Solid Workers

Boris Johnson's position is very bad . But last night, as the Prime Minister nursed his pounding head after four defeats and the collapse of his position perhaps there was a crumb of consolation reflecting on how it couldn't possibly get worse. Dear reader, it got worse. Does anything say "you're finished" more than your own brother resigning from your government and announcing his retirement from politics when the next election arrives because he can't stomach your policies? We certainly have Johnson the younger to thank for giving Labour a handy slogan for the constituency campaign in Uxbridge and South Ruslip. But when you consider the manner of the resignation, it's got to sting. Yes, sure, there was no way it could be spun positively for the PM, but it could have been handled better. JJ might have hung on until the election and announced then he was leaving politics, but instead by immediately giving up on he has inflicted even more damage on him. It...

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...