A little selection of some of the things I've been reading this week.
This article by Owen Jones, "Social mobility is a dead end" (from the Guardian)
Instead of putting social mobility at the heart of politics, we should emphasise the social worth of working-class jobs and support struggles to have pay and conditions that reflect it. Take a report by the New Economics Foundation a couple of years ago, which compared the social value of different occupations. Hospital cleaners, for example, are generally paid the minimum wage. However, when taking into account the fact they maintain standards of hygiene and contribute to wider health outcomes, NEF estimated they generate more than £10 in social value for every £1 they are paid. Waste recycling workers are another case in point: because of their role in preventing waste, promoting recycling and keeping down carbon emissions, NEF calculated that, for every £1 spent on their wages, another £12 is generated. But the NEF model was damning when it came to well-paid jobs like City bankers (for every £1 paid, £7 of social value is destroyed) or advertising executives (£11 destroyed for every £1 popped into their bank account).
This piece by Laurie Penny, "Julie Burchill's imperialist froth over Israel" (fromt he New Statesman)
Ultimately, if we're really going to play the who-got-here-first game, someone really needs to put in a word for the poor old Philistines. And the Caananites. And the Midianites. And the Amalekites. And the followers of Ba'al, all of whom have some prior historical claim on the land by virtue of being slaughtered or enslaved or driven out over the course of three millennia of gory religious tribal wars – it's all there in the Torah. The sort of self-deception that calls all temperate inquiry "Jew-baiting" is just dogged, ahistorical worship of the politics of bullying.
The Green List (from The Independent)
And finally, this wonderfully named Tumblr: http://keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus.tumblr.com/
Wow, I wish I'd been reading these things! Except for the Boehner tumblr, of course! Rectifying things now...
Posted by: Laura | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 07:14 PM
You did manage to leave the house though! and started to write a sitcom!
Posted by: Frances | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 07:58 PM