Respect your elders, young ladies!
There was an article on the Independent last week calling for younger feminists to concern themselves with the plight of the so-called WASPI women, the women born in the 50s who are being caught...
Category: Welfare reform
Where were you?
Today the Guardian published a long article on the late Lucy Glennon, who wrote for the paper, most memorably about her condition (epidermolysis bullosa or EB), but also about food and about the effects...
Are the Tories evil? What is evil, anyway?
Owen Jones: Cruel? Certainly. Unforgivable? Beyond doubt. But the Tories aren't actually evil – Comment – Voices – The Independent Last week Sunny Hundal posted an article on Liberal Conspiracy in which he made...
Mark Littlewood: making the War on Welfare personal
Today the Daily Mail published a quite astonishing and appalling article by Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs (and former spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the Pro-Euro Conservative Party and NO2ID) calling...
People’s Assembly: a review
Yesterday the People's Assembly Against Austerity, which has been holding "rallies" (I'd call them meetings, rather than rallies which I always thought were held in the street or at least in the open) around...
Who better represents “Welfare UK”?
This is the front page of tomorrow’s Daily Mail, one which cynically exploits the tragic death in 2011 of six children in a house fire started by their parents and their parents’ friend in...
Go after abusive media companies, not bloggers
Samuel Johnson famously asked, in an essay written during the American war of independence, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”. These days, we hear...
Don’t be tempted not to vote!
Yesterday, in response to the abstention by most Labour MPs (and the party itself; forty Labour MPs voted against, including John McDonnell and Dennis Skinner) on the retrospective legislation to excuse the government for...
Lib Dem associations must act against backdoor Tories
Last week it was reported that the Lib Dem party conference had condemned the government’s plan for “secret courts” (as the BBC describes it, “some civil proceedings held in private for fear of damaging...
IDS: More Catholic than the Pope?
The other day, Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury, defended the welfare system that the present government are busy ripping up, describing it as a duty of a civilised society to support vulnerable...
Cait Reilly and Workfare: some basic maths
Earlier today I was listening to the Eddie Nestor show, an evening news phone-in programme on the BBC London station, which was discussing the Cait Reilly case. Reilly had been told, wrongly it now...
Is your family ‘troubled’ enough to get a ‘Basics Card’?
Today the Daily Telegraph reported that the government were considering introducing a system of "smart cards" for benefit payments, which recipients will only be able to use to spend on "essentials" such as "food,...
Carole Malone: a new low in victim-blaming
This was on “This Morning”, a chat show that goes out on weekday mornings on ITV1, earlier today (Wednesday): Carol Malone, a tabloid newspaper columnist, gave her judgement on the family of which six...
Workfare critics DO care about its impact on workers
The war on workfare is worse than workfare itself | Brendan O’Neill | spiked This article dresses up a familiar argument of the present government and its supporters in the right-wing press — that...
People who resist subsidised cheap labour aren’t snobs
Faiza Shaheen – I’m a jobs snob. Iain Duncan Smith should be one too. | the new economics foundation There was also an article in yesterday’s Guardian from someone with a genetics degree from...