“Excess Deaths” and British Political Culture

The Financial Times reported today that the UK has the worst death rate from Covid-19 ‘among countries that produce comparable data’...
Read MoreClassic Dom

Like many proverbs in English, the term comes from Shakespeare. A “petard” was a small bomb, used for blowing up the fortifications of castles.
Read MoreStay Arrogant?

Amid the weight and seriousness of life-changing and life-ending events, how can the national conversation be dominated for three days by the bad behaviour of Dominic Cummings during the lockdown?
Read MoreWho Should be in Charge: Doctors or Politicians?

Our lives currently seem to be in the hands of doctors, and this concerns not only those who have caught the new coronavirus.
Read MoreEmergency rule nurtures voluntary servitude…

It’s safe to say that citizens are getting inventive. They petition governments and crowd source funding and support for the hungry and harassed on Twitter, convene social gatherings and drinking parties on Skype...
Read MoreBritain is being managed by the B Team of bodgers…

Seeking to regain some ground, the health secretary promised tests for all essential workers (not just health workers), but on its first day the website offering appointments was over-subscribed in under two minutes.
Read MoreThat CPUSA Life

The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was formed in 1919, two years after the Russian Revolution. Over the next forty years, it grew steadily from a membership roll...
Read MoreVoted, Ran, Isolated

On the dot of noon yesterday, we received text messages from the government telling us to observe the ‘strict rules’ laid down by the president of the republic.
Read MoreCovid Conspiracies

The conspiracy theories about the virus range from it being a biological weapon created by the Chinese government, that it is a conspiracy created by U.S. democrats to prevent Trump’s reelection...
Read MoreNow Pepe was going to be president…

The recent chaos at the Iowa Democratic caucus was exacerbated by eager Anons responding to a 4chan call to “clog the phone lines”...
Read MoreAdam Staley Groves on the Iowa Caucus

CNN by Adam Staley Groves Today, love seems more a privation than I could ever remember. Maybe that’s the problem of being aware of it, as if we could ever know love—or—as Foreigner once clamored, “I wanna know what love is.” So if there’s the small violence of certainty...
Read MoreCacophonous cross talk that’s only seen when there’s no real news to report…

A third-party app the party had deployed to count and transmit votes, apparently without adequately training precinct chairs in its use...
Read MoreWith the Option to Sell Out

For forty years the center had been drifting steadily to starboard. So what if it jumped a ways to port? It might have been abrupt, but it’s not as though anyone was proposing the abolition of the monarchy or the nationalization
Read MoreNot Enough Voters for Corbyn

Before trying to examine the outcome of the 2019 general election, before any attempt to analyse the social complexities of the electorate that it reveals, it is important to understand three things.
Read MoreWhen Will Labour Win Again?

The immediate, clear consequence of the UK election of December 12, 2019, is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded where Theresa May’s failed in the last general election, in 2017—by winning an emphatic parliamentary majority...
Read MoreThe Punch That Wasn’t a Punch

First, some facts, as they are in precious short supply. Around noon on Sunday 8 December, Daniel Sheridan of the Yorkshire Evening Post published a story about Jack Williment-Barr
Read MoreSusanna Crossman: A Year of Yellow Edges

Roughly one year ago, on 17th November 2018, an impromptu French national protest was held against fuel tax. On Facebook, the instigators said: Put your fluorescent jacket on your dashboard.
Read More‘Socialism was hardly in the air in the suburban US’

Socialism was hardly in the air in the suburban us of the late 90s and early 2000s. In Sunkara’s characteristically breezy telling, it took a lingering oasis of American social democracy, the local public library...
Read MoreWill Warren Win?

The big story of the campaign so far has been the ascent of Elizabeth Warren. A reluctant and somewhat shaky candidate in 2012...
Read MoreMothers Without Men

Place Edmond Rostand in Paris was packed on Sunday 6 October. Smartly dressed families kept arriving. They had gathered to oppose a new law that will extend assisted reproduction (PMA) to lesbian couples and single women...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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