Archive for the ‘Rory MacKinnon’ Category

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White Right Terrorism: Oslo & Media Narratives

In Rory MacKinnon on July 30, 2011 at 4:36 am

[First published in The Morning Star, 29/07/11. Image by nrkbeta under a CC licence.]

[I want to preface this piece by pointing out that Breivik's killings, just like September 11 and 7/7, were politically motivated. If anything, the political aims were even more obvious. Far from cheapening their suffering or fuelling Breivik's narcissism or scoring political points from a national tragedy, an analysis of the political landscape which fuelled him is the only way to ensure his victims - of whom many were Norway's next generation of left-wing leaders - did not die in vain.]

A right-wing extremist publishes a manifesto promising armed resistance against Muslims, ethnic minorities and “cultural marxists”, blows up the offices of a centre-left government, then guns down literally dozens of young party activists, as young as 14, at a nearby summer camp.

Perhaps the only good – if it can be called that – to come out of such a horrific crime is the way Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous campaign drew out the very media narrative which fuelled him, only to stop it dead with an object lesson in media bias. Read the rest of this entry »

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Man United: Public-Sector Pensions & A City On Strike

In Rory MacKinnon on July 2, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Image by SecretLondong123, used under a CC license.

[First published in the Morning Star, 01/07/2011]

It’s 8am on a Thursday morning in Manchester’s university quarter, smack in the middle of the summer break. But the streets are far from empty.

Teachers and lecturers stand clumped together on picket lines outside their classrooms, while across the canal librarians, parking wardens, civil servants and others are doing much the same. Manchester it seems is closed for business.

It’s only a slight exaggeration: with literally a third of Manchester’s workforce in the public sector, it’s hardly surprising that the government’s plans to raid public sector pensions has raised a bit of a ruckus. And with clear blue skies, a beaming June sun and the warm glow of camaraderie, it’s obvious people are glad to be out and about. But they haven’t forgotten why they’re here. Read the rest of this entry »

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Circling The Welcome Wagons: Refugees & The Con-Dem Cuts

In Rory MacKinnon on June 27, 2011 at 4:17 am

[First published in The Morning Star, 25/06/2011]

The Con-Dem coalition were full of fine words last weekend, as NGOs across the country prepared for the launch of Refugee Week.

“The British tradition of welcoming genuine refugees to this country is a great one, and I hope we continue to show this generosity of spirit in the future,” David Cameron declaimed over the piercing shriek of a Daily Mail dogwhistle.

The PM – who just months ago accused refugee communities of “not really wanting or even willing to integrate” – even sent immigration minister Damian Green to go meet and greet with locals at the Northern Refugee Centre in Sheffield.

Green was of course “delighted” to attend. His hosts may have been less enthusiastic, given they are set to lose literally half their budget and paid staff to public funding cuts in the next three months.

But Green would have been hard pressed to find a warm welcome anywhere: despite Cameron’s talk of tradition, the Con-Dems’ cuts to public services amount to a systematic segregation of refugees and asylum seekers from the society Cameron supposedly wants them to join. Read the rest of this entry »

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Suffrage On Sufferance: Ken Clarke & Prisoner Voting Rights

In Rory MacKinnon on May 28, 2011 at 11:33 am

[First published in the Morning Star, 28/05/2011]

When the BBC’s Question Time arrived at Wormwood Scrubs last week, justice secretary Ken Clarke was braced for battle: in the same day he’d managed to outrage feminists with talk of “the gradations of rape”, while incensing hardline authoritarians with a plan to dangle reduced sentences for prisoners who plead guilty.

But the lord chancellor was back to his breezy, avuncular self by the time inmate James Patterson got a chance to ask why Clarke’s clemency didn’t extend to allowing prisoners the vote — despite a landmark ruling on the issue in the European Court of Human Rights more than half a decade ago.

“Does denying all convicted prisoners the vote reinforce their alienation from society and discourage rehabilitation?” he asked.

Clarke’s response was unequivocal: so unequivocal, in fact, that he didn’t even need to qualify it with an argument. Read the rest of this entry »

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What’chu Talking About, Willetts? AKA The Abel Magwitch Funding Model

In Rory MacKinnon on May 12, 2011 at 4:11 am

David Willets by bisgovuk

David Willett’s staggering suggestion Tuesday that we could top up university budgets by letting people just buy their way in seems to have made a lot of headlines (including my own).

A lot of people were understandably blindsided by his stunning argument that we could make Britain a more equal society by opening universities up to (a) the very hardest-working, brightest, luckiest kids the middle and working classes have to offer, and (b) rich kids who scrape through the entry exams.

Of course the other David has moved quickly to stamp out that forest fire – but another wee gem seems to have slipped past unscathed and relatively unobserved.From the original story:

A third option for expanding university places without cost to the public purse is by encouraging charities to sponsor students. At present, if a charity wished to fund a group of students from poor backgrounds, those places would have to come out of a university’s existing quota because of the risk that the students involved might need public support in future.

Read the rest of this entry »

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This Sceptic Isle 2: Electorate Bugaboo

In Rory MacKinnon on April 16, 2011 at 7:32 am

[First published in The Morning Star, 16/04/2011. For my previous piece on immigration and graduate unemployment, see here.]

David Cameron stoked the coals of election-month controversy this week with a brilliant tactic: a carefully crafted stump speech which seemingly blamed immigrants and beneficiaries for each others’ woes.

Yes, the quarterly unemployment rate was 7.8 percent – a drop of just 0.2% since last May, when Cameron took power with “the biggest, boldest, most comprehensive programme of getting Britain back to work any Government has ever introduced”.

And yes, there were still five people out of work for each job advertised — a figure only likely to rise as the public and voluntary sector cuts take effect.

But Cameron sidestepped the obvious explanation – that job creation has been practically nil – in favour of a neat bit of dogwhistle politics, combining fist-in-glove xenophobia with open contempt for unemployed Untouchables. Read the rest of this entry »

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Haw Fought The Law & The Law Won: The Crackdown On Activism

In Rory MacKinnon on April 4, 2011 at 4:42 am

Anti-war protester Brian Haw. Image by David Martyn Hunt, used under a Creative Commons License.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/04/2011]

There was a strange scene at London’s Chatham House on Wednesday morning.

Israeli president Shimon Peres stood inside at a lectern, a man accused of war crimes for his role in Operation Cast Lead; the 2008 assault which saw missiles rain down for 22 days straight on a city about the size of Sheffield, killing between 1100 and 1400 Palestinian civilians and injuring countless more.

Police kept watch outside the building — but they weren’t there for President Peres.

They were there for the 30 or so members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the street outside, peacefully protesting and calling for his arrest.

The campaigners say they were kettled; the police deny it.

But in an odd twist of fate the conflict seemed to crystallise the twisted mentality behind the government’s policing bill being debated in the House of Commons a few streets away. Read the rest of this entry »

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London Underground: An Eyewitness Account Of March 26

In Rory MacKinnon on March 29, 2011 at 8:56 am

Hi all. It’s been two days since the anti-government rallies and the accompanying media coverage, and rather than the usual essay I’m just going to put my thoughts, actions and reactions in a tangled mess here. If that’s alright.

Much of the media coverage has drawn a distinction between peaceful protestors – those who stayed on the designated march route and toddled home after the speeches – and Violent Anarchists. The truth is much more complex.

There were certainly anarchists (and anarcho-communists). I was there when they marched from Malet St; I was there when they broke away from the official march and surged up towards Oxford. I spent much of the rest of the day chasing after them, arriving just too late to see what really happened at TopShop, HSBC, Santander and The Ritz.

But they were just one of many groups, and they had specific goals and tactics which go well beyond the media depiction of mindless violence. Read the rest of this entry »

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Where There’s Smoke: Tracing The UK Tobacco Lobby

In Rory MacKinnon on March 23, 2011 at 7:22 am

[First published in the Morning Star, 23/03/2011]

Last fortnight’s release of the Government’s tobacco control plan saw a flurry of press releases and talking heads; everyone from local shop owners to libertine smoking enthusiasts. But behind the headlines lies a carefully coordinated and well-funded network of lobbyists and public relations experts who all draw their paycheques, at least in part, from the same trio of multinational tobacco companies.

At present the tobacco control plan (available here) centres on two issues: a ban on point-of-sale displays from next year and potentially a ban on the colourful cartons themselves. But the Government has said it will first explore the “competition, trade and legal implications, and the likely impact on the illicit tobacco market” – and it’s here where the industry lobbyists hopes to win over public opinion.

Noone doubts that tobacco is big business in Britain: around 7 million packets are sold each day, generating nearly £13b a year. In the convenience store sector it outsells confectionary, soft drinks and newspapers combined. To put it another way, nearly one in three adults in the UK are regular smokers — and the market doesn’t look to be drying up anytime soon.

Read the rest of this entry »

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How IR Law Turns Press Into Propaganda & Gets People Killed

In Rory MacKinnon on March 10, 2011 at 12:47 pm

Industrial relations is one of those weird political anomalies; a field which affects literally everyone who’s ever paid their own rent but is somehow seen as a bit of a bore by anyone who isn’t an active card-carrying union member. It’s what prompts the insistence on “balanced” legislation which invariably assumes lawsuits and industrial action are effortless, exhilarating experiences for employees with no personal impositions whatsoever.

But events in the British rag trade over the past week have provided a perfect case study of why the systematic erosion of rights for new employees -particularly the 90-day probationary period in New Zealand, and Britain’s one-year exemptions from unfair dismissal – has been such a dangerous idea.

First Liberal Conspiracy‘s Sunny Hundal posted allegations of political pressure on BBC reporters to recast Government funding cuts as “savings”. Then the next day Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiat tendered his resignation in an open letter which alleged that for the last two years he’d basically been paid to make things up about celebrities, neo-Nazis and Muslims. Read the rest of this entry »

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