We must question the assertion that the Coalition government is a radical administration, on a par with the 1945 Attlee and 1979 Thatcher governments. That judgment can only be made retrospectively, in view of the legacy the Con-Dems leave behind.
We are not all in this together. Benefit changes and service cuts will have cumulative and often profoundly disruptive and painful effects on the lives of poor people, especially as they interact with existing deprivations and difficulties. Citizen's Advice Bureau adviser Deborah Padfield sets out
After the vigour and excitement of the student demonstrations against the cuts, today’s Guardian leader derides Unite’s new general secretary Len McCluskey as a ‘Bourbon’. Why? Because he proposes trade union action and strikes rather than defeatist acceptance of the government’s unjust and counte
Although the traditionally powerful Iranian merchants have lost influence and seen their economic privileges decline under Ahmadinejad, they do not challenge the status quo. Ali Hedayat explains why
While packed full of humour and touchy subjects, the Dutch celebration of Saint Nicholas is at once an enduring testimony to the country´s racial imagination and one of the most promising sites of its disruption.
A scribe of Britain's Labour establishment had died
The measuring of official policy by its impact on the quality of human life is progress. But only if the governments that proclaim the idea are serious, says David Boyle.
A friendly movement of flash protests against corporate tax avoidance when much needed public support is being cut captures public interest in the UK
Thursday’s narrow victory on the tuition fees bill marked the first major blow to the Coalition. The bill passed, but at a price of serious internal division within the Liberal Democrat party, and having given rise to a nationwide protest movement, raising a number of important issues beyond highe
This essay traces the cultural embodiment of the British state in ‘English Literature’ in the period from 1790 to 1810, its uses and abuses, and the demise of this seminal metaphor for the ‘nationless nation’ which began in the 1970’s. The latter period saw a post-imperial unravelling of the cultu
The Narkomfin building in central Moscow is an experimental masterpiece and testament to the spirit of a young Soviet state. Yet it has been transformed from fashionable youth into ragged beggar. Clementine Cecil writes on the latest attempts to save it from ruin.
openDemocracy Russia recently published the harrowing tale of a Russian drug-dependent woman Irina Teplinskaya, and her campaign to make medication available to HIV positive people. Here she describes the protest actions organised in support of the campaign.
