July 2015

The previous post was about chancers, among other people. Here’s another post about chancers. What’s interesting in this one is the multiple levels of chancership. You have the two blogger/staffer/whatever types, classic chancers, who would love to hire on with UKIP, but mostly because they could sell that experience to someone with more money. You…

Read More UKIP as cashpoint

What to make of this story? Camila Batmanghelidjh has been basically forced out of Kids’ Company after the Cabinet Office wanted to know what it’s been doing with the money. Much detail is available in a Buzzfeed piece of the sort you’re meant to think Buzzfeed doesn’t do. She, of course, blames austerity, cuts, etc.…

Read More Chancers, respectability politics, and IDS: A4e, Kids Co, and Trussell

I notice people are whining about BBC “payoffs” again. This is pathetic. If the BBC is meant to be independent, that means politicians of all descriptions shouldn’t be able to threaten the people who work there with the sack. This can be achieved in two ways – either we take the politicians’ power over the…

Read More The price of BBC independence. In favour of cynical payoffs

So Labour are voting against the relevant clauses in the Finance Bill tomorrow and the Welfare bill is up to the new leader. The SNP will be voting against fox hunting on Wednesday. These facts are connected. The Westminster SNP is apparently pissed off enough about the attempt to pass EVEL earlier in the week…

Read More The SNP is in. Let’s find out which Tories are really up for it.

Everyone’s waiting for something to happen about Greece. If you think the suspense is bad, imagine what it’s like if you have a pan-European politics column to fill and you have undertaken a public commitment not to fill it with speculation, gossip, or bullshit that you can’t substantiate with data. At the moment, there is…

Read More All politics is eventually about the whips

So I need to write some more stuff for the Pol. Progress so far is here. My self-imposed terms of reference require something that uses data or public documents and that results in a testable prediction. Also, I’m chary of doing something about Greece for fear both that the situation changes dramatically during the editing…

Read More Open newslist 9