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Migrants pay in £20bn more than they take out
Migrants from the EU have a lower rate of unemployment than the UK-born population, according to an analysis of 2011 census data just published by ONS. They also make a net contribution to the British...
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May evades vote on EU arrest warrant to prevent Tory party from splitting
May’s shenanigans yesterday in the Commons over the European arrest warrant is the perfect example of how far relations with the EU are being treated as an outpost of internal Tory party politics. Any...
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Your right to know what’s done in your name with your money
Openness, transparency, and accountability. These three values underpin the public service ethos, they are the foundation of good government and a healthy democracy. As a taxpayer you have a right to...
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Workers of the world unite against the new generation of trade deals
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...
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The Stansgate title should not be revived, nor the pretender “elected” to the...
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...
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The paedophile next door – moving beyond condemnation?
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...
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Government duplicity on torture from Blair to Cameron: eleven evasions
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...
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Our corrupt, self-protective, unaccountable Establishment
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...
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On Charlie Hebdo and defending liberty – a dose of multiculturalism would help
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...
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What makes someone murder cartoonists?
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....
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World leaders and hypocrisy: Nous sommes a bunch of Charlies
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...
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The snoopers’ charter raises its ugly head again
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....
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The economics of hypocrisy and why the sheikdoms have to go
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...
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One million fewer registered this year to vote hits the young, poor & minorities
Research by Labour and Hope Not Hate has found that the vast majority of local authorities – 307 out of 373 sampled – have seen voter registration fall in the last year. Overall, across all local...
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The right to protest is precious – we must defend it
The right to protest is a precious and important one. It is fundamental to any democracy. Co-operation with the police has always been a sensitive area and indeed current legislation requires agreement...
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Whistleblowers do more to hold governments to account than parliaments
Whistle-blowers are worth their weight in gold, though governments certainly don’t think so. Some of the most important things we’ve learnt about the nature of the societies we live in have come...
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How far did blacklisting extend outside construction?
It was originally assumed that blacklisting was a secret tool used by construction companies – Balfour Beatty, Costain, McAlpine, Skanska, Carillion, Kier and over 30 others – to keep out people they...
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Change will come if we stand together
We have come so far since the first International Women’s Day in 1911. At that time the Suffragettes were fighting – at times to the death – to ensure that women across the UK had the same democratic...
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McCluskey leads attack on Farage’s promise to axe racial discrimination laws
Nigel Farage has said he would scrap laws designed to stop racial discrimination in the workplace that he claims are out of date because British society has moved on, making them redundant, and it is,...
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How to put right the corruption, secrecy and non-accountability rampant in...
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has cleared armed police officers of any wrongdoing over the killing of Mark Duggan over 3 years ago, following an inquest verdict of lawful killing a year...
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