The revolution will be streamed
The random occassional musings of Donnacha DeLong – anarchist, NUJ activist, freelance journalist, social media expert and online communications consultant
So, after a great NUJ meeting with a brilliantly ethnic diverse turn-out, I turn on the TV and the BBC is showing “Last Whites of the East End“. Despite being fully aware it would annoy me, I watched it. I’ve been trying to think of something to blog about, so here’s another blog about history.
According to the programme, “white British” people are leaving the East London and it’s the end of the “good old East End”. This needs serious unpicking.
There are some very careful phrased statements being made at the moment about EU migration into the UK. The wording is important, because there is a key difference between EU migrants and EU nationals working in the UK.
This difference is the Irish. While Ireland is in the EU and Irish people can correctly be described as EU nationals, in UK law, people born in Ireland are not EU migrants.
The following article appeared as the foreword to Phil Mac Giolla Bháin’s book “Minority Reporter”.
There’s nothing new about anti-Irish racism. In fact, some of the language of racism in general can be found far back in Irish and British history. Gerald of Wales accompanied the anglo-Norman invaders who first subjugated Ireland to rule under the king of England in the 12th Century. He wrote, in The History and Topography of Ireland (PDF), of the native Irish:
The Budget is out – tax cuts for the rich on top of trying to destroy the NHS, welfare cuts, tax avoidance, university fees, post-riot sentencing, hackgate, occupy evictions – the reasons to be angry go on and on and on and on. But, after the massive student demos of just over a year ago, the 26 March demonstration and the 30 November strikes, things seem to have gotten fractured. Lots of small demonstrations and actions, but what we need to do is bring everyone together and create a massive force to take down this government and scare the next.
Apparently, militant secularists are threatening Britain. Well, according to the unelected Tory loud-mouth Baroness Warsi. It appears the Tories have decided that the Daily Mail-promoted bleating about Christians under attack is reaching the upper echelons of British political life.
Continue reading “Persecuted religious groups and Baroness Warsi”
Right-wingers seem to have gotten a bee in their bonnet about development funding to parts of India by the British government. Incredibly hypocritically, they point to cuts being made in the UK to argue that we shouldn’t be wasting money on an increasingly rich country.
Continue reading “Aid to India – the historical perspective”
Update: Following these two successful meetings – and also raising the issue at tonight’s NUJ Claudia Jones lecture, I’ve set up a new mailing list and will discuss setting up a follow-up discussion and planning meeting with NUJ colleagues. Stay tuned for further details.
Readers of a certain blog on a certain newspaper site might have gotten the false impression that I was against the post-riot clean-up operations in London. On the contrary, I promoted plans for Tottenham on Twitter, started early collecting abandoned shopping trollies on Wednesday morning en route and then, alas, found that it wasn’t possible due to the police cordon still being in place on Tottenham High Road. By Thursday, the area had pretty much already been cleaned up by the Council.
Continue reading “For the record – I supported the clean-up operations”
The revolution will be streamed 