This column of mine appears in The Morning Star. It’s also cross-posted at the Campaign For Public Ownership website.The NHS is a great example of socialism in action. Public libraries are another. The idea of a place where all members of the community can go to borrow books which are communally owned is a quite wonderful one and totally at odds with neoliberal ideology, which prefers private - and not public - provision. This is probably why, in this age of neoliberalism, public libraries in Britain are under grave threat. A new report by the Valuation Office Agency showed that Britain has lost nearly 200 public libraries since 1997. The number of books available to be borrowed has fallen dramatically - by 13 million in the period 2003-9. And worse could be to come, with swingeing...

Jo Nova makes a good point in her recent piece about the hideously complex task of tracing funds spent on climate change research. It's a PhD size project, she writes, and there are no grants available to fund this kind of PhD.Actually, as I've hinted before, I'm not sure it's even doable. The tortuous flows of money, the multiple agencies involved, the extremely slack accounting in some instances, and the lack of any clear definition of "climate change", all conspire to make any calculations extremely tenuous.There may even be an element of exaggeration – not only for the reasons Jo suggests, that some agencies and governments want to be seen as "green" but also, many projects are deliberately falsely categorised, just to get the money. Knowing which way the wind is blowing, many...

A question suggests itself -- and I'm certainly not the first to ask it: why in a book ostensibly about Karl Marx does Jacques Derrida divert himself, and us, at such considerable length, considering 'Hamlet'? If we choose not to accuse Derrida of bad faith or wilful obscurantism -- which, anyway, would only show our own bad faith, or an obscure lack of understanding concerning his project -- then we must take him absolutely at his word. We read Spectres of Marx and note that 'Hamlet' allows Derrida to think, and to think of Marx. 'Hamlet' supplies him with the metaphors that allow him to unpack Marx's own metaphors and allow us to see how these metaphors structure Marx, structure 'Hamlet' and could deconstruct (unstructure) our idea both of Marxism and the destructive reality of our...

The House of Commons Evidence Check report on homeopathy is due to be published on Monday 22nd February.  In the lead up to this the lay homeopaths have launched their campaigns of hate and conspiracy against the committee and in particular Evan Harris.  This is not surprising.  Nor was it unexpected that professional organisations, including representatives of medical homeopaths such as the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), misrepresented evidence to parliament. However, the relationship between the lay and the medical homeopathic community has always been a little wary, medical homeopaths, such as Peter Fisher of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH), have strongly criticised the lay homeopaths claims on malaria and many other issues while the lay community fear that any...

Mike Rappaport updates his original post on the interpretation and construction distinction with this: What is clear is that the four constructionists emphasize different things, appear to be motivated by different concerns, and describe their positions differently. That is what I meant by saying that the different scholars “had different conceptions of construction.” Larry [Solum] claims that his conception of construction allows for their conceptions, and it might be true. But Larry’s conception, if I understand it now, is very general. Depending on how one gives content to it, I might even agree with him. He says interpretation is determining meaning and construction is given legal effect to a provision. He even says that when one gives effect to an unambigous provision,...

"Can you please tell me who will stop this happening and I will vote for them."So says Mr Tony Nicholls in a comment under Christopher Booker's latest ST column today. Booker (along with Richard North) has made another valiant attempt to unravel just how much of our tax money is being flushed down the bog of the global warming industry. It's not easy, as regular BOM readers will recall from our own attempts. Indeed, there is every indication that government departments deliberately mislead us. For example, Booker describes how Defra paid £1,436,000 to fund the international working group that produced the last IPCC report - the one that included such lies as the melting Himalayas. Yet they later claimed in a report to Parliament that the cost was only...

As his 12th novel comes out, he admits he fears his decline as a writer and is still wounded by the criticsMartin Amis is the most argued over novelist in the UK, largely, I suspect, because hardly anyone reads him. I bumped into my neighbour, a cultured fellow, a few days after interviewing Amis and asked him what he thought of his work. He had read one of his books years ago – couldn't remember what, didn't like it – but he'd heard all about the row, running hotly last week, sparked by Amis's suggestion that the "silver tsunami" of decrepit and deranged old people should be killed off. Thus does Amis the controversialist obscure Amis the writer, who is now 60 and this week publishes his 12th novel, The Pregnant Widow.Amis lives in a large, but not ostentatious, house in a...

As regular readers of this blog or of our website know, helping to fight corruption in Kenya is a big target for us - both for our political work and the DFID programme.  Last month we launched a new booklet on fighting corruption in Kenya.  If you didn't see news coverage of it, you can read about and get the brochure on http://ukinkenya.fco.gov.uk/en/newsroom/?view=News&id=21575275 .  The launch coincided with our decision, in the company of other donors, to suspend payments to the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) because of  a report from the Ministry of Finance documenting that money had been stolen from the programme.    What has happened since then? First, I believe that despite the enormously important political...

"Peace on this planet will not be forged by military strength. It will be forged by those who come together despite their governments' differences." The word 'peace' has got, amongst various linguistic meanings, a greeting meaning as well as a meaning of a rest, is used in religious ways, can function as a synonym or metaphor, etc. In terms of politics, it usually describes a non-conflict state of international relations, the opposite of a war,... It has been a part of slogans of liberal or independent movements. So many times people have gone out in the streets and called out for peace in their countries, territories, for a world peace and yet this has never been achieved. In fact, as long as we could date conflicts and wars, every century, almost every decade, has had a war state, war...

Nidal Malik Hasan's dangerous mental state is a legitimate subject for investigation, not an excuse for fear-mongeringA senseless killing spree. A suspect with a troubled and troubling past whose extreme religious views may have played a role in his homicidal outburst. Questions as to why no one intervened before he went off, and what should be done to prevent it from happening again.The foregoing describes Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army major accused of shooting 13 people to death at Fort Hood, Texas, last week. But it also describes other American killers who've slipped in and out of America's collective consciousness over the years.The difference is that Hasan's religiously inspired (if that's what it was) murder spree is tied to Islam. The others were not. Thus we are being treated to...

Owen Jones emailed me last week to ask if I’d look at his article, “Left out of the picture”, which is over at Socialist Unity. Owen describes a basic plan for left-wing reorientation, another Future of the Left-type article, and I figured that the least I could do was to examine what Owen’s suggesting and see how I think it measures up. Let me begin with this, though. Since the mid-1980s, the Left has been having a debate about why we were beaten. That should emphasize just how traumatic our defeat was, how utterly routed we all were in the face of aggressive neo-liberal reforms, backed by state sanctioned stong arming. Twenty five years later, the Left is still pretty disorganised but both over- and under-estimating the extent to which this is the case have real...

"I didn't libel Tom Watson. if I had done, he would have sued me." - Iain Dale (source) Today, in the High Court, The Sun issued an apology to Tom Watson (more) and agreed to pay a "substantial sum in damages" (plus costs) for the "acute distress, humiliation and embarrassment" caused. Take a look at what The Sun have apologised for specifically: The Claimant was not copied in on, nor did he know about any of the emails between McBride and Draper until Friday 10 April, when the matter was first drawn by the media to the attention of Downing Street. He did not have any involvement in or knowledge of the "Red Rag" website. Accordingly, the Claimant did not lie when he publicly denied involvement by way of press releases issued first by him on 12 April and then on 14 April by Carter-Ruck...

Ned Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen received its European premiere in Oxford. Rorem is a very important song composer, and this is a major cycle so it's a scoop for the Oxford Lieder Festival. Oxford Lieder spots what's good long before it reaches the mainstream. This is the way to keep your fingers on the pulse of what's happening in art song. Some of these concerts will be repeated later in London, but Oxford is where things start.It's strange that a composer as famous as Ned Rorem should be considered "unknown" in Europe. He may not be performed here as frequently as he is in the US but everyone has access to recordings. Susan Grahams's Rorem Songs was a huge hit a few years ago, winning awards all over. Carole Farley's recorded him for Naxos and there's even a British recording...

The American film-maker has shocked many of his rightwing critics by revealing he is a practising CatholicRightwing critics of controversial film-maker Michael Moore call him many things: a socialist, a hypocrite, unpatriotic – and they even make unkind remarks about his weight.But, with his new anti-capitalist film showing on US movie screens last week, Moore has unveiled an unexpected trump card against conservatives who so vociferously attack him: Christianity. Moore is a practising Catholic and has put religion at the core of Capitalism: A Love Story. Alongside the political arguments about inequality, Wall Street corruption and the failures of George W Bush, Moore argues that capitalism is also fundamentally unchristian.In the film he interviews several Catholic priests, who...

Six years ago Crystal Renn was an unknown model, battling with an eating disorder. If she hadn't put on five stone she would not have become one of the industry's top names. She might, by her own admission, not even be aliveI am sitting with one of the world's most successful models in an Italian restaurant in New York, and the model is eating. First she demolishes the contents of the bread basket – hunks of chewy yeasty dough, the kind of crusts Manhattan dentists cite in lawsuits. Then she sets upon a prosciutto, polenta and smoked mozzarella starter that, by my estimate, must surely be 764 calories of creamy, fat-laden comfort food, followed by a main dish of red snapper. I'm all for skipping pudding but she's a fan of the crème brûlée. She orders two, one for me, one for her. She...

The 'Bang-Bang Club' were photographers who risked their lives recording the violence of the townships. But a new film about them has left some of them worriedI'd started to give up on the Rooke Gallery, which had looked such a promising neighbour in my building in Johannesburg. The complex used to be offices of Premier Milling, whose abandoned grain silos still tower over Newtown. The Rooke Gallery is shoehorned into the ground floor, its clean white walls an invitation to contemporary art, rather like White Cube nestling amid the warehouses and urban chic of London's Hoxton.But every day I would pass the gallery on my way out and be confronted by a locked door, drawn blinds and a sign saying "Closed for rehang". I feared another artistic experiment had bitten the dust. In fact, the...

Your humble Devil has received the following missive from the Adam Smith Institute, advertising Dr Madsen Pirie's new book—Zero Base Policy.The Adam Smith Institute gives the next government a "shopping list" of policies needed to rescue Britain. In a report "Zero Base Policy", released today, the Institute's President, Dr Madsen Pirie, says minor change to existing policies is no longer an option, given Britain's dire economic and social fabric. Instead the need is for "zero base" policies to provide new and effective ways of achieving policy objectives.Topping the agenda is economic change. The ASI sets out measures to turn Britain from a high tax, high debt economy into one on the virtuous circle of low taxes and increasing growth and revenues. The ASI calls for rejection of the...

Will it be the Sun what lost it?The paper's new editor, Dominic Mohan, has splashed with a picture spread of the 207 British casualties in Afghanistan and the headline Don't You Know There's A Bloody War On.In what amounts to a thousand word editorial (in Sun terms, that's the equivalent of War and Peace) the traditionally gung-ho paper berates Gordon Brown personally for the equipment shortages and the traditional atmosphere of shambles at the Ministry of Defence which, in its view, is solely responsible for the lamentable state of affairs.Each dead soldier "represents a sacrifice made for democracy and freedom in the name of Britain" sez the Sun.Yet, to its shame, our Government doesn't seem to want to face up to the fact we are in the middle of a savage conflict. Our leaders are...

G20 demonstrators cite Met evidence in high court to show that officers were given no restrictions on use of forcePolice officers' notebooks lodged at the high court tell how they punched people in the face and beat others with riot shields during the G20 demonstrations in April.The notebooks, which have been lodged as evidence in an action brought by three protesters, also disclose how Metropolitan police were given no restrictions on the use of force when they were ordered to move protesters attending the Climate Change camp in the City of London on 1 April. The accounts were written up the day after the demonstrations.In one notebook, a police constable recounts how when he saw a protester pushing against officers' shields: "I punched him in the jaw and he moved backwards."Another...

Margaret Mitchell only wrote one book. It took her ten years and won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. To some extent it has been overshadowed by the 1939 film adaptation that won 9 Academy Awards. You can imagine the pressure she would have been under to write a follow-up especially considering the ending she wrote. It's just crying out for one. And yet Mitchell refused to write a sequel to her book, Gone with the Wind. Mitchell's estate finally authorised Alexandra Ripley to write the novel Scarlett in 1991. It never made it to the big screen but there was a television mini-series produced in 1994 with former 'James Bond', Timothy Dalton, as 'Rhett Butler' and ex Coronation Street and Emmerdale actress Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as 'Scarlett O'Hara'. One might wonder what Mitchell would have...

There are some MPs, no matter which party they belong to, who command respect from their opponents. Andrew MacKinlay is one of those MPs. But he has decided tonight to tell his Constituency Labour Party in Thurrock that he will not be a candidate at the next election. It's got nothing to do with expenses, but all to do with the fact that he is physically exhausted and, I think, very disillusioned with the way Parliament is heading.I have known Andrew since 1991. We met when we were both monitoring the progress of the Ports Bill through its committee stage. He was working for a trade union and I was advising port authorities. I have immense respect for him and what he has achieved in Parliament since he was first elected in 1992. He has been a courageous, independent voice, often taking on...

Tourist who was missing for 12 days describes his fear and frustration at trying to survive and signal rescue workersThe British backpacker who survived 12 days after getting lost in the Australian bush todayrevealed how he had prayed to God for help, written goodbye notes to his family and thought he faced a "long, painful starvation death" during his ordeal.Jamie Neale admitted to being "an idiot" to ignore signs urging people to register with authorities before going bushwalking, and that he only started thinking he was in trouble after a day and a half, He also spoke of his growing frustration and anger as helicopter searchers failed to spot him.Neale, 19, who has denied allegations his disappearance was an elaborate hoax, said in an interview broadcast by Sky News , that he feared...

  For many women, the difference between life and death is a piece of string, a clean razor blade, a fresh bandage and a bar of soap. That’s why a pitiful amount of money can save a woman, or a newborn baby, or both. And that’s why, while the Australian government is expending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting a war in Afghanistan, civilian volunteers in Australia are sending thousands of simple birthing kits (bandage, blade, string, soap, plastic sheet) to Afghanistan, because it is one of the most oppressive places in the world to be a woman. Last Wednesday, 500 people gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney for a glimpse of this reality. The event was sold out. The speaker was a young, attractive former member of the Afghan parliament, Malalai Joya,...

Can a show put on by two gay men really reflect what it's like to be a woman? Maddy Costa finds outBy his own admission, theatre producer and nightclub promoter Simon Casson is not the kind of person one would expect to be involved in a cabaret extravaganza glorifying femininity. "The idea of femininity is quite scary to me," he says. "In that way, I'm not unlike a lot of gay men, or men in general. I don't want to get in touch with my feminine side." Yet here he is, producing Gay Shame Goes Girly, at the Brixton Academy in London from tomorrow.Satire is at the heart of Gay Shame, an annual event that Casson started in the mid-90s as a counterpoint to the increasingly commercialised Gay Pride. It was certainly the driving force last year when Gay Shame went "macho", exploring masculinity...

The Telegraph has an alarming report on the evocatively named Stockholm Programme, the EU Commission's five year plan to do to the whole of Europe what New Labour has been doing to Britain for the past decade:Jacques Barrot, the European justice and security commissioner, yesterday publicly declared that the aim was to "develop a domestic security strategy for the EU", once regarded as a strictly national "home affairs" area of policy."National frontiers should no longer restrict our activities," he said. Tony Bunyan, of the European Civil Liberties Network, describes the programme - due to be finalised in the second half of this year - as a "digital tsunami" which will create an EU ID card register, internet surveillance systems, satellite surveillance, automated exit-entry border...

Furious scenes at Manchester town hall when Tory MEP describes BNP as 'aberration' and condemns Griffin's success as sad day for British politicsNick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was today elected to the European parliament.The far-right leader won a seat in the North West region. Earlier Andrew Brons, another British National party politician won in the Yorkshire and Humber area. It is the first time the party has had an MEP elected.Griffin's victory was only confirmed shortly before 2am after a two-hour cliffhanger over the last of the North West's eight seats saw the Greens fall narrowly behind the BNP and Ukip just failed to pull ahead enough to win a third seat.There were furious scenes at the declaration when the highest polling candidate, Sir Robert Atkins, described the BNP as...

Perhaps the most important report in a newspaper today is a piece in The Daily Telegraph headed: "24-hour news streams and constant Twitter updates causing brain overload".The importance does not stem from any topical immediacy but in explaining, in part at least, what is happening in politics today – more specifically why it is happening.The piece describes work by Professor Dilip Jeste in the current edition of Archives of General Psychiatry - and other work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - telling us that digital advancements feeding a 24-hour news culture could be starting to move too quickly for the human brain and causing it to overload.To give it a contemporary edge, Jeste refers to "constant emails, news alerts, and Twitter updates" which are contributing to...

Nick Griffin may have been trying to improve the image of the BNP, but (unsurprisingly) he might as well try to polish a turd given the pond life rabble that the party attracts. Yesterday’s Observer ran an article highlighting some of the “wit and wisdom” of key BMP members: Salford-based BNP Euro election candidate Eddy O’Sullivan set his Facebook status to read "Wogs go home". O'Sullivan wrote: "They are nice people - oh yeah - but can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" O'Sullivan denied that the comments were racist and insisted they were made in private conversations between individuals. "I also may have had a drink at the time," he added (definitely a case of in vino veritas, methinks) Anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has spent...

(Christopher Aldous) Christopher Aldous: Hi my name is Christopher Aldous aged thirty four and I write the blog We Don’t do God I have been very happily married to Jo for the last 4 years and Dad to three wonderful children Jord, Bethany & Grace. I am very strong advocate and believer that everybody no matter what walk of life they come from, what sex they are, or colour of skin or disability that they may have should have an equal chance and be given the same opportunities in life. This belief has been formed through my strong Christian faith of virtually twenty years and my active interest in politics over the last eleven years.My family is my life and my friends bring extra joy to my day to day life.Out of faith, politics and family I am a passionate and addicted fan of...

Last week while at SOMESSO I had the opportunity to meet with Umair Haque, one of the world’s most radical economists. I was interested in understanding what his ‘economics of ideals’ means in the context of the changing world in which we live. To give you a flavour of his thinking, check this post and consider these statements: Business needs an institutional infrastructure — relatively voluntary exchange, some level of ownership, some measure of expected honesty, some kind of market efficiency, and investment with a horizon greater than nanoseconds. None of these exist anymore. And they’re not, barring a miracle, coming back. So what we are left with are the institutions not of economic democracy, capitalism, or socialism — but of feudalism. In feudal...