Month: October 2017

Nationalisation vs Privatisation (Part 93….)

With the Party conference season behind us the big idea back on the agenda is, apparently, socialism versus free-markets. Stirring speeches about the return to socialism rang out from Labour in Brighton, to be met by counter-blasts of free market rhetoric from the Tories in Manchester. It was all quite nostalgia inducing for some of us – forward to the 1980s! And, of course, thoroughly specious from both camps.

In reality the debate quickly descended from the lofty heights of imaginary alternative social systems – neither socialism nor free markets have ever existed and are ever likely to – to a rather more prosaic debate about nationalization versus privatization as almost as devoid of serious thinking as it was the first time around in the 1980s. Continue reading “Nationalisation vs Privatisation (Part 93….)” →

It Wasn’t The Cough That Carried Her Off…..

I have been thinking about THAT SPEECH by Theresa May all day today. Why?

Well, on a very personal level, first I have a cough problem. Not a “here today gone tomorrow” cough problem. I’ve had it chronically since 2009 on and off before that. I’m receiving treatment at a specialist and experimental cough clinic. I recently discovered it may go back to an industrial accident I had in 1970!

Be that as it may, I therefore have some sympathy with anyone caught out by an uncontrollable cough in public speaking situations. I have had them. I have had lectures where I’ve collapsed into fits of coughing so alarming the students got worried I was about to expire. I have had to leave meetings. I have had to decline live radio and TV on days when I knew I was at risk.

So, I understand.

Which is why I am totally and utterly dumfounded by the sycophantic drivel being spouted about “poor Theresa”. Continue reading “It Wasn’t The Cough That Carried Her Off…..” →