The government still claims that ID cards will be voluntary for EU nationals, but (other) leaked documents suggest that by 2010 anyone wanting a student loan will need to be registered with a biometric card – essentially making students guinea pigs.
It can hardly inspire confidence that the day after this information came out it was reported that details of 1,400 Scottish students went missing. Add these to the three million on the learner driver database, 25 million people on the child benefit lists, and 600,000 Royal Navy contacts, all of which have gone missing over the last year.
In November of last year, there was a brief moment of light amid the darkness that was 2020. Scotland became the first country in the world to make period products free for all. Just as the weekend and the eight-hour-day are now regarded by many as a given, future generations may be in disbelief that...
On 4 November last year, when many of us were watching the aftermath of the American presidential election, the US formally left the Paris Climate Agreement. Written in 2015 at the United Nations’ COP21 climate conference in Paris, the agreement is often considered to be the most significant document of international climate cooperation. Back then,...
To say 2020 was dramatic would be an understatement. The world situation has been completely transformed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the inadequacy of governmental and state responses. As we head into 2021 it feels like we are entering uncharted territory. To make specific predictions would be unwise. But the Covid-19 crisis raises fundamental questions...
The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.
