I was looking for news about Labour taking control of Bradford council. Here is some Bradford news. Polling day passed relatively peacefully yesterday, despite concerns over potential violence or intimidation on the streets. Yeah, us and Luhansk. The leader of [fascist group] Britain First, Paul Golding has been challenged to a fight by a British…
Read More Elections pass off peacefully in disputed territoryMySociety has produced a map of Viking placenames in the UK. Eoin Clarke has produced a map of cuts on a ward by ward basis: And the Tories wonder why the North of England is a No-Go area for the Nasty Party. pic.twitter.com/l498nrqyNR — Eoin Clarke (@DrEoinCl) April 7, 2014 Is there something we should…
Read More The real Tory agendaI find it really hard to believe that Leeds United FC can’t pay its wages, and hasn’t really been a viable business since 2001 or thereabouts, while Leeds RLFC remains a powerhouse club and one of the richest in Rugby League. Dave Hadfield called the chapter on Leeds in Up and Over “League in its…
Read More BafflingMusic post, single-malt version. Really, isn’t this totally prefiguring all those fuzztone semi-R&B people who appeared over the last year or so? Just with Bootsy Collins and therefore more funk. Beats anything here. The video is ridiculous, but why didn’t this sell a ton just as daft party music? Also, rhyming “chaos” and “never was…
Read More Utterly self-indulgent Friday music postShorter me: economists should study business more, and in an ideal world, industrial sociology, before they try to do cognitive psychology Peter Dorman at Econospeak takes issue with a Robert Frank piece about workplace safety, which has all the whoopee doo Econ-101 problems you’d expect. I think, though, that there is a really big issue…
Read More This one weird trick will improve your productivity and deliver social justiceDavid Goodhart responds to Jonathan Portes and it’s as bad as you might expect. To focus, remember he said 50% of schoolchildren in Bradford have special educational needs? Here’s the tape: Bradford has just opened two more schools for children with Special Educational Needs,’ he writes. ‘On some measures nearly half of all children in…
Read More The Bradford mutants strike back.Jonathan Portes reviews David Goodhart. A sample: ‘Bradford has just opened two more schools for children with Special Educational Needs,’ he writes. ‘On some measures nearly half of all children in the area qualify for special help.’ No source. However, the Department for Education publishes the statistics, and it turns out that in Bradford, the…
Read More Goodhart: majority of Bradfordians are twisted mutantsTony Harrison, reviewed by Nicholas Lezard: he says “When dole-wallahs fuck off to the void / what’ll t’mason carve up for their jobs? / The cunts who lieth ‘ere wor unemployed?” That hasn’t changed, not really: and “call-centre worker” isn’t something you’d want on your gravestone either, as my own experience has taught me Here’s…
Read More Some Yorkshire linksI sometimes wonder how I got away with being a 1980s kid. Between the Ro-Ro ships sailing with their bow doors open, the football grounds burning down, the police-enabled disasters at them, the state-backed kiddy fiddlers, the beef that ate your brain, the Soviet nuclear rain, aircraft full of smoke on the runway at Manchester…
Read More scanner appeal!Here’s some “why the Bradford West result means we should support my politics” that supports my politics: Next Generation Labour. Don’t take support for granted We have to realise that the wars still matter Mobilised youth are a polical force to be reckoned with Labour has to examine its relationships with Muslim communities Austerity needs…
Read More we pretend to campaign and they pretend to vote for us