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Showing posts from March, 2012

It's curtains for you, Elizabeth my dear

So the immortal line, penned by the Squire-Brown combination, eerily asserts, with the very warnings of revolt and expression of contempt for establishment that typified the entirety of the self-titled, Stone Roses debut album. Yet was it every truly curtains for the ol' Hag and her wonderful kinfolk? So wonderful of course, thousands upon thousands of us took to the streets to be adorned by their glorious presence only last year. That the British Monarchy still stands, let alone that Liz&Co. Ltd rakes in an estimated £41.5 million per year in tax revenue , and receives a complementary ceremony in the event of a marriage, courtesy of yours truly, is enough, I will argue, to suggest that the cloth fabric was never even woven, let alone the curtain drawn on the Monarch. I recently attended a Q&A session with David Miliband, who argued the Royal Family's presence was justified by its ability to 'bring people together' and provide a sense of 'Britishness

The Labour Question

(Originally printed in The Mancunion: Issue 13, 20th February 2012) The Coalition is struggling. Unemployment claws stubbornly to the eight-percent mark, while national produce, fuelled by falling rates of profit, remains defiantly stagnant. An attempt to rewire the core engines of the UK economy through austerity has failed catastrophically to yield the ‘strong, enterprise-led recovery’ promised by George Osborne in his first budget statement as Chancellor. Unfortunately, it only gets worse; inflation looms well above the Bank of England’s target of two-percent, coupled with decaying wages, serving only to choke living standards for the majority. Yet curiously, the Labour Party, the principle parliamentary opposition to the Con-Lib government, appears utterly unable to establish a strong standing among the British electorate; latest polls suggest Labour to be either level, or a mere percentage-point above the Conservatives. Between the 1997 and 2010 general elections, Labour