Sowing the seeds: Tax is Liberating

Its the 6th birthday of Graham’s Grumbles today! To celebrate, I’m posting something here which I wrote for Student Christian Movement‘s blog series leading in to their Seeds of Liberation conference.

Tax has always been a contentious topic. In 1773, Britain tried to force American colonists to pay taxes on tea imports. In an act of civil disobedience, crates of tea worth nearly £1million in today’s money were thrown off ships and into the harbour. What became known as the Boston Tea Party became a rallying cry for many on issues of who gets taxed, by whom and at what rates.

Some thoughts on General Synod

I’ve finally hammered out my over-riding thoughts on Tuesday’s twist to the on-going saga of General Synod and its interminable debate on women bishops. My conclusion is that there’s plenty that ordinary lay people can do to keep things moving forwards.

Eric Pickles and Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law

You’re hopefully aware by now that the government is slashing back the money provided to local councils to cover council tax benefit., The Tories are returning to the familiar ground of forcing everyone to pay regardless of ability as a way to drive up the fear of poverty. But for councils, this could be a massive problem: if everyone must pay something, what happens when many genuinely can’t?

Too young to know?

Last Saturday I was out protesting against the Government’s Workfare program. It was, all in all, a good protest, though I have plenty of thoughts on strategy for the campaign in future. One incident stuck out to me – a scene of about five seconds that massively wound me up, in which a mother demanded I not give her daughter a flier. I responded as best I could, but her final words on the matter were “can’t you see she’s only 14?”.

Surviving life in two cultures

One of the debates about the Church and Christian life that recurs in Soul Survivor is the difference between trying to expand Christian Subculture and actually taking Jesus’ messages of love, justice, forgiveness, etc to the people. Its a critical debate on one level, especially for a church so laden with its own peculiar culture that is butting up against many other cultures.

Phone Hacking: a crisis of agency for the rest of us

The unearthing of a hacking scandal at NewsCorp and the massive media circus of Murdoch ‘on trial’ before the commons select committee provided a spectacle that held what felt like the whole population in some sort of trance. It felt as if the whole of the establishment was just about to cave in on itself. The problem, and the reason I found the whole episode so difficult to deal with, was the impossible task of finding a way to do anything.

Guest Post: Society’s Disabling Restrictions

Amidst a rising tide of negativity towards disabled people in the press, Disability Rights activism is becoming more and more urgent. I got asked by Nicola Sleap if I would publish this article she wrote for SCM’s Movement magazine as a guest post. I’m glad she did, because unlike her, I’m not on the receiving end of this shift.

UK Riots: Hopelessly Violent?

This has certainly proven to be a year of unrelenting, if deeply contrasting uprisings, and it shows no sign of abating, with India the latest to enter the fray with anti-corruption protests that saw more arrests than our riots did. If its possible to make objective comparisons between the #ukriots and all the other uprisings of recent months, then I intend to do it.

Coalition of Resistance National Council Report

I wrote the following for the Common Wealth Network blog, so it has a fairly specific set of recommendations at the end, but I also thought that many of you would be interested to read about my experience attending my first decision making council in London for the Coalition of Resistance, a major endeavour to unite people against cuts and privatisations.

“The Tiananmen Question”

It is probably one of the most iconic protest photos in history. A single human facing down a huge, ugly symbol of totalitarianism. China’s recent history has shown that capitalism is more than capable of thriving in the absence of human rights and freedoms that many in the West have long contended go hand in hand with economic liberalism.