12 years of catastrophic Tory misrule has brought Britain to the brink of a #HumanitarianCrisis.
Millions have to choose between eating & heating. 1 in 6 have used a food bank this year, & for the first time, donations to food banks are drying up due to the #CostOfLivingCrisis
In response, Tory-supporting tax-avoiding foreign/non-dom billionaires are ramping up the #propaganda - as they ALWAYS do when greedy selfish bastards like them have taken more than their fair share. So rather than focus on food banks, we get the demonisation of Unions & workers.
While New Labour ameliorated hardship, helped kids get a good start & invested in public services following 18 years of Tory misrule, they still had to keep the billionaires sweet, meaning privatisation, deregulation, wealth concentration, & insecure work.
Bonuses in the financial & insurance sector have hit a record high, growing by 27.9% over the last year, while average wages in the same period grew by just 4.2% - nearly £6BILLION was paid out in City bonuses in March alone.
“There is no justification for such obscene City bonuses at the best of times – let alone during a #CostOfLivingCrisis. While City executives rake it in, millions are struggling to keep their heads above water.” - Frances O’Grady, TUC general secretary.
“Working people are at breaking point, having been left badly exposed to soaring bills after a decade of standstill wages & universal credit cuts. Ministers have no hesitation in calling for public sector pay restraint, but turn a blind eye to shocking City excess.”
#THREAD on right-wing culture war crank Katharine Birbalsingh's first speech since becoming the Government's Social Mobility Tsar - predictably delivered to the dodgy opaquely funded free-market lobbying group Policy Exchange, which pushes libertarian-right ideology.
She starts by downplaying the importance of inequality & social mobility, attempting to discredit the evidence which is crystal clear that rising inequality is a key contributing factor to the lack of social mobility: her first move is to separate inequality from social mobility.
Her heavily implied suggestion is that accidents of birth are really not that important, & thus structural issues should be pretty much disregarded, although she (reluctantly) accepts "Those born nearest the top have advantages over those born nearest the bottom" - no shit.
So grotesque hard-right ideologue & Tory darling Katharine Birbalsingh is finally giving her first speech as the Govt's Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, having been appointed in October 2021 - to the hard-right Policy Exchange think tank.
In her speech Birbalsingh will say that success is often too narrowly defined as stories of people rising from humble backgrounds to elite jobs & will call for more focus on smaller steps up the ladder, such as 'the children of unemployed parents getting stable work'.
I'm sure you remember the Govt's controversial whitewash report of the Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities, written largely by hand-picked culture war ideologues & given a brief to play down both structural/systemic & institutional racism in Britain.
Opening contribution to the Special Issue 'Cultural Studies & Education: A Dialogue of Disciplines?' - Guest Editors Bill Green & Andrew Hickey survey the pedagogical & disciplinary intersections of Cultural Studies & Education.
The Editors cast a distinction between the pedagogical & educational, and from this basis argue that predominant accounts of Cultural Studies’ educative purpose derive from the relationship that the field has maintained with formal and institutional sites of Education.
Cultural Studies sought to ‘awaken the desire for education amongst working people in the belief that education was central to the cause of emancipation’, asking how ‘experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, & institutional forms’.
New research: 'High-speed broadband availability, Internet activity among older people, quality of life & loneliness' - Gretta Mohan & Seán Lyons, 2022.
Using data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, linked to administrative data on high-speed broadband availability from infrastructure maps, this study examines patterns of Internet uses and psychosocial outcomes for over 3500 people aged 50 plus across Ireland.
High-speed broadband availability is associated with higher reported levels of home Internet access, greater frequency of use, & more engagement with Internet activities.
Controlling for demographic & socio-economic circumstances, quality of life is higher among daily users.
This episode explores Nashville music, & uncovers the story of one of the biggest stars of the early country era - the African American ‘Harmonica Wizard’ DeFord Bailey.
String bands, hoedowns, square dances, old-time fiddle and banjo styles, these sounds were a dominant strand in African American roots music from the 17th century onwards. Despite this, many people think that such music comes solely from dungaree-wearing, white rural folk.
Country might appear to be the whitest of all music genres, but it has some surprising roots. How were its black roots whitewashed from the history of American folk & country music? How did they become positioned as white genres? What does black Americana sound like today?