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.

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?

Sermon: Jesus in the Temple

After a few requests, the sermon I preached at St Lawrence’s two morning services on Sunday is now here for you to enjoy. Its about 50% longer than a regular blog post, but I don’t really want to start hacking great pieces out of it. Also, sorry for the second paragraph joke. I realise putting that on the web, where it can be read by people who aren’t actually in Yorkshire may cause issues.  It was a joke. Enjoy!

Parenthood in a time of scarcity

Being in my mid-twenties, its unsurprising that some of my peers are having kids. But quite a large number aren’t, and a sizeable chunk of my female friends are very fervently “not having kids”. Its a huge change in one’s life, and so perhaps its not surprising how quickly it becomes a divisive issue.

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.

What could a 21st Century Workhouse look like?

The danger with predicting a repeat of history is the very messy way in which history partially repeats, subjected to the changing circumstances of the day. Someone commented on my choice of words in a previous post, daring me into a bet on whether or not this government would reintroduce the Workhouse system for administering the poor. They say “don’t feed the trolls”, but I’ll never learn…

The Rise of Neo-Victorianism

I’m sure I wrote a post about the rise of Neo-Victorianism sometime about 2 years ago, concerned with the anti-social behaviour rhetoric that was prevalent in the media at the time. I can’t find it. Either way, during my time at home this Christmas, we watched the recentish BBC serialisation of Dickens’ Bleak House as a family. Somehow this government is managing to make Dickens’ work even more depressing to watch…

Why did I pick up the Sun today?

I’m travelling today, and so I get the excuse of having a large number of newspapers around me to tempt my curiosity. I rather wish they hadn’t. There are days when I swear at the news for what is happening, and there are those days when I get angry because what is written totally misses the point, or is so clearly written with an agenda of injustice.

Postcode Uprising: the hidden story of the youth riots

Suffice to say, Britain does not have a history of “Youth Riots”. Such events are not as regular or predictable as French or Danish Youth Riots, with their specific politics and social science appeal. So to see young people out on the streets over the last few weeks, and to witness the relatively small number of broken windows has been as unexpected for many activists as it has for many police officers. But the media, slow to respond and supplied with only limited information, has been very slow to see some of what’s going on.