Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: off-topic ranting
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Today was moving day – up at 6am, finish packing, removalists come at 8am, cross the suburb of Kichijoji to our new river-side apartment in nearby Mure, then back to the house to clean, deliver a present to our previous landlord and done and dusted by midday. That was the plan. Things went a little…
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Today’s Guardian is reporting a new conservative policy on welfare, which will target young people on housing benefit particularly. David Cameron wants us to think that this is a big and necessary change, but in making his case he is giving an implicit nod to what really needs to happen in the UK: If you…
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On Sunday I signed a contract to rent a new apartment, which I will move into next weekend. Currently I’m living in a kind of Granny flat (called an ohanare) behind the home of my landlord, in South Kichijoji near the famous Inokashira park. I like Kichijoji a lot, so our new apartment will be…
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The Guardian reports today that the UK Government has released a review of its Mandatory Work Activity Programme, and that the review finds the programme didn’t have any success getting people back to work. The review was written by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and can be obtained from the blog…
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Continuing (belatedly) my series of posts on sex work, public health and feminism, in this post I will discuss how I think anti-sex work feminists have coopted the movement against human trafficking in their political campaign against the sex industry. I have shown before that I don’t think moralist campaigners against sex workers have the…
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When I lived in London I visited the Crown Jewels, and was struck by how perfectly they encapsulated Britain’s morbid fascination with its past riches. Stored in a secure room in the Tower of London[1], these goodies are an enormously tasteless display of confiscated bling, their centrepiece the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which was captured during Britain’s…
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In comments to my statistical proof that Game of Thrones is misogynist, Jamie tells me that I am viewing the world through the lens of “privilege,” and thus unable to properly understand the seriousness of certain issues. There is of course a grain of truth to this idea, that living in a certain privileged environment…
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It surely comes as no surprise to my reader(s) that I am a strong supporter of labour unions. Not only are they the single most important mechanism by which the working classes of the developed world secured basic rights, but they are a fundamental part of the Australian social fabric – they have been around…
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In today’s Guardian is an article by Naomi Wolf that attempts to link the growth in anti-abortion laws in the US to its imperialist foreign policy. A lot of feminists poo-poo Naomi Wolf as “feminism lite” or politically suspect (I think this having something to do with a prior excursion into the US’s overly-fraught abortion…
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Obviously they didn’t have Wii, so their lives were clearly poorer quality compared to those of modern Australians – my God, this is the pre-vegemite era we’re talking about here – but this doesn’t mean financially they were poor. However, today, in a rather apocalyptic article of vague relevance to other topics on this blog…
Compromise and Conceit 