PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT – TIME FOR THE FIGHTBACK

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Community and tagged activism, activists, anti austerity, Arcadia Group, austerity, Australia, bedroom tax, benefits, Boris Johnson, campaigning, climate crisis, climate jobs, construction, corruption, Covid-19, cronyism, CWU, Debenhams, east anglia, engineering, eviction ban, featured, fossil fuels, furlough scheme, gig economy, government, green economy, green industrial revolution, Hospitality, hospitals, Jane Loftus, Jo Rust, jobs, King's Lynn, Labour, MPs, nationalisation, NHS, norwich, pandemic, People Before Profit, Philip Green, PPE, public ownership, recession, redundancies, retail, Serco, social security, tax reform, Topshop, Tories, tourism, trade unions, TUC, uk, Universal Credit, welfare state, wildfires.

By John Sillett

The recent collapse into administration of shop group Arcadia and Debenhams’ department stores was shocking, but not unexpected. Both companies have had their assets looted by their owners; Arcadia’s owner Philip Green has become widely seen as the unacceptable face of capitalism. Whilst the vultures pick over the bones of Topshop and its relations, there has been an avalanche of redundancies in many sectors, from construction to engineering. The pandemic has hastened the collapse or rationalisation of companies depending on footfall, like retail, hospitality and tourism.

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

EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

Posted on May 4, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged Beyond Tuition Fees, capital, capitalism, commodification, corbyn, cultural capital, david richardson, degrees, dissent, economy, education, featured, Free Education, government, HEFCE, higher education, Labour, labour market, marketisation, nationalisation, office for students, pedagogy, policy, professional classes, public ownership, research, society, state funding, student experience, student satisfaction, students, teaching, tuition fees, UEA, uk, UKRI, universities, university staff, workers.

By Michael Kyriacou

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.

The traditional arguments for ‘free education’ focus on reducing the upfront price of university courses to zero. Rather than HE being a commodity to be traded on the open market, it becomes a good paid for by the government. This kind of argument rests on a contradiction: we cannot solve the commodification of HE by continuing to assert the existence of HE as commodity, even a nationalised one. Abolishing tuition fees is undoubtedly a good thing, but to move beyond their legacy we must understand HE as devoid not only of its price but also its status as a commodity. We need to explore the potential for HE grounded not in classification or institution but in the fundamental equality of intelligences – HE without the degree.

WHY WE NEED A DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE AND ETHICAL BUS COMPANY

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Community and tagged bus, bus company, bus service, clause 21, commuters, eoin clarke, external, first bus, IPPR, liberalisation, nationalise, neoliberal, norfolk, norwich, Norwich Labour Party, privitisation, profit, public ownership, rail, renationalise, shareholders, transport act, we own it.

by Oliver Steward

It’s the 30th anniversary year of buses being deregulated and privatised by the then Thatcher government under the legislation of the Transport Act 1985. Privatisation was supposed to bring greater efficiency to the bus network, give commuters choice, and aid in cutting fares. It has however failed as a policy. It is time that local councils take back control of the bus network, and renationalise to make it publicly owned, and publicly accountable to those who use it.

Éoin Clarke posed a fundamental policy question concerning transport: why we should reconsider the merits of privatisation of our bus and rail network? In this article I’m going to focus on buses.Continue Reading

public ownership

BUS W@NKERS

EDUCATION AS EMANCIPATION – BEYOND TUITION FEES #7

WHY WE NEED A DEMOCRATICALLY ACCOUNTABLE AND ETHICAL BUS COMPANY

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