THE UK PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged abolition, altcourse, BLM, david guake, defund, featured, G4S, IAS, IAS UK, immigration, immigration detention, incarceration, ministry of justice, price fosu, prison industrial complex, profit, public safety, racism, Serco, sodexo.

by Michael Noone for IAS UK

In March 2018, the then Justice Secretary David Guake delivered a speech on the topic of prison reform. He kicked off proceedings by detailing his perception of the prison system and its modus operandi. Describing it as three-fold, Guake explained the aims as follows:

First, protection of the public – prison protects the public from the most dangerous and violent individuals. Second, punishment – prison deprives offenders of their liberty and certain freedoms enjoyed by the rest of society and acts as a deterrent. It is not the only sanction available, but it is an important one. And third, rehabilitation – prison provides offenders with the opportunity to reflect on, and take responsibility for, their crimes and prepare them for a law-abiding life when they are released.

BUS W@NKERS

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged access, bus, bus company, bus service, bus wanker, buses, class, commuters, Enrique Peñalosa, ethical, featured, first bus, inbetweeners, liberalisation, mobility, nationalise, neoliberal, ownership, profit, public ownership, rail, renationalise, rural, shareholders, snobbery, transport, transport act.

by Matthew John White

I doubt that the brilliant gross-out teen comedy The Inbetweeners invented the term ‘bus wankers’, but it certainly dragged it into popular culture. In Series 2, Episode 4, which first aired in 2009, arch gross-merchant Jay shouts the insult in question from the window of a moving car. The phrase is now firmly mainstream. You’ll often see it in social media comments: “my car’s at the garage so I’m being a bus wanker today”, or “can’t wait to pass my driving test so i can stop being a bus wanker”. A Facebook group named ‘bus wankers!‘ is liked by 93 thousand people.

Derision of bus users isn’t always achieved with this phrase, of course. Just the other day, while discussing a trip to London over a pub garden pint, a friend of a friend loudly asked “Who over the age of 30 gets a bus?”, accidentally (I hope!) paraphrasing an apocryphal Thatcher quote in the process. Yet ‘bus wankers’ has become the standard, convenient, go-to expression for such mockery.Continue Reading

BEYOND TUITION FEES #11 – MUCH TO LEARN, MORE TO DO

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged activism, adult education, associate tutors, Beyond Tuition Fees, campaigning, capitalism, co-operatives, Community, consumerism, corbyn, crisis, exploitation, featured, food, Free Education, government, higher education, housing, international students, labour party, learning, market, marketing, marketisation, neoliberalism, NUS, postgraduate, profit, resistance, strategy, student activism, student debt, students' unions, tuition fees, uk, unions, universities, university management, university staff, utopia.

By Bradley Allsop and Rowan Gavin

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green have brought together perspectives from across the sector to explore the possibilities of post-fees HE. In the final instalment, the series editors summarise the visions for the next chapter of UK HE that the series has laid out.

There is more energy, debate and innovation on the left now than there has been for decades. Capitalism’s multiple crises, and the inability of its defenders to respond to them, are beginning to translate into tangible political opportunity. This series sought to capture the essence of some of this historical moment and direct it towards thinking about what we want our university campuses to look like, beyond the staple progressive policy of scrapping tuition fees. A project in unashamedly utopian thinking, it recognised the very real possibility that free tuition might be a reality in the near future, and sought to explore how this requires the left to think practically about what comes after and where our energy should be focused next.

A CO-OPERATIVE FUTURE FOR STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #9

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged BDS, Beyond Tuition Fees, Birmingham, Birmingham Student Housing Co-op, block grants, Brighton, co-operatives, Co-ops UK, coalition, corbyn, cost of living, democracy, economics, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op, ethical procurement, exploitation, featured, food, food co-ops, free range, free trade, Glasgow, Glasgow Student Housing Co-op, grassroots, housing, Labour, landlords, local food, maintenance grants, nestle boycott, norwich, Norwich Association for the Co-operative Housing of Students, nursing bursaries, NUS, NUSSL, organic, private renting, profit, property, Sheffield, Sheffield Student Housing Co-op, student accommodation, student activism, Student Co-operative Homes, student debt, student housing coops, student loans, students, Students for Co-operation, students' unions, SU reform, Tories, tuition fees.

By Robyn Banks

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

Up and down the UK, from Edinburgh to Brighton, students are building alternatives to existing, exploitative housing and food practices. How? By creating co-operatives! These alternative ways of organising are expanding and flourishing at a rate never seen before, as students look to take their lives into their own hands, in defiance of the rising cost of living and exploitative landlords and businesses. The founding of Student Co-operative Homes, a launch pad organisation for potential student housing co-ops across the UK founded by the grassroots network Students for Co-operation and supported by national co-op federation Co-Ops UK, demonstrates the growing support for these independent, democratic projects.

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, collective action, consumer law, consumer rights, consumerism, contact hours, corbyn, counselling, course closures, education, Free Education, funding, government, higher education, Labour, market regulators, marketing, marketisation, office for students, picket lines, policy, postgraduate, postgraduate education officer, postgraduate tutors, precarious contracts, profit, public, regulation, research, risk, specialist courses, state-funded education, student protection plans, students, students' unions, Success as a Knowledge Economy, taxation, tef, Tories, tuition fees, UCU, UEA SU, uk, UK Research and Innovation, universities, university collapses, USS strike, utopianism.

By Maddie Colledge, UEA SU Postgraduate Education Officer

It is a time of extraordinary potential for change in UK Higher Education. Labour’s promise to end tuition fees has defied the critics and united many behind Corbyn’s political project. But what will the implications for universities be if this comes to pass? And what can we do to leverage this progress? In this series, the Norwich Radical and Bright Green are bringing together perspectives from across the sector to explore these questions.

CW: Mentions suicide

It’s common for arguments in favour of free education to be dismissed as abstract or utopian, and for students who promote it to be belittled as naïve. I fear that in our attempts to try to portray the significance of free education, we have fallen into a trap where the concept has become so expansive and broad, and the term so overused, that it has lost all meaning. We need to move away from talking about ‘free’ education, and towards articulating a vision more explicitly centred on ‘state-funded’ education or ‘public’ education. For me, the description ‘free’ makes the concept feel distanced from the viable possibility of education funded through public taxation, and does us no favours in making it reality.

AGAINST POPULAR ENVIRONMENTALISM

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged canada, capitalism, climate change, coffee cups, corporate, ecology, economy, environment, environmentalism, Erik Solheim, Europe, featured, grassroots, India, levy, Mark Fisher, Michael Gove, Naomi Klein, Narmada, Narmada Bachao Andolan, NGO, non profit, Paris Climate Agreement, policy, private sector, profit, science, South Africa, Tar Sands, uk, UN.

by Scott McLaughlan

The earth is facing major – and quite possibly irreversible – environmental catastrophe and ecological breakdown. No need to panic. The Paris climate agreement was a resounding success, was it not?

On the one hand, one set of researchers estimate that at our current trajectory, we have about a 5% chance of remaining below the 2C threshold set out in the Paris agreement in 2015. On the other, a recent audit of the agreement conducted by the United Nations (UN) made it clear that even if the Paris agreement was to be met in full, it won’t be enough of a shift to avoid a total planetary clusterfuck of epic proportions. In his statement on the matter, head of UN Environment Erik Solheim suggested that “if we invest in the right technologies, ensuring that the private sector is involved, we can still meet the promise we made to our children to protect their future”.

What if the “private sector” is the problem? In order to decode the question we need to be clear what the private sector is, what its objectives are, and the kind of power it has over environmental policy.Continue Reading

“MORE POWERFUL THAN LANDLORDS CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE” – THE SUSSEX RENT STRIKE

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged access, ACORN Tenants' Union, activism, Birmingham Student Housing Co-op, campaign wins, campaigning, community action, compensation, democracy, direct action, Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op, exploitation, landlords, living conditions, living costs, Norwich Association for the Co-operative Housing of Students, power, profit, profiteering, quality of life, renfell tower, rent, rent strike, Sheffield Student Housing Co-op, standard of living, strike action, student accommodation, student housing coops, Students for Co-operation, Sussex Cut The Rent, UEA, university management, University of Sussex.

by Robyn Banks

Last week, students living in accommodation at the University of Sussex staged a rent strike, and successfully achieved their goals in the space of three days. The university has capitulated and agreed to £65,000 of compensation for the students who live in the halls due to the appalling state they are currently in.

UEA: BANKING ON IMMORALITY

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Apartheid, banking, Barclays Bank, BDS, boycott, climate change, climate research, Dakota Access Pipeline, divest, Divest Barclays, divestment, Elbit Systems, environment, environmentalism, Ethical Consumer, ethical consumption, ethical investment, ethics, extreme fossil fuels, finance, fossil free, Fossil Free UEA, fossil fuels, fracking, Green, investment, israel, Israeli-Palestine conflict, morality, norwich, occupation, palestine, people and planet, profit, profiteering, Ryedale, sanctions, Sheffield Students' Union, student money, students' unions, Third Energy, tuition fees, UEA, UEA SU, war, yorkshire.

by Robyn Banks

If it’s not one thing it’s another with UEA. Weeks after their announcement that they’ve finally divested from fossil fuel companies, People and Planet UEA have discovered that the university has nearly £23 million invested with Barclays Bank. This won’t be particularly surprising to most – there is a branch on campus after all – but it shows the university’s ongoing decision to disregard the unfolding environmental and ethical situation of the world it operates in.

PUTTING A PRICE ON DISABILITY

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Access to Learning Fund, ADHD, diagnosis, disability, Disabled Students Allowance, Dysgraphia, Dyspraxia, eduation, finance, Hardship Fund, higher education, learning, learning difficulties, marketisation, national student survey, nss, profit, specific learning difficulty, spld, student, student satisfaction, teaching excellence framework, tef, UEA, university, University of East Anglia.

by Robyn Banks

Last semester at University I was diagnosed as suffering from learning disabilities (Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs)). Whilst the diagnoses of having ADHD, Dyspraxia and Dysgraphia didn’t come to much of a shock to me, the fact that I then had to pay £100 in order to be diagnosed did.Continue Reading

COMBAT CAPITALISM – THE SHAME OF MAYWEATHER VS MCGREGOR

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged Amanda Nunes, athlete, boxe, boxing, brock lesnar, capitalism, combat, combat sports, Conoc McGregor, Dana White, Dimitrius Johnson, entertainment, fight, Floyd Mayweather, George St Pierre, Jay Z, Jon Jones, martial arts, MMA, money, mysogyny, press conference, profit, racism, sexism, sport, sports, toxic masculinity, UFC, wrestling.

by Toby Gill

Content warning – sexism, domestic abuse, racism, two very rich men being awful.

Last night, combat sports enthusiasts of the world gathered around their television sets. At the end of a long day’s work, they sunk into their sofas – remote in one hand, perhaps a Bud in the other. Of course, as they have been saying to their less knowledgeable friends for months, this whole fight is simply a farce. Of course, just like everyone else, they are obviously going to watch it. This week has been the world tour: a series of hugely anticipated pre-fight press conferences. Fans now watch eagerly – just to see if there could be some substance to this fight after all.

What they have been greeted with is a steaming, grotesque, shameless turd-like insult to everything they hold dear.

profit

THE UK PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

by Michael Noone for IAS UK

BUS W@NKERS

BEYOND TUITION FEES #11 – MUCH TO LEARN, MORE TO DO

A CO-OPERATIVE FUTURE FOR STUDENTS – BEYOND TUITION FEES #9

THOUGHTS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF MARKETISATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #3

AGAINST POPULAR ENVIRONMENTALISM

“MORE POWERFUL THAN LANDLORDS CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE” – THE SUSSEX RENT STRIKE

UEA: BANKING ON IMMORALITY

PUTTING A PRICE ON DISABILITY

COMBAT CAPITALISM – THE SHAME OF MAYWEATHER VS MCGREGOR

Support the Radical

Subscribe

by Michael Noone for IAS UK

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Support the Radical

Subscribe