Show me the money
Governments around the world making swingeing cuts, claiming they are chronically short of cash.
But oddly enough many large corporations are awash with money. As reported in the Financial Times last month, cash currently represents the biggest proportion of assets in the US for over 50 years. As the world economy stalls US corporations are sitting on some $2 trillion – that’s about the same as the entire value of the British economy.
Don’t cut the dressage!
The Independent Schools Council is currently in court trying to get the legal definition of public benefit changed to justify their tax-free status.
To be fair, they’re paying for more than your average curriculum.
The Education Review Group point out that, “Nobody would seriously expect hunting, shooting and fishing to be tax deductible yet it seems that schools somehow slipped by unnoticed and continue to take advantage of outdated charitable rules providing such things as golf, beagling, and dressage.”
The mask slips – and then falls off
The true face of the Tories is increasingly clear for all to see, and it’s not pretty. What bumbling Justice Secretary Kenneth Clark hinted at in his interviews on the question of date rape Roger Helmer, Tory MEP has said explicitly on his blog.
“Imagine that a woman voluntary goes to her boyfriend’s apartment, voluntary goes into the bedroom, voluntary undresses and gets into bed, perhaps anticipating sex, or naïvely expecting merely a cuddle. But at the last minute she gets cold feet and says “Stop!”. The young man in the heat of the moment is unable to restrain himself and carries on…the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only establishing reasonable expectations in her boyfriend’s mind”.
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.
