9am. Friday 20 March. Full backpack, full suitcase, I present myself at Bristol City Council’s offices to let them know I am homeless during lockdown. Greeted by a battery of staff out front and a whiteboard marked “EMERGENCY CASES ONLY”, indicating the building’s coronavirus siege, I answer their triage questions and confirm that I am indeed an emergency case only. I talk…
Aneurin Bevan is venerated by all parts of the Labour Party, with seemingly every faction and politician casting themselves in his political image. In Welsh Labour, this is taken to the next level: “[Bevan] was mentioned by no less than five different speakers before lunch on the first day of Welsh Labour party conference in 2012”. This quote is taken from a…
Keir Starmer has won the Labour leadership election, but it’s not yet clear what that will mean. Politics-as-usual has suspended for the moment anyway – will there be a conference this year? Will any of the things that normally mark a new leader’s tenure even happen? At this stage, it’s all deeply unclear. What is clear is that a variety of people…
If Scotland is to become a fairer country, the SNP has to stop pretending it already is one. Many people within and outside Scotland’s borders view the country as a golden beacon of progressivism, standing in stark contrast to dreary Tory England. This is an impression that the SNP government is understandably keen to promote. It’s almost as if when you cross…
There’s a modern proverb I like that goes, “You’re not in traffic. You are traffic.” (I live in Los Angeles, where driving is equal parts ubiquitous and punishing.) In so many words, this saying expresses that we can cause harm even as it appears to happen to us. This idea strikes me as pertinent in modern American politics. As Democrats face an…
I’m very boring, and so I read a lot of reports by charities, think tanks and trade unions. The University and College Union (UCU) last month released a new report, “Second class academic citizens: The dehumanising effects of casualisation in higher education”. Based on research by Olivia Mason and Nick Megoran of Newcastle University, the report makes for interesting yet profoundly depressing…
Now that resounding Conservative victory has been followed by leadership elections, the opposition’s focus has naturally shifted to the next general election. But this government has a free hand to tip the electoral scales, through boundary reform and voter ID legislation, while Labour must match some of history’s greatest landslides just to govern alone. Faced with the very real possibility of a…
Penny Jackson is a Prospect member who recently won a compensation claim against the Ministry of Defence for disability discrimination. You can read more about the background to the case here – but we are pleased to feature Penny telling her story in her own words here on The Social Review. Her writing can also be found at https://autisticsjw.blogspot.com/ The process started some…
