Free Labour and the UK's Youth

When Cait Reilly refused to work for free at Poundland, the tabloids had a field day. How lazy and idealist are the youth of today! Fancy being on the dole and turning down work! Wasn’t like she had anything better to do, she just couldn’t be arsed… Dossing about, expecting handouts from the state and [...]

The US debt crisis, the Tea Party and George Bush on steroids.

Talk of deficits, massive debt and brutal public spending cuts are pretty much in the British news 24/7 these days, so if you’ve noticed the recent debt crisis in the USA you’ll have noticed some of the same terms being thrown about, but if you paid close attention you might have noticed that unlike the [...]

This is Britain, and everything's alright. It's FINE.

All conflict dies in the brotherhood of flags After last weeks multiple days of consecutive rioting, there’s a chance now for some calm, measured discussion on the upheaval that saw the capital and several English cities burn, high streets looted and alleged gangster Mark Duggan shot dead – with three others killed defending their property. [...]

Student Wars: Stirling Strikes/Fights Back

Yesterday something unusual occured in the historic City of Stirling – a large march and rally though its town centre. The purpose was to protest job cuts at the University – specifically, 17 compulsory redundancies being made in the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling: Scotland’s only Instutute of Aquaculture, which enjoys an [...]

Attention employers! (or how definitely not to organise work in a post-capitalist society)

As part of the growing army of the unemployed created by the biggest crisis of the capitalist economic system since the Great Depression of the 1930s (and soon to be compounded by the onslaught of the Con-Dem government’s ‘austerity’ measures), I think it’s about time someone brought up one of the less talked about aspects [...]

Being Young Is Shite.

It has emerged that youth unemployment has risen to it’s highest levels since 1992. Officially 20.5% young people are unemployed in the UK as a whole. That’s just over 1 in 5 of us! Not only is this statistic worrying for young people it is the blunt, grotesque truth that young socialists have known for [...]

North Africa in Revolt

An explosion of popular protest has broken out in North Africa over the past few weeks, with anti-government demonstrations and riots continuing in both Tunisia and Algeria. Localised unrest first began in Tunisia in mid-December, sparked by the attempted suicide of 26-year old graduate Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself alight outside a government building in protest [...]

Anti-cuts focus on Disability & Housing Benefit

After the recent student rebellion against the ConDem attacks on education, the anti-cuts movement is now recognised as a force to be reckoned with. This site has led the way in reports and analysis of this new movement, which I consider to be as significant as 2003′s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. As recently [...]

Why raising the retirement age is a spectacularly crap idea

Among the many things to make your blood boil coming out of the comprehensive shafting we all received at the hands of the government on Wednesday was the really crap plan to make us all work longer. By 2018 (2 years earlier than previously planned) the retirement age will be equalised for men and women, [...]

The Tories: Creating ‘Spongers’ since 1979

By McMeg Gettin handouts can be so frustratin Get in line son there’s five million waitin’ The Proclaimers, Cap in Hand As a central part of actualising Dave Cameron’s glorious vision of The Big Society, the Con-Dem coalition has promised to sweep away the “cycle of dependency” that afflicts Britain’s “pockets of worklessness”. Announcing his new welfare [...]