Start with Hong Kong. A bouquet of modern capitalism. Concrete, glass, steel. Banks, hotels, skyscrapers. Streets bedecked with anti-pollution face masks. And residents who advise visitors come to marvel not to drink the water. Then escape to a leaf-shaped island of some 24 million population which became known to untroubled, disinterested people outside only...
Read More »
SPGB
What future for the Beautiful Island?
The race to the bottom
Sweatshops are workplaces where the working conditions are extremely poor and health and safety laws are not enforced or are non-existent. News reports of fires which have killed dozens of people because fire doors were locked in sweatshop factories are not uncommon. Wages are very low, there may be bullying and intimidation, especially of...
Read More »
Support the same old, same old.
Are you happy with your life? Is your work fulfilIing? No problems getting up in the morning? No stress? No complaints? Good. We’ re perfectly happy too. But there are a group of dangerous fanatics who say that they’re “anti-capitalist”. These groups are threatening everything we hold dear. Because we are basically satisfied with...
Read More »
Suffer, little children
One thing I am certain of is that I would give my life for my children, such is the power of my feelings for them. I did not take to the nappy changing or the enforced insomnia and as they grew older I resigned myself to the fact that during their teens I was...
Read More »
Profit Freedom Day
“You could have to work for 134 days each year just to pay your tax bill” (their emphasis) read the headline of a full page HSBC ad in the Times (16 March). “Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT, car tax . . . it all adds up. In fact, in 2009 the average Briton had...
Read More »
Capitalist money madness
Read any newspaper, listen to any radio bulletin, watch any TV news broadcast, and there will be some instance of Capitalist Money Madness – detrimental, shocking or unbelievable thinking and behaviour influenced by money. Trains have been derailed because saving money came before rigorous track maintenance; cows have been ground up and fed to...
Read More »
Growing inequality in the US
We have previously reported on the fantasy and myth of the American Dream , most recently here , and again we find ourselves reading another article , this time from the Economist , highlighting the increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility in the United States. The American dream was simple: work hard and move...
Read More »
On the UK election debates
And so Brown , Cameron and Clegg engage in the first of their series of televised debates , all the other minor political parties , of course , excluded in this demonstration of media impartiality and fairness . These three political party leaders claim to be working for the betterment of society. Each of...
Read More »
It’s the Devil’s fault!
“Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that “the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was prompted by the devil.” Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that “the devil is behind the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia...
Read More »
The Haitian Tragedy
Haiti spent more, in 2008 servicing the country’s debts than it did on health, education and the environment. In our article, Haiti—an un-natural disaster, we noted that the earthquake in Haiti, and similar disasters, are presented as unavoidable disasters; and that, to some extent, this is true. But we stated that it is not...
Read More »
RSS
