Solid Workers

Articles like this boil my piss. According to the BBC , a third of all graduates are "overeducated" for the jobs they currently have. This is up by over a fifth since 1992, and nearly a quarter of all workers in London are overeducated for their job versus 16% for the national background. At least according to the Office for National Statistics. It goes on to say that while a degree is most often a passport to higher wages/salaries, some of these stats can be explained by graduates deliberately choosing to do jobs. That makes it alright then. Well, it does acknowledge that another explanation might be worth considering. "It can also be seen as a form of underemployment, hence contributing to the extent of labour market slack". How very nice, but it's telling the only explanation the ONS offers is faux neutral gubbins about people plumping for jobs/careers that pay less. Which is what you would expect from an institution inflected with bourgeois common sense. Th...

My friend and colleague Simon Speck passed away on the 19th after a short illness. Finding words to describe the shock and accompanying numbness is difficult. It still hasn't properly sunk in. I first met Simon at my Derby job interview - he was one of the panellists. Little did I then know we would be spending the next couple of years cooped up in a cramped three-person office. And in such surrounds, you can't fail to get to know someone well. He would talk with pride about his footy-mad daughter, Melitta, while offering caustic observations about the mums and dads who would bawl at their girls from the touchline. I'd get stories about his time in public school where he would labour under the watchful eye of a Lenin poster, revel in a reputation for being a red, and also how he developed his talents as a mimic and cartoonist to ward off the attentions of the bullies. As a boy hailing from the labour aristocracy - his words to describe his dad's itinerant oil worker/eng...

This month saw 14,937 votes cast over six local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. One council seat changed hands. For comparison with March's results, see here . Party Number of Candidates Total Vote % +/-  March +/- Apr 18 Average/ Contest +/- Seats Conservative             6  2,180     14.6%   -9.6%    -24.3%     363      0 Labour             6  3,466     23.2%   -8.6%   +13.2%     578     -1 LibDem             5  2,741     18.4%  +1.0%     -5.8%     548      0 UKIP             3   182      1.2%   -...

Not in a properly writerly mood. Good job there's a fix for that.

The local elections are well and truly underway in Stoke-on-Trent, and in 2019 these are something of a novelty. For readers who don't follow the ins and outs of Potteries politics (what's wrong with you?), Labour is the challenger party to a council coalition of self-styled "City Independents", a UKIP councillor and your friends and mine, the Conservatives. How then have matters gone since they took control in 2015? It is a truth commonly acknowledged that Stoke's Conservative Party won't win any Mensa prizes, but the fact their politics and governing strategy has steered the Independents these last four years tells you all you need to know about the calibre of the governing coalition's senior partner. With the stepping down of former Council Leader Dave Conway and his replacement by Ann James, it's a case of nothing having changed down the civic. In the original coalition talks to keep Labour out, the Tories were given the deputy leadership - natura...

Is there anything more to be said about Extinction Rebellion ? Probably not, except it deserves the left's unequivocal solidarity, encouragement and support. There's little more to be added to takes by Richard Seymour and Lewis Bassett . Not that it's going to stop me from having my two penneth worth. 1. Extinction rebellion is both timely and untimely . Timely, because it's very much of the moment. David Attenborough and the BBC are spearheading programming on climate change, species loss, and environmental degradation. The public are prepped for it, and young people particularly are concerned - as the magnificent displays of climate school strike marches make clear. But this week's rolling non-violent direct action is untimely too. It's inconvenient for politicians more concerned with Brexit than environmental emergency, it's inconvenient for the hundred global companies responsible for 71% of emissions , and it's inconvenient for a government utterly...

I thought this conversation between Alex and Ash Sarkar from Novara Media was nuanced and interesting. You never get in-depth and critical discussions of Brexit on mainstream news programmes; vox pops down some market in the north is usually as far as it goes. As always, please consider supporting Politics Theory Other so Alex can do more and bigger shows.

For one time only, George Galloway tells us he's voting for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party. Pushing the oft-heard Brexiteer talking points, we're told parliament has spent the last three years trying to thwart the result of the 2016 referendum. So "we" need to send a message to the "Westminster elite". A rocket up their backsides, if you will, a reminder the angry leave army are not about to have their Brexit taken away from them. But to countenance voting for, urging a vote for, and campaigning for the Brexit Party , isn't that a step too far? Elaborating his position further, Galloway emphasises the political distance between himself and Farage, but because this is an issue of democratic principle, he is prepared to encourage people to vote for the referendum's outcome to be enforced. Making this easier is the fact Labour's list of candidates - affirmed without any members' participation, it must be noted - can count among them enthusias...

If the Tories veer off to the right after Theresa May, we know there's going to be a bunch of voters (and elites) left high and dry. Looking at by-election results from the last year and more recently, we see the Tories are more likely to lose seats to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens than Labour. There are voters on the centre right who are put off by May and the interminable hard Brexit saga and open to something that isn't a Corbyn-led Labour Party. Given the pro-EU but otherwise-everything-is-A-okay positioning of our friends The Independent Group/Change UK, on paper they are well-positioned to pitch to this space and realign establishment politics . How then are they doing? Polling is a bit all over the place, but consistently low. As folks get excited about the latest YouGov putting Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in the lead for the Euro elections (now backed by George Galloway, no less), CHUKa are knocking about six-to-eight per cent mark. Funnily, the last Sur...