Unvolunteering
By Paul Jon Milne Paul Jon Milne's art can be found on , and his surreal exploration of unemployment, revolution and fighting games can be found on facebook. Trundling through…
A very British problem, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love renting
Norwich City Councillor Samir Jeraj responds to Alyson MacDonald's The Case Against Landlords. In the 2006 film Thank You For Smoking, the anti-hero lobbyist for the tobacco industry muses about…
The case against landlords
Let's face it: nobody wants to live in private sector rented accommodation. This is the type of housing which provides the least secure forms of tenure, and where the worst…
On Integrated Education – Happy 30th, Lagan College
This 4th September marked the 30th birthday of Lagan College, Northern Ireland’s first integrated school – that is, the first school where Catholic and Protestant children were educated together. It’s…
The alienated ‘Multitude’: ‘the Class’ of the 21st century
Throughout the 20th century development amongst workers of 'class consciousness', the subjective awareness of ones objective class interests, was seen as central to the hopes of achieving a transition away…
Why We Have A Welfare State
David Cameron thinks that the only way to save our public services is by harnessing the opposing forces of volunteerism and capitalism. I'd like to think that history proves him…
How I became Disabled
By Clare Cochrane “I was like the drinker who didn’t want to admit it. That’s the first step in the AA meeting. I never wanted to admit publicly I’m disabled.”…
The Dependency Paradox
Personal responsibility is a recurring theme in Conservative rhetoric, although they tend to use the more down-to-earth expression of “doing the right thing”. David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith in…
A Year of BS: 3 Reasons why The Big Society is a Big Fraud
For some time in opposition David Cameron had been quietly supportive of a group of people doing things most people didn’t rate, but that made a huge difference to the…
Brian Souter: bigot
I remember it clearly. The school may have been conservative, but the teacher herself was really very liberal. "How do gay people have sex?" "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to…