Michel Houellebecq, ever controversial, imagines France shunning centre-left and -right and voting for an Islamic republic to defeat Marine Le Pen’s Front National. A piquant review of an acerbic novel on the limits of liberalism.
Archives for September 2015
Going global: Corbyn public ownership push
Jeremy Corbyn is pilloried for urging renationalisation of vital public services but he’s simply part of a growing international trend to repair the gaps left by private providers and his call should be heeded.
Privatising Scottish water: the issue gets even murkier
The Scottish Government has been trying to push its so-called plans to hand ownership and control of business water usage to a private English company into the long grass. Time to come crystal clear and transparent on what its real plans are.
Bold Reekie: a poetry slam with a difference
Big words, bigger picture, fine detail. A grand scheme for poetry writ large on a scaffolding banner on a building site in Edinburgh’s Canongate reveals the more adventurous side of the capital city. If you hurry – and I type faster – you might just be in time to vote for whose words adorn the site.
Landscapes of Communism: the Soviet Union’s architectural legacy
What might a non-capitalist architecture look like? Owen Hatherley’s Landscapes of Communism takes a tour through the architectural legacy of the Soviet Union.
Osborne’s nuclear nonsense economics
George Osborne has been in China offering taxpayers’ money to subsidise its entry into the UK energy sector with French state-owned EDF while slashing incentives for efficient, clean renewables, many of them based in Scotland. So much for his sound economics.
Robots, the digital economy and fair shares for all
Prof Richard Freeman, co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, calls in this interview for wider ownership of pension funds/employee shares in their companies to manage effects of AI/robots on employment and the growing concentration of wealth among the 1%.
Saving the Union from the unionists
A year on: there may be a time for a Big Debate on how the UK and its peoples define identity and sovereignty but it’s not now, argues one of our foremost political analysts.
Reshoring Scotland: the case for a manufacturing revival
In announcing her Programme for Government at the start of this month, the First Minister committed to publishing a Manufacturing Action Plan for Scotland in the autumn. But it begs the question: what does manufacturing require that isn’t already covered in the lengthy Government Economic Strategy published only six months ago?
Unions risk cutting off their noses over EU
Labour’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn and some union leaders are indicating they might back #Brexit in the pending referendum. But British unions would be worse off outside the EU.