Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
In Radiant: The Life & Line of Keith Haring (2024), Brad Gooch presents a compelling account of Haring's life & work with a strong emphasis on the public artist & his positive/supportive relationship with young people via such public art. Not shying away from Haring's sometime difficult personal life, this well-judged & highly detailed (but never boring) bio will become the standard work on the artist. Really excellent!
I wouldn't normally post on Nigel Farage & his toxic politics, but here is Aditya Chakrabortty setting out the shape of the problem, Farage's relentless (and successful) attempts to move UK politics to the right, and the collusion of the media (and the main parties) with this programme.
Its depressing stuff but a necessary summation of why Farage has become a major problem for progressive politics in the UK.
I see Keir Starmer is making a big thing about Rishi Sunak lying during the first election TV debate... I know why he needs to do this but...
Its an election...
Sunak's a Tory....
This is, I'm afraid, just the thin end of the wedge of what we'll be seeing in the next five weeks... sure call it out, but we shouldn't expect anything different....
And before you say it, I'm sure Starmer will be accused of lying about stuff too... and maybe rightly!
You'll be unsurprised to know that across the political spectrum voters think that in the last five years.... although voters win the right blame institutional management, while those on the centre & left are more likely to blame the Tory government.
Once again, whatever you think of Labour plans & capacity to make improvements (fast) to the public services, this (again) suggests its not going to be easy....
But one key Q. is how much of this is perception & how much is experience?
Across North Wales & Northern England flood waters (caused by rain) are increasing the danger of lead poisoning of agricultural land from disused lead mines.
While this problem has been known about for some years, little has been done to deal with it, but recent shifts in weather patterns now make this an urgent issue for aspects of the UK food chain.
Mike Savage (LSE) puts the deselection of Faiza Shaheen by Labour into the context of her work on wealth inequality & concludes:
'in pursuing an ugly & manifestly factional manoeuvre in their deselection of Faiza Shaheen, UK Labour may be doing more harm than they realise when it comes to promoting their stated goal of “a decade of national renewal”.'
Shaheen has been a major campaigner for greater equality, might that not be what Labour wants?
Another impact of the damage the Tories have done to the UK's international reputation is being felt keenly by the families of people detained abroad in controversial circumstances.
Matthew Hedges (detained & tortured in the UAE in 2018) points out:
“Foreign Office quiet diplomacy does not work...The reality is that the British government’s behind-the-scenes influence has disappeared'.
Our soft power (as has been pointed out) is evaporating!
As someone who was a serial mature student (BA 25-31/MA - 34/PhD - 35-38/2nd MA - 58-60) I completely agree with Yvonne Williams - adult education is a key to fulfilling aspirations that only come into focus later in life.
To be clear, I think that all levels of education (not just the tertiary level I accessed as an adult) should be available to all ages.
Its never too late to be learning new stuff, nor too late to benefit from it for whatever reason!
A day before a judicial review of an exclusion order that kept a man in Turkey (who has leave to remain) barred from returning to the UK, it was lifted by the Home Office... but this time its not actually the Home Office acting inhumanely rather Robert Jenrick intervened to stop the Home Office allowing him back soon after the original barring from a return flight.
If you thought Jenrick was a vindictive nasty piece of work, then you're likely right!
Exports of clothing and footwear sold to EU countries have fallen from £7.4bn in 2019 to £2.7bn in 2023
Partly driven by firms manufacturing in Asia no longer landing goods in the UK for final packaging (they now go direct to the EU)... and partly because UK clothing manufacturers have moved production to the EU to avoid red-tape & other expenses.
Of course, this is also tied to the UK's swing away towards service exports...
Here are some heartbreaking stories of Long Covid which, despite effecting around 2M people seems to have largely disappeared from mainstream discussions of health (although it appears on Mastodon more often). Perhaps understandably we seem now more focussed on the ever worsening NHS crisis.
However, when we turn to 'long-term sickness', we'll not get far if we don't have a much clearer idea of how & why Long Covid persists for so many.
I'd take Allison Kirkby (CEO/BT) more seriously in her complaints that the regulatory environment of the UK (contrasted with Scandinavia) has led to a lack of world-class broadband infrastructure if I hadn't had for ten years world class broadband delivered via a community broadband project (one of many in rural England).
Its not the regulatory environment that's the problem its BT's quasi monopoly position & its hatred of its customers that is the problem!
Given the Met Police's own inability to deal with violence against women from within its ranks, its a bit ironic that Mark Rowley (Commissioner of the Met) has now suggested around 4 million (mostly) men are a risk to women & girls.
He may be right that this is a problem that goes beyond policing, but even if that is true, for some time the police have been effectively downplaying the problem.
As a society we need to recognise this as the problem it is!
One of the big debates around the forthcoming election is the adoption of tactical voting & its use to 'punish' the Tories.
There's lots of media commentary about this, but as always @sjwrenlewis offers an interesting take on the issue.
In the end he concludes one of the key democratic aspirations of this election must be to deny the Tories the post-election position of remaining the 'official' opposition.... & tactical voting may/can achieve that end!
Unsurprisingly the move by employers to rein in extensive working from home, is not only breeding resentment among workers who have grown to like hybrid working but looks likely to lead to more cases centred on remote working going to employment tribunals.
As I've noted so often, universities have extensive knowledge & experience of the pros & cons of hybrid work (academics have done it for decades) yet no-one seems to want to learn from that experience?
More evidence the water companies have been getting away with rubbish service as the regulator(s) that oversee water provision are either asleep at the wheel or have been 'captured' by the sector.
Now, the Drinking Water Inspectorate would (alongside OfWAT) seem to be rather reluctant to use their powers to prosecute.
If they thought a softly softly, engaging with the firms approach was a better bet, the state of England's water supply demonstrate it isn't!
The UK has not invested enough in public infrastructure, but attempts towards rectifying this lack in investment look likely to confront skilled labour shortages in construction.
Not only did Brexit reduce the number of migrant workers entering the sector, a lack of investment (interest) in skills training (i.e. via FE colleges) compounded by health-related retirements of older workers means there are too few UK-national with skills to fill the gap(s).
Hmm.... I think it may show more the centralisation of construction investment in London.... the figures for skills shortage are for all sectors, not just private or public work.... but my guess is many of those coming in from Essex are responding to better pay on offer in London as big projects struggle to find workers - perhaps Essex projects are not getting started, or cannot offer such high wages?
The number of people with private health insurance has risen to nearly 6m in the UK (the highest since the 2008 financial crisis) and the number of paid-for hospital admissions continues to rise (by 7% last year).
As we always like say... 'follow the money'.
If you want to see the aim of Tory defunding of the NHS & the crisis in public healthcare they have engineered in the last decade... all you need to do is look at who (which companies) are benefitting!
'A Conservative minister whose family farms beef & lamb signed off on a £5m advertising campaign encouraging people to eat more red meat – despite government advice that doing so can pose health risks'.... nothing to see here.
No corruption, no skewed govt. spending to hep out Minister's families, no manipulation of health advice.... nope, noting to see here at all.
UK politics has a number of problems with accessibility for non-majority groups... we're familiar with issues around ethnicity & gender, but are less clear about how ableism has effectively barred disabled people from our political institutions;
the disproportionally low number of disabled people in politics, is not only a crisis of representation, it also means policy is shaped by the prejudices & incomplete knowledge of the able.
The Labour Party's green energy agenda, like the recent stumbles in the (putative) green transition for the UK, may be compromised by the lack of distribution infrastructure investment;
we already know that the UK domestic inter-connecter network suffers a lack of capacity that is already driving delays in solar & wind plant construction.
Unless a Labour Govt. does something about this problem, aspirations for the green transition will be (again) pushed back.
Parents are increasingly taking their children out of school & home schooling them, with the most reported reason being the mental health of their children.
To some extent, the pandemic normalised the idea of children learning from home, so we might wonder whether the threshold for concern prompting a turn to home schooling has lowered.
But, it also suggests the impact on children of the myriad crisis that have engulfed school in recent years.
