporter Zhanna Nemtsova asked Boris Johnson, “Mr Johnson, you argue that the source of this nerve agent, Novichok, is Russia. How did you manage to find it out so quickly? Does Britain possess samples of this?” Johnson, after some preamble, replied, “When I look at […]

The Tories handling of Brexit is entirely consistent with their intent

Trying to fathom the Tory strategy over Brexit is not dissimilar to trying to work out where you were and where you were going in one of London’s infamous smogs in years past in which, sometimes, you were unable to see your hand in front of your face. I well remember being completely disoriented, not […]

Working class and proud of it

You may recall George Osborne cynically using the brutal and vicious murder of six children by Mick Philpott to monster benefits recipients and the welfare state. This is what he had to say, “Philpott is responsible for these absolutely horrendous crimes and these are crimes that have shocked the nation. The courts are responsible for […]

Letter to America (to Eileen , a friend) (may contain class prejudice)

It’s a steel grey Monday morning, not so much light coming in to my living room as creeping in and stealing all the colour. There is really only one word to describe it – melancholy – and it is infectious. I’ve woken late, for me, and I have two things on my mind, you and […]