The rest of the blog
Paul Bristow cites the Epping Forest ruling to demand hotel closures for asylum seekers, but offers no plan for what follows. The Conservatives built the hotel system; Labour inherits it; local politicians weaponise planning law while migrants disappear from view.
The arrest of a part-time cleaner for sharing Facebook posts backing Palestine Action shows how Britain’s response to Gaza has drifted from foreign policy into domestic repression.
Farage brings the noise, Starmer brings the law. The country falls apart to the sound of flags snapping and doors slamming while capital quietly clears the till.
Robert Jenrick’s Union Jack pantomime isn’t patriotism; it’s a confession of weakness. A dying political class turns to flags and ladders because it has nothing left to offer but theatre.
By sanctioning International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, Trump’s America has openly declared that empire stands above the law. Europe and Britain now face a stark choice: defend the court’s independence, or accept a world where justice stops at Washington’s door.
The Alaska talks were not a breakthrough but a trap. A “peace deal” that rewards Russian aggression is appeasement by another name. Ukraine’s fight is for survival, and any settlement must be on its terms—not Moscow’s.
The High Court’s ruling in Epping shows how Britain has turned planning law into a border regime, feeding jealous politics of scarcity and erasing the very category of the refugee. Now with Labour councils as willing collaborators.
The High Court’s ruling on the Bell Hotel in Epping is not a local quarrel but a turning point: councils asserting veto power, judges dismissing statutory duties as time-wasting, Farage and the Tories cheering, and Labour keeping silent. What began as a far-right protest has been laundered into national policy.
The Trump administration’s latest tariff proposal assumes that other countries will quietly absorb the cost of import duties. But tariffs don’t work like that. They never have.
Simon Hannah’s Reclaiming the Future: A Beginner’s Guide to Planning the Economy is a searing indictment of capitalism’s failures and a powerful call for a democratically planned socialist future. In an era of crisis, this book is essential reading for anyone who refuses to accept that the chaos of the market is the best we can hope for. As capitalist crisis deepens, bringing with it ecological catastrophe, resurgent reactionary politics, and growing inequality, Simon lays out an uncompromising case for a planned economy as the only viable alternative. This is not a work of dry economism or abstract theory; it is a call to arms, a rallying cry against capitalist realism and its false sense of inevitability.
The ongoing banking crisis, which is best exemplified by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, reveals the fundamental flaws in the capitalist system and its inherently unequal power dynamics. As we face the challenges of financial instability, it’s time to critically reassess our economic paradigms and explore transformative approaches that prioritise equity and sustainability for all.
In a world entangled by financial webs, the architects of our economic fate – the bankers – often weave a perilous dance of risk and reward, leaving many to question their responsibility in times of crisis.
More back of an envelope planning from Truss and Kwarteng.
On broken resolutions that have taken us to the brink.
According to the city, the public, and even some Conservative party members, yesterday’s emergency intervention by the Bank of England in the financial markets qualifies as a crisis. A week, is a long time in politics