Heres to you, Mrs Robinson.

are you willing to discuss an alteration to the marching route down the Garvaghy road or are you trying to seduce me?


when the Good Friday agreement was first implemented there were elements not just within the ranks of die hard republicanism who were of the opinion that the decades long struggle for a united Ireland had been abandoned by Provisional Sinn Fein/PIRA. Recent developments should silence such critics.
The revelations of guilty, intergenerational, sex scandal, intermixed with financial shenanigans with the ubiquitous "property developers" show how close Stormont has grown to the example set by their estranged cousins on the Liffey. That it is the DUP that is leading 'Norn into this historic convergence is clear vindication of the far sightedness of the Adams/Mcguinness strategy.

An American gets it

....Why? Because it is exploitation, not discrimination, that is the primary producer of inequality today. It is neoliberalism, not racism or sexism (or homophobia or ageism) that creates the inequalities that matter most in American society; racism and sexism are just sorting devices. In fact, one of the great discoveries of neoliberalism is that they are not very efficient sorting devices, economically speaking. If, for example, you are looking to promote someone as Head of Sales in your company and you are choosing between a straight white male and a black lesbian, and the latter is in fact a better salesperson than the former, racism, sexism and homophobia may tell you to choose the straight white male but capitalism tells you to go with the black lesbian. Which is to say that, even though some capitalists may be racist, sexist and homophobic, capitalism itself is not...

....This is also why the real (albeit very partial) victories over racism and sexism represented by the Clinton and Obama campaigns are not victories over neoliberalism but victories for neoliberalism: victories for a commitment to justice that has no argument with inequality as long as its beneficiaries are as racially and sexually diverse as its victims.

In the neoliberal utopia that the Obama campaign embodies, blacks would be 13.2 per cent of the (numerous) poor and 13.2 per cent of the (far fewer) rich; women would be 50.3 per cent of both. For neoliberals, what makes this a utopia is that discrimination would play no role in administering the inequality; what makes the utopia neoliberal is that the inequality would remain intact.

Walter Benn Michaels- Against Diversity
from here
(thanks Butchers)

Blimey thats a turn up...

...after 25 years I have rejoined the labour party.


not from any matter of principle, I am as convinced as ever that there is no state road to socialism, whether revolutionary(bolshevik) nor reformist (labour). I am however painfully aware of the threat of a tory victory at the next election. The past 13 years Labour in government have done many things that I have found execrable, and yet have rebuilt the NHS, introduced the minimum wage and the tax credit system which has made a real difference to the lives of many working class people. the existence of a Labour govt. has given us a, relatively, benign regime in which to operate, a situation which would change immensly if Cameron and his toffs get in.
I look at Brown's handling of the recession and note that there has been less reprossessions than expected, less bankruptcies, lower unemployment, There is little that national politicians can do in the face of a global recession but it seems that Brown and co have in many ways given us a soft landing.
In contrast the slathering of Cameron's cronies at the chance to slash and burn the welfare state in their urge to cut! cuT! cUT! CUT! shows that they are determined to take us back to Thatchers days.
so I signed up to do what I can to stop Cameron.