News Reviews from 2012
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By Rob Lyons The celebrity chef now has such a fattened sense of self-importance that he thinks he has the right to lecture elected politicians. ‘We don’t want bullshit about the big society. We want a strategy to stop Britain being the fifth most unhealthy country in the world. The most unhealthy country in Europe. This is the first generation of kids expected to live not as long as their parents. Tell me, Mr Gove, Mr Lansley, how you plan to change that? Two out of five kids are obese. What is in your arsenal? The fact is, they are doing nothing…’ |
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News Reviews from 2012
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On Tuesday last week (27th March) 21 year old Liam Stacey, a student at Swansea University, was jailed for ‘tweeting’ comments that would be considered sick by most people’s standards. Although in very poor taste, and you would hope that most people would either challenge or ignore such comments, he did not actually hurt anyone or cause any damage. He was jailed effectively for a thought crime or as Judge John Charles summed up for causing aggravation. Although the panellists on Question Time this week seemed to be in agreement that the sentence was a bit harsh, there are also many people who think that a custodial sentence was correct in order to send out a message that such racist idiocy is not acceptable and to teach them a lesson. Gary Lineker, the Match of The Day pundit allegedly tweeted a warning to think before you tweet. |
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News Reviews from 2012
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The London Olympics is speeding towards us, with the associated rhetoric about legacy and the transformational impact it is destined to have on every person, young and old, in the UK and beyond. Cost calculations range from £9bn to £12bn to the taxpayer, with additional revenue from private sources in the form of sponsorship, merchandising, tickets sales, TV rights totalling around £2bn. Venues, regeneration, and infrastructure are funded through the former, with the latter covering the direct costs of mounting the games. Additional concerns voiced through the popular media suggest that these costs fail to take into account the quagmire of additional services and operational costs in London and across the country, leading up to and during the event, therefore failing to reflect the true cost to the taxpayer of hosting the games. |
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News Reviews from 2012
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What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! In the time of a digital renaissance, wherein dissemination of ideas and sources of learning are widely available to a general populous of global proportions via the internet, the on-going freedom to obtain information in this culture of sharing knowledge is threatened by bills such as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Rights) and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Never before has information been so widely available to so many, thus public availability is a good thing no? From a utilitarian stance it would be difficult to argue against, however the greatest good for the greatest many isn't all that's being considered. |
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News Reviews from 2012
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The war on workfare is worse than workfare itselfby Brendan O’Neill, Tuesday 28 February 2012Republished from spiked as background reading for a discussion on Workfare, to be introduced by Mark Harrop. The pity and tears of the anti-workfare lobby are far more insulting to working-class youth than asking them to stack shelves in Tesco. As a radical leftist of some years’ standing, it pains me to point out the following: we are rapidly entering a new era in Britain in which radical protests against government austerity measures are more reactionary than anything proposed by the government itself. |
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