Tunis yesterday, Cairo today, London tomorrow?

This piece of mine appears in today's First Post.

Neil Clark: These revolts aren’t peculiar to Muslims – they’re about young people having no hope

Tens of thousands of people, fed up with economic hardship, unemployment, and the corruption of their country's ruling elite, gather in their capital city's main square and call for the resignation of their pro-western government and for new elections to be held.

No, I'm not referring to events this week in Cairo, but Belgrade.

While Egypt's disturbances have made front page news the world over, Serbia's huge anti-government protests have gained far less media attention. And the Serbs aren't the only Europeans who are taking to the streets to express their disapproval of their leaders.

You can read the whole of the article here.

UPDATE: In similar vein, here's John Pilger's latest: The Egyptian Revolt is coming home.


In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Cairo’s Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. “We won’t stop,” said the young Egyptian woman on TV, “we won’t go home.” Try kettling a million people in the centre of London, bent on civil disobedience, and try imagining it could not happen.

Newcastle 4 Arsenal 4 : The greatest comeback in Premier League history

Well, I can’t recall a more amazing game in the Premiership can you? In fact I’d say it was the most remarkable top flight match since QPR 5 Newcastle 5 in September 1984, when QPR were 4-0 down at half time... Remember that one?

Well done to Newcastle for their astonishing comeback. And after a few weeks of boringly predictable results, wasn't it good to see something unexpected this weekend- not just at St James' Park, but at Molineux and Stamford Bridge too? And Wigan scoring four goals as well!

Think our post is bad? Here's how it could soon get worse

This article of mine, on the Netherlands’ unhappy experience with postal privatisation, appears in today's Mail on Sunday.

Hundreds of campaigners recently marched through David Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency to protest against Government plans to sell off the Royal Mail.

'The planned privatisation is an unnecessary ideological move which will damage postal services for ever,' said Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers Union.

While Hayes believes the sell-off of Royal Mail - in State hands since its inception in 1516 - would mean an increase in prices, a decrease in services and mass Post Office closures, Business Secretary Vince Cable claims the move will 'secure the services that consumers and businesses rely on'.

Of course, they can't both be right. To find out what a privatised postal service really would be like, we only have to look across the North Sea to the Netherlands. And Holland's unhappy experience should give us all grounds for concern over what is about to happen in Britain.

You can read the whole article here.

Save our Public Libraries:Philip Pullman on the ‘greedy ghost’ of market fundamentalism

The free market fanatics came for our utilities, our railways and our airports.
Now they’re coming to destroy our health service, our postal service, our publicly owned forests and our public libraries.

Market fundamentalism, this madness that's infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days. The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that's all. What he doesn't understand is enterprises that don't make a profit, because they're set up to do something different. He doesn't understand libraries at all, for instance.

Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life. We're coming to see that old Karl Marx had his finger on the heart of the matter when he pointed out that the market in the end will destroy everything we thought was safe and solid. "Everything solid melts into air," he said. "All that is holy is profaned."

You can read the whole of author Philip Pullman’s brilliant speech in defence of public libraries cuts over at False Economy website.

And an abridged version was published in last Saturday’s Guardian.

Tomorrow is Save our Libraries Day.

Let's not allow the market fundamentalists who have already destroyed so much that was good about Britain, destroy our libraries.

In the words of author Mark Haddon: "Libraries are being destroyed to save a banker’s bonus”.

UPDATE: For an example of the extremist free market fundamentalism that Philip Pullman highlights, take a look at this anti-public library piece by Eamon Butler of the Adam Smith Institute. Apparently those concerned about public library closures are all middle-class Radio 4 listeners.
　

Margaret Thatcher's extremism has already been outdone by this coalition

This article of mine appears over at the Guardian's Comment is Free website.

Neil Clark: The Lib Dems have proved less of a moderating influence than One Nation Tories in Thatcher's first years.

Ask any genuine socialist or progressive which was the most extremist British government since the war and it's long odds-on that they'd say one of the three administrations of Margaret Thatcher. But I believe that is now an outdated judgment. For when it comes to political extremism the present government has already outdone Thatcher.

The coalition, which its supporters ludicrously claims occupies the centre ground, seems hellbent on privatising the entire British state.

You can read the whole article here.

Rotten system turned Fernando Torres into a traitor

Neil Clark: UK football won’t be rid of selfishness and greed until salary caps are brought in.

Yesterday's events, on what the Daily Mail called the "craziest day in English transfer history", remind one of the classic post-war Italian film Bicycle Thieves. In it, a poor man and his son search the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle which he needs for his work. His search proves fruitless. Totally demoralised and frustrated, he decides to become a bicycle thief himself. Acting selfishly can be contagious.

You can read the whole of my First Post piece on the Fernando Torres saga, and why it's one big step back or the English game, here.

John Barry R.I.P.

video: reddielocks76.

In the sleeve notes of my ‘Best of John Barry’ CD, Jonathan Ross writes of Barry "If he were French then they‘d name a park after him and cover him in medallions''.

Now I don’t often agree with Ross- but on this he was dead right.

John Barry, composer of the greatest film music of all time, music which gave millions of people around the world a great deal of pleasure, didn’t even get a knighthood. Perhaps if he’d written boring, pretentious books and attacked Islam, it would have been different.