Ed Balls went to Oxbridge, thus making him eminently eligible to lead ‘New’ Labour through its next incarnation as the Pinochio Party. Then again, so did all the other ‘contenders’ as did most of the Coalition cabinet, but let’s stick with Balls for a minute . . . .
Tag Archives: New Labour
Conclusive evidence that Oxbridge produces financially illiterate, lying sociopaths.
May 24, 2010 – 8:40 pm
Pay attention, class. This is an important revision course on UK student tuition fees
July 26, 2009 – 11:21 pm
Both Labour and Tories are backing plans to more than double student tuition fees to £7000 within four years. Labour shamelessly abandoned its 2001 election manifesto promise that ‘it will not introduce top-up fees and has legislated against them’ – then introduced them in 2004.
The Dearing Report, commissioned in 1996 under Tory [...]
Who will be brave enough to wear the Brown trousers?
June 3, 2009 – 11:55 pm
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the most unpopular leader of the Labour Party ever, a singular achievement given the horrorbags who preceded him. His 21% approval rating beats the previous liability incarnate, Michael Foot, who scored 24% in 1982. Foot was a principled Fabian, idealist socialist toff in the Orwell mould but his donkey jacket, mad [...]
Did police brutality kill Ian Tomlinson and do we care?
April 11, 2009 – 6:23 pm
. . . . . The answers are yes and yes. It matters that we know and that the police and government know that we are not prepared to tolerate any more abuses of our lives and liberties. Avaaz.org, with whom Thus is not affiliated but thoroughly admires, have launched a petition, which I hope [...]
Liberty in Britain is suffering death by a hundred cuts
February 19, 2009 – 11:24 am
I still cannot quite believe this is happening to my country. It feels like a bad dream. But it is happening, and we must stop it. Now. By Timothy Garton Ash
For thirty years I have been travelling to unfree places, from East Germany to Burma, and writing about them in the belief that I was coming [...]
Cruel parenting is not a class issue
December 8, 2008 – 3:50 pm
By Julia Margo, Demos
I expect that my fascination with Karen Matthews is predictably middle class. Her crime may be heinous, but she has captured our imagination in her role as working class anti-hero: a reminder of how some people (the ‘other half’) live in today’s Britain. The weekend coverage of sink estates – the ‘bubble [...]
The Daily Mail finds an immigrant who wants to ban immigration
December 1, 2008 – 12:55 pm
. . . and his name is Sir Gulam Noon, who became a self-made multi-millionaire by popularising Indian ready meals and allegedly donating £250,000 to New Labour in the mistaken and unfounded misunderstanding that this would earn him a peerage. Sir G, a genuinely impressive self-made monument to bootstrap free enterprise, says that Britain is [...]
Set tasers to stun, Jacqui
November 24, 2008 – 10:53 pm
My earlier advice about recruiting Pikey police has clearly fallen on deaf ears. The nation was stunned – not literally, yet – by today’s news from our own Sarah Palin, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, that 10,000 tasers would be issued and 30,000 police trained in their use. Amnesty International report that 300 people have died [...]
Trouble at t'mill: I've just agreed with a Tory
November 20, 2008 – 7:40 pm
Julia Hobsbawm, the persuasive daughter of the world’s most celebrated Marxist historian invited me to get up very early today for an Editorial Intelligence Briefing. We heard a thoughtful homily from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown about Baby P and what this told us about our expectations of the nanny state. We are generally on the [...]
Human capital is only useful if you don't break the bank
November 16, 2008 – 11:30 pm
The mantra of the Third Way seems to be about “capabilities”. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband pontificated in The New Statesman that this it is about creating an “I can” society. But what exactly is the point of all this? Coming from a Development background, it took me a while to realise that all politics, [...]