Solid Workers

Consider the tank. Great clunking machines swathed in armour plating, and a big gun for shooting things. Ideal fodder for video games you might think. And indeed, a number of arcade and simulator titles have gone off and run with it. Top view, first person view, these are the most sensible ways of rendering tank combat in digital form. See Battlezone , M-1 Abrams , and Granada , for example. Much rarer is a tank game as a horizontally-scrolling affair. And rarer still is to keep the side on view and, um, place the tank in a platform game. Yet this is exactly what SunSoft did with Blaster Master , one of the most beloved and consistently praised games in the old Nintendo library. As you might imagine, platforming in a tank lends the game to some quite unusual features. And so it proves. The most stark of which are the two game modes. On the one hand there's your huge levels with plenty to discover and few hidden power ups to find, and then there's ... when you get out of the tan...

"Though I would win my appeal against expulsion", goes the blurb fronting up Alastair Campbell's thwarted resignation letter from Labour, "your losing mentality and lack of Brexit leadership mean I won’t return". I'm sure readers share with me the deep sadness that his malevolence won't be returning to the party for the foreseeable. Truly a black armband day. Before we look at Campbell's letter proper, let us briefly examine his claim that he would win his appeal. The grounds for this boast are fanciful to say the least, assuming the appeal would be conducted by the rules and the panel isn't stuffed full of old Blairites. Readers will recall he invited automatic exclusion from the party for using the very considerable platform he commands to say he voted Liberal Democrat in the EU elections. As a voluntary party, Labour as per any party has the right to oblige its members to do certain things, like vote for it. As the rule book says, anyone ...

A guest post from @jake_srowland If you’ve been living under a stone for the last few years you might have missed Labour's anti-semitism crisis . That Labour has a problem with this form of racism is undeniable, and there have been many members found to hold and share these repugnant views. Labour has never denied this is the case, and the party's educational leaflet for members, No Place For Antisemitism acknowledges a “number of Labour members hold antisemitic views and a much larger number don’t recognise antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories.” Labour has taken a long time to make its position clear, but isn’t action without serious thought beforehand dangerous? As Horkheimer made clear: “action for action’s sake is in no way superior to thought for thought’s sake, and is perhaps even inferior to it”. Can the problems Labour has with anti-semitism be called a crisis? If here we were to take a leaf out of Stanley Cohen’s great book Folk Devils and Moral Panics , we...

It's easy to be pessimistic. Since 1979 the key industrial battles have all been lost by the left, resulting in the imposition of the economic settlement we now groan under. And while it looked like social liberalism was all-conquering and irreversible, the appointment of Boris Johnson, the Windrush scandal , the cynical manipulation of Labour's anti-semitism wars by the right, and the rising hate crime figures against women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities underline how we can never be complacent about such things. We're in a bit of a funk because the world is looking gloomy. To find some reasons to be cheerful would be nice. Cheerfulness is the cornerstone of Johnsonism, if we can now speak about such an abomination. His first appearance at the dispatch box as Prime Minister was pretty terrible, all told. Jeremy Corbyn's statement fired no less than 10 questions, to which Johnson replied that he didn't hear a single one. This then is how it's going to...

This month saw 21,830 votes cast over 16 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Six council seats changed hands. For comparison with June's results, see here . Party Number of Candidates Total Vote % +/-  June +/- July 18 Avge/ Contest +/- Seats Conservative            13   6,013     27.5%   -3.6%     -8.7%     401     -4 Labour            15   2,714     12.4%  -11.0%    -19.2%     181     -2 LibDem            13   8,096     37.1% +11.2%    +22.1%     623    +5 UKIP             5    349      1.6%  +0.2%     +0.2%  ...

If you're reading this, you've survived the first day of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Well done. With a bit of luck and fortuitous politics, there won't be many of these we'll have to endure. There are two notable things the Johnson administration accomplished in its opening hours: a speech outside Downing Street (with a new lectern, no less), and controversial new appointments - but what do they say about the government Johnson's leading? When Theresa May stood on the Downing Street steps for the first time, she made an audacious pitch that sounded like a real break with Dave's government. No more demented deficit determinism, a planned approach to economic policy, a commitment to (nebulously defined) social justice, and a one nation community in which everybody had their place. Not my cup of tea nor I suspect yours, but it resonated and awarded the Tories a seemingly unassailable lead over Labour. Even worse, it suggested we could look forward to a new au...

Was Theresa May the worst Prime Minister this country has ever seen? She's up against stiff competition, from both her immediate predecessor and the utter void following her. Whatever verdict history decrees, her record in government is almost singularly awful. Even if you sit and meditate on the last three years, surely the most earnest Tory would have difficulty picking out a May achievement that isn't spin and hot air. A fair few words have been expended on May on this place, so I won't try your patience by saying much more. Except to reiterate two things about her legacy, both of which are inseparable. On Brexit, May bears a large share of the responsibility for normalising the idea of a no deal Brexit with her idiot mantra of no deal is better than a bad deal. This line, more than anything Nigel Farage has said, strengthened and emboldened the hard right of the Tory party. You know, the people tied to the most backward and reckless sections of capital. She offered t...