Partly pre-empting my next post – which is going to start with a bit of post-dormancy navel-gazing about what I’ve been doing while I haven’t been blogging – here’s a Web site I’ve just set up:
It’s for my book More work! Less pay!, which is out very shortly. It’s coming out in a prohibitively expensive [...]
I’ve written another paper (hence the no blogging). No prizes for guessing which area this one’s in.
Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (2009), “The parties of the centre right: many oppositions, one leader”, in Newell (2009a)
Allum, F. and Allum, P. (2008), “Revisiting Naples: clientelism and organized crime”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies,13(3)
Bardi, L. (2007), “Electoral change [...]
Following another thread in another place, here are a couple of reviews of books about Silvio Berlusconi, currently Prime Minister of Italy for the third time. As you can see, these reviews predate the 2006 elections, won by a united Left under Prodi (perhaps not quite the gran tessitore Aldo Moro was, but certainly a [...]
More news on my book. I handed over the corrected proofs this morning, together with an index. Compiling the index was easier than I’d thought it would be, but still not exactly fun; it was one of those tasks that leaves you looking round for the next chunk of mental hard labour for several days [...]
There was a curious piece in the ‘Work’ section of Saturday’s Guardian (I only read it for the problem page). It was headed
10 things we’ve learned so far
We send our reporters around the UK to see what happens in a downturn
but on inspection there were only three things that they’d learnt from their roving reporters; [...]
(Updated Christmas Eve, after spotting a flaw in my statistical analysis. I am deeply sad.)
Now that it’s well and truly over, two things really stick in my mind about the Manchester Congestion Charge vote. (Strictly speaking, the Manchester Transport Innovation Fund vote – but I don’t think it’s a fund that we voted to reject.)
One [...]
My worldview was formed in the 1970s, when (it seemed to me) there was no such thing as lifestyle: to say that personal choices mattered, were worthy of attention, was to say that the personal was political, which in turn connected those choices to a whole range of broader commitments. Because it all was connected, [...]
Eliot Weinberger’s Obama v. Clinton: A Retrospective was clearly written in the heat of (interim) triumph:
Just when you thought [Clinton] had hit bottom, she went even lower. She tried to cast Obama as a scary black man who, as subliminally suggested in her infamous (and mercilessly parodied) ‘3 a.m.’ ad, would break into your house [...]
WorldbyStorm:
Once Blair et al dreamed of a hegemonic project that would dominate the centre left for decades. At this rate they’ll be lucky to salvage anything from the wreckage.
Which reminded me of something I wrote for Casablanca (anyone else remember Casablanca?) in October 1994. To set the scene, John Major’s Conservative government had been re-elected [...]
Something from the Italian press, following on from Liam. This is taken from a column by Curzio Maltese in today’s Repubblica. ‘Il Caimano’ – ‘the caiman‘ – is a popular and well-deserved nickname for Berlusconi.
It’s a bit naive – no, extremely naive – to profess to be astonished that Berlusconi the statesman has turned back [...]
I seem to be disagreeing with WorldbyStorm quite a lot lately. Here’s WbS on the Lisbon Treaty:
I’d tend to the view that it is difficult to see how 26 countries won’t move forward. Why shouldn’t they? There’s no advantage to the status quo.
…
I was once, in a fairly received way, quite wedded to the federal [...]
An Italian postscript. Here’s a post which originally appeared eighteen months ago (23/11/06) at the recently-revived Sharpener. I think it stands up pretty well: I got the importance of fragmenting the old Christian Democrat bloc, Prodi’s skill in knitting together ex-Christian Democrats and ex-Communists, and the lamentable importance of Clemente Mastella. (Who didn’t even stand [...]
For the Left, the Italian elections were an avoidable disaster. Unfortunately, they weren’t avoidable by the Left.
Brief history lesson. Western Communist Parties always were contradictory formations, and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) more than most. The official ideology of the party was gradualist: the irreversible socialist transformation of society was to be achieved through [...]
I’ve written a book. The MS has just gone off to the publisher; it’s still got to be checked, copy-edited, re-checked, typeset, proof-read and probably several other stages I’ve forgotten about, and it probably won’t be out much before Christmas. But it’s a book, and it’s been written. By me.
It’s called ‘More work! Less pay!’ [...]
It is fair to recognize the difficulty and the immensity of the tasks of the revolution that wants to create and maintain a classless society. It can begin easily enough wherever autonomous proletarian assemblies, not recognizing any authority outside themselves or the property of anyone whatsoever, placing their will above all laws and specializations, abolish [...]
Here’s James Mensch, who’s a Canadian professor of Philosophy, writing at openDemocracy:
Those who fear solidarity’s exclusionary tendencies generally focus on the solidarities based on our past, that is, on our inherited situations of race, language, culture, and religion. Those who proclaim its benefits see solidarity in terms of our working with others to achieve common [...]
I’m sorry to see that Ellis has closed his blog. I’ve enjoyed and admired Ellis’s writing since we were both contributors to Casablanca; I remember he did a piece on the slave trade ostensibly by John Smith, which antedated Tony Benn’s joke at the expense of the Economist by a decade and a half. Unfortunately [...]
Apologies for the long silence – and for the post that’s about to follow, which will be of much greater interest to some than others.
Unlike Liam and Andy, I am not now and have never been a member of RESPECT. Like Liam and Andy, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the fallout within [...]
The following comment didn’t appear on whatever post it was meant for, as WordPress’s spamcatcher automatically sent it to the bitbucket.
I like your blog and I feel we share sufficient common ground for a link to each others blogs to be mutually beneficial.If you agree to link then please contact me at ‘An Unrepentant Communist’
http://unrepentantcommunist.blogspot.com/
on [...]
“There’s only one thing worse than a folk singer, and that’s a Stalinist folk singer.” – Ian Birchall
Hmm.
Several years ago I was enthusiastically involved in getting Red Pepper to publish a piece by Steve Higginson (of the estimable Soulpool), demolishing the myth of progressive, national-popular folk music.
When we look at the various collectors, mediators and [...]
