I have in previous blogs expressed strong reservations about using the notion utopianism, discerning in the use of the term a latent predilection for totalitarian blueprints. One of my blogs was challenged by Steve Hall, who argued that we precisely lack and need an injection of utopian thinking. Those who follow Steve on twitter will… Read More »
This is a blog written a few days after the EU referendum. I confess to still feeling shocked, disappointed and too restless to settle to anything much, even reading. I spent the evening of 23 June at the Dorking Sports Hall as a Labour Party observer of the Mole Valley count. It was a long… Read More »
I have not blogged about the NHS for quite some time. In fact the last occasion I explicitly did so was when Wendy Savage and I were campaigning together in 2011 to strangle the Health and Social Care Bill at birth (our talks to students still reside somewhere on YouTube). I remain sceptical and confused… Read More »
February 15, 2003, is a day that will enter the history books. It saw coordinated global protests against the imminent Iraq War in 600+ cities. Experts in social movements have described it as the largest protest event in human history. Estimates of participants worldwide range from 8 to 11 million: Rome saw around 3 million,… Read More »
Well, who would have thought it? So much ‘reform’ crammed into post-1970s financial capitalism and rationalized by neoliberal ideology! The institutions and conventions of postwar welfare capitalism – familiar to a declining proportion of the UK population – have been sabotaged by a fraction of the Occupy movement’s 1%, call them what you will: governing… Read More »
This will be a two-part bog, the first before today’s vote is taken on the motion to extend bombing operations to Syria, the second after the vote. I remember only too well marching through the London streets in 2003 to tell Bliar and his allies in the Commons not to invade Iraq. There were quite… Read More »
Bertrand Russell once told a story with a purpose behind it. Imagine, he wrote, that a turkey wakes up each morning to a rising sun, a feed and, well, the prospect of a mundane but decent enough day. As the days pile up his sense of security and comfort grows. Then, out of the blue… Read More »
In his recently published The Health Gap, Michael Marmot reports on two lists of ‘top ten tips’ for health. The first was published by England’s Chief Medical Officer in 1999 and contains the following items: 1 Don’t smoke. If you can stop, stop. If you can’t, cut down. 2 Follow a balanced diet with plenty… Read More »
Perhaps the paramount research question confronting sociologists today is: why is it that those being exploited and oppressed are not rising up? And as a follow-up: what are the most likely drivers of social change? In this blog I focus on the second question and consider and comment on several possible ‘drivers’. The primary characteristics… Read More »
I am a socialist. It is difficult to write in a detached way so soon after a general election that delivered such a surprisingly decisive and divisive conclusion. I still feel emotionally fatigued, disorientated, and above all sad and angry at the future that faces so many who are already suffering at the hands of… Read More »