This week, MP for Elmet and Rothwell Alec Shelbrooke has proposed making changes to the welfare system in order to effect what the Daily Express today describes as a “crackdown” on the “skivers taking us all for a ride”. The idea is a fairly populist one which fits into the present narrative of benefit-bashing,...
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You might have seen today’s news from the Conservative Party Conference that the Government will now allow householders to exercise “reasonable force” in the protection of their homes and families from burglars. “Being confronted by an intruder in your own home is terrifying, and the public should be in no doubt that the law...
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Following the riots of August 2011, the Economist writer Bagehot produced a fabulous article demonstrating that the crisis over wayward youth was one which had reoccurred in almost every generation in recorded memory. The piece, which tapped into Stanley Cohen’s theories of moral panic, demolished the knee-jerk view that this sort of public disorder...
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The citizens of Manchester, like their counterparts in towns and cities across the UK are struggling to come to terms with huge reductions in local authority funding. The city council recently approved £61m of cuts for 2012/13 in addition...
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On the 19th of February, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey hopped on the bandwagon of a new petition launched by the Coalition for Marriage, a group formed to support what they define as traditional marriage (ie: that which involves one man and one woman), opposing any...
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So here’s the scenario. A sovereign nation in the Middle East is accused of developing weapons of mass destruction. The dictatorial leader is portrayed as psychotic and deranged across the western media, seemingly capable of anything. The international community releases intelligence reports, making a series of...
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It was only last week that Iain Duncan Smith was yet again forming a correlation, not causation, with the occurrence of the riots. This time, Smith argued that X-Factor was partly the cause of the riots. That’s right. The cause. Now, when I was younger, I was...
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At Occupy the London Stock Exchange, the obsession with empty tents and health and safety regulations which has persisted since the camp came into existence appears to have finally given way to more serious discussion. This has no doubt been assisted by the pause in legal...
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Concerns about immigration are regularly at the top of the British political agenda and are frequently debated in homes and workplaces across the UK. Unlike many commentators and politicians in the mainstream media, I certainly don’t see the subject as taboo or that...
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I recently re-discovered this little gem of a documentary whilst rooting through some old films on my hard-disc. Released in 1995 by director Brian Springer, and billed as a surreal expose of media-constructed reality, it consists of unauthorised footage sourced from unencrypted satellite broadcasts across the United States during the early 1990′s. These satellite...
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