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An eventful week

Jeremy Corbyn shares his take on what has been an eventful week, from the Government’s change of heart on the Saudi prison contract to the celebration of Black History Month in Bristol.

Quantitative Easing Was a Bust; Let’s Try Higher Wages Instead

The global economy faces so many headwinds at present that it’s hard to know where to begin. China’s real estate bubble has popped, capital flight has put emerging markets into a nosedive, commodities prices have plunged triggering fears of deflation, the economic data is increasingly bleak, and the Fed’s plan to “normalize” rates has sent stocks gyrating like never before.

The Ugly Truth About Poverty In Britain

According to a study by Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE), 33% of all UK households endure below-par living standards – defined as going without three or more “basic necessities of life”, such as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the comparable figure was 14%. A 140% increase.

Corbyn in the Media

The media do not merely generate the political weather. They play a large part in creating the climate in which information is received and understood. A notion such as ‘electability’, to take the example at hand, is unthinkable without the media, which, in their every representation of a political leader, ask (and supply the authorities to help us decide) not only who is and is not electable, but what should be the criteria by which electability is judged.

It’s Never Been More Important To Ask What’s Wrong With Work

The capitalist class regards us all as nothing more than thieving scroungers, ever ready to skive if we are given half a chance. And it is not the payment of benefits that really irks the rich – it is the refusal to put our human capital – our minds and bodies – into their service that enrages them. How dare we not work to fatten their wallets.

Jeremy Corbyn is not leading a campaign he is leading a movement

The ideas and vision that Jeremy Corbyn represents, for so long buried beneath a ton weight of Thatcherite ideology, have risen from their slumber and are now part of the mainstream political discourse again, breathed new life by thousands of young people who demand a real and humane alternative to the thin gruel that passes for reality today.

Chris Leslie has got Corbynomics wrong

People’s quantitative easing is instead a highly directed process where the debt that is repurchased has been deliberately created and issued either by a green investment bank or by local authorities, health trusts and other such agencies for the specific purpose of funding new investment in the economy at the time when big business and financial markets are completely failing to deliver the scale of investment that is needed to get the UK working again and to restore our financial prosperity.

The Greek Coup: Liquidity as a Weapon of Coercion

The Greek government was thus broken Mafia-style at the knees, until it was forced to abandon its national sovereignty and watch its public treasures sold off piece by piece. Suspicious minds might infer that this was a calculated plot designed from the beginning to throw Greece’s prized assets onto the auction block, a hostile takeover and asset stripping for the benefit of those well-heeled entities in a position to purchase them, including the very banks, hedge funds and speculators instrumental in driving up Greek debt and destroying the economy.

Fantasy Politics – ‘Corbyn’s Morons’ And The ‘Sensible Approach’

Like Blair and the rest of the establishment, the Guardian and other corporate media claim their motivation is to preserve Labour’s electability, rather than to attack any and all politics that stray off the ‘centrist’, ‘modernising’ path. In reality, it could hardly be more obvious that this collection of profit-seeking, corporate enterprises – grandly and laughably proclaiming themselves ‘the free press’ – is opposing a threat to their private and class interests.

Labour’s Ultra-Right Chuka Their Toys Out The Pram

The 35 MPs who nominated Corbyn are ‘morons’ according to New Labour-era apparatchik John McTernan – basic underlying argument: you can’t actually give voters a choice, because then they might choose the wrong one. You can’t let a candidate who vaguely represents the reasons people join the Labour Party slip into the contest – because we don’t represent those views, and have built entire careers around leading a group of people we fundamentally disagree with.