DVD's From My Collection: Fail-Safe (1964), Directed by Sidney Lumet



Book Review: Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class By Owen Jones



Over the last thirty years the utterly defeated social democratic left has abandoned the working class in favour of identity politics-a stew of single issue politics based on anti-racism, anti-sexism and environmentalism, devoid of any overarching class analysis which was characteristic of the old left, reformist and revolutionary alike. Owen Jones' book arrives on the bookshelves at just the right time, when all the nostrums of 'we are all middle-class now' are demolished by rampant austerity and recession. Chavs exposes this acceptable form of hatred in popular culture, directed at the working class and the poor, as the result of Thatcherism's savage attack on working class living standards and trade union organisation in the 80's and does an excellent job of busting the myths that have accumulated around the chav stereotype. For instance rather then filled with bigoted BNP supporters, working class communities are more racially mixed then middle-class ones with a higher percentage of inter-racial marriages. Likewise during the Iraq invasion it was those on the lower income scale who opposed the war. 

The limitations of Chavs though lies in its nostalgia for the 'good old' working-class Labour Party of times past and its almost complete reliance on parliamentary politics to bring working class representation-for a fuller critique read Clifford Biddulph from The Commune here

Spanish Anti-Austerity Protest On 25th September-Action We Should Emulate.



Informative article from Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR) on the protest outside the Spanish parliament brutally attacked by riot cops. We need to bring this sort of action over here as one way to kick-start our quasi stagnant anti-austerity movement. We have the big TUC march on the 20th October but it ends at Hyde Park where yet again we will listen to a lot of hot air from Union leaders. We need to be daring because our predicament is absolutely desperate. We cannot appeal to mainstream politicians, wait around for Labour to win the next general election (as if that will do any good) and be reasonable any longer-as in Spain, social democracy, the NHS and the Welfare State is being dismantled before our very eyes to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and virtually no one in the House of Commons have come out against it. This is no extreme left exaggeration-it is happening now. So how do powerless ordinary working class people in the UK to respond? My answer is extra-parliamentary resistance and mass civil disobedience-strikes, occupations and confrontational protests linking into the everyday lives of the majority. We have to fight back otherwise the future is bleak indeed.

Horror of Horrors-The Lib-Dem Conference



As Greece and Spain explode once again in fury as they see their lives being destroyed to pay for the crisis caused by the bankers and other assorted criminals going under the name of global capitalism, we here in the UK have the political party conference session. Watching the Lib-Dem conference (which I have never done-I'm not a masochist) is like being kettled-a horrible combination of frustrated anger and crippling boredom. Here is a party supposedly representing liberal values and everything nice and cuddly collaborating in the most brutal and nasty right wing government in Britain ever! The bearded and 'hippy' middle-class delegates sit there and cheer on the biggest attack on the working class and the poor since Thatcher, plunging thousands into misery, poverty and homelessness. Clegg supports a further cut of £10 billion from welfare and they sit on their useless backsides and cheer!?  The last nail has been driven into the coffin of social democracy, liberalism and representative democracy by the very people who seemingly hold these values in their heart. The only logical response is utter rage-see post from the Void here, but we also desperately need a movement of resistance from below of the working class and the poor to stop this ongoing nightmare at least and usher in an alternative system at the most.



The Queen Is The Biggest Benefits Scrounger Of The Lot!

See The Void's post here

Nice Hippy Capitalist Richard Branson Making Money From NHS Sell-Off

Already the free at the point of delivery of the NHS is being eroded as this worrying post from Dr Eoin Clarke attests. Note that 'nice' hippy capitalist Richard Branson of Virgin will be making even more money through the destruction of this British institution, celebrated in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, proof positive that there is no such thing as a nice capitalist. Once not so long ago it was unthinkable that a public service like the railways would be used to make profit for big business at the expense of passangers-now it is the time for NHS to be turned over to the profiteering sharks like Virgin Care. Literally sickening!