It’s not a binary thing for me. State good/private bad. I’ve advised local councils and am appalled at the basic lack skills, drive and competence we have st this level.

@john-yates Totally agree. That’s why I think it would be wrong simply to say, “Right, let’s re-nationalise,” rather than honestly and stringently ask, “What have we got rig…[Read more]

I’ve always viewed Blair as the ultimate political chameleon. (“What do the focus groups say I should be?”) rather than, “What do I think is…[Read more]

You know Mick, I bet you loved the seventies and eighties.

@john-yates Yes, for a while I did love the seventies. I escaped from Belfast to Bradford in 1971. Sanity! I’d had nearly twenty years of religious fundamentalism and sectarian hatred, finally errupting into near-civil war. Suddenly you were away from it, with people who weren’t stark…[Read more]

This was the tragedy of the early 80s. And the neo-liberalism which is running like a virus in our veins is destroying our society. Unless, as Margaret Hilda Thatcher so confidently averred, there’s no such thing as society.

Mick

Members of my family, still rejoice at how great the 70s and early 80s were.

@funny The early 80s? What were they doing? Who were they coming into contact with?

I remember the early 80s as the most terrible time imaginable. You’d go to Peak crags mid-week and they’d be full of people – not having fun per se, just there because there was…[Read more]