Keep It Dense, Keep It Futile, Yeah?

Labour's sudden swerve to the right can't have escaped the attention of many. Under the hands of our dear benevolent leaders, Kieth "Keir Starmer" Stauner and Evans "David Evans" Almighty, party democracy and freedom of speech have both been reduced to the consistency of wheat-based breakfast cereals - utterly shredded. The anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate rhetoric is ramping up and the party is losing members quicker than a Tory can lose a pouch of party powder up their snot-locker. All promises and pledges have been all but officially reneged on and they've returned to the beige world of tinkering around the edges of capitalism. Basically, they're part of the establishment furniture once again; no vision, no ideas, no clarity but a room full of suits and fuck me if Kieth doesn't have a decent haircut! They are essentially no different from the Tories.  The only real difference is that they'll follow on through with the well-flogged-do...

One of the problems that have arisen during the pandemic is that of unemployment. Businesses are no longer able to retain employees, and many have folded altogether. Although the government's furlough scheme has helped retain jobs, it has clearly not been a total success and hence unemployment has risen by 1.2%, according to official figures. The official figures are questionable at best though, they don't truly reflect the scale of unemployment. The Office for National Statistics puts unemployment at 5% as of Sept - Nov 2020 , up from around 3.7% a year earlier. Because of the way unemployment has been defined, unemployment is suspected to be much higher. In other words, the government have fudged the figures. According to some sources, it could be as high as 13.2%! For those of us familiar with the corrupt whims of the Tory government, the fudging of data doesn't really come as a shock. There are really two types of unemployed people - people who are out of work and peop...

The recent debacle caused by a bunch of pissed off day traders gaming the stock market and hedge funds that rely on "shorts" to create wealth has blown open the contradictions of the stock market and its class nature. It is about time that we publicly had a serious discussion about the nature of these things. In case you've been living under a very cosy rock for the past week, here's the lowdown: a few small-time investors on Reddit realised that the shares for the US corporation GameStop were undervalued. After some investigation, they came to the conclusion that the stock is being purposefully shorted by a particular hedge-fund.  With me so far? Don't worry if not, thankfully some kind soul has already prepared a guide to the shenanigans so I don't need to go beyond my remit with overly technical jargon. Right-click the image and open in a new tab if you can't see it properly. The Game Is Rigged So now you hopefully understand the basics of the situation...

Recently, Guardian writer Rafael Behr wrote a piece which, in a contrived manner, all but states that Jeremy Corbyn is the reason he had a heart attack. Also contained within the tiresome mire of his spiel is the accusation that Corbyn and his supporters wanted to enact a pogrom upon Jews.  “At least we are finding out who would have hidden us in their attic,” one Jewish friend said to me. We laughed because it wasn’t even a joke.  - Rafael Behr, The Guardian It is laden with outrageous, insulting statements and various insinuations, such as above, which is obscured by a thin veneer of respectability, the bits about his heart-attack, which literally bookend the article. Forgive me for being defensive and insulted by the notion that anyone on the left would want to violently eradicate anyone else, especially Jews. It's absolutely antithetical to socialism and our outrage toward Behr is entirely justified. Behr, of course, took offence to people rightfully defending themselves f...

You've all heard it before - "Corbynism is a CULT!", "The cult of Corbyn strikes again!". We've all been called cultists, zealots or acolytes at some point. It's a boorish and trite accusation that has followed mass political movements for change throughout history. I want to explore where these accusations come from and why they are made, and hopefully dismantle the narrative well enough for others to be able to defend themselves in the face of these ridiculous claims.   Back in 2015, a certain back-bencher with 30 years of experience behind him was nominated in the Labour Party leadership contest after Ed Miliband's disastrous result in the general election. The aforementioned back-bencher was nominated purely on a diversity ticket, a crusty old "Bennite" socialist, a dinosaur living out of his time in the modern land of Blair's Third Way politics. That backbencher was Jeremy Corbyn. He was nominated simply to maintain the illusion th...