KEEP CALM & WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged benefits, benefits culture, Boris Johnson, conservatives, CSJ, cuts, deportation, dwp, featured, gender gap, george osborne, health, Iain Duncan Smith, NHS, pension, pension scheme, retirement, statistics, Tories, unions, vulnerable, welfare, welfare cuts, women, work, workers.

by Jonathan Lee

“New pension plans to work till you die are no cause for alarm” says arch-Tory overlord Ian Duncan Smith. A recent report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), the Tory think-tank which brought us Universal Credit, has recommended the government raise the retirement age from 65 to 70 by 2028, and to 75 by 2035.

The Tories are not content to simply make workers’ lives as miserable as possible through underfunding schools, unaffordable housing, food poverty, and the greatest devaluation of wages in modern history. They now seek to steal the last golden years of life from the majority of working class people who cannot afford a private pension in order to retire early.Continue Reading

WHY WAGES MATTER

Posted on March 27, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged benefits, cuts, decline, denmark, economy, featured, Ghent, housing, IFS, livelihood, pay gap, recession, salary, statistics, trade union, TUC, uk, unions, wages, welfare, workers.

by Edward Grierson

It goes without saying that the current wage situation in the UK is not good. Following the disastrous speculation on the banks’ behalf that led to the recession, real wages for UK workers fell by 10.4% from 2007-2015, a decline only matched by Greece. Even worse has been the combination of this wage drop with the continued pay gap between employees and the people who employ them: as of 2015, the salary of a UK CEO was nearly 130 times that of the average UK worker’s salary.

The reason why this is a concern, why we should be worried about falling wages, surely is obvious.Continue Reading

2017: THE YEAR OF THE YOUTHQUAKE?

Posted on February 21, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged activism, agitate, analysis, BES, change, conservatives, corbyn, democracy, demographics, elections, featured, GE17, general election, Ipsos-Mori, Labour, mobilise, momentum, New Statesman, nme, organise, Parliament, Peter Kellner, politics, Prosser et al, statistics, uk, voter turnout, voting, yougov, young people, youth engagement, youth politics, youth turnout, youthquake.

by Bradley Allsop

Youth voter turnout has long been a topic of debate, controversy and worry in British politics. Always below the national average, it has plunged even more than other age-groups’ dovetailing turnout in recent decades, sparking expressions of concern (although comparatively little policy change) from political parties. This seemed to have changed last June, with sites such as Yougov and NME reporting large increases in the youth vote for the 2017 general election, with the figures suggesting the largest rise in youth turnout in British political history.

“TOO COLD TO CONCENTRATE” – THE STATE OF STUDENT HOMES IN 2018

Posted on February 4, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged ACORN renters' union, bills, class, cold, direct action, electricity, featured, fuel poverty, gas, Homes Fit For Study, mental health, NACHoS, NUS, prepaid meters, private landlords, property, rent strike, report, statistics, student accommodation, student housing co-ops, students, utilities, wellbeing.

by Robyn Banks

Last week, NUS released the 2018 edition of their ‘Homes Fit For Study’ report on the state of student housing in the UK. Whilst the findings aren’t overly surprisingly, they still present the stark realities of the standard of housing that students have to face. The report demonstrates the effect that poor housing can have on mental health and wellbeing – one student reported that “Sometimes in bed when it’s bitterly cold we all feel like crying…” and another even said that her housing was so cold she caught pneumonia. In a society where the focus is on growing private capital, the health of tenants often comes second.

WHY I WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO COLLECT DATA ABOUT MY ETHNICITY

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged antigypsyism, census, data, discrimination, ERRC, ethnicity, Europe, featured, France, government, GRT, gypsy, Hungary, identity, invisibility, Italy, law, Mapping for Change, measures, mortality, policy, population, Roma, Romani, Slovakia, statistics, Sweden, traveller.

by Jonathan Lee

A new project to count the number of Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers in London was recently launched by London Gypsies & Travellers and Mapping for Change. Their goal is to provide an accurate estimate of the numbers and distribution of GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) people across the city.

Official census statistics on Romani and Traveller people in the UK are famously inaccurate (only 58,000 in the 2011 census). This is partly because neither group are traditionally very fond of official registers, particularly those which record ethnicity.

And why should we be?Continue Reading

DODGE THE BULLET

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged domestic violence, gun control, gun owners, gun sales, guns, hungerford massacre, Las Vegas, las vegas shooting, mass shootings, militia, National Rifle Association, NRA, perception, port arthur massacre, Sandy Hook, second amendment, Select Committee on Gun Violence, shooting, statistics, Texas, US.

by Gunnar Eigener

Content warning: mentions mass shooting

From big cities to rural communities, gun crime brings chaos and despair. Guns kill on average 12,000 people a year in the US. Recent shootings in Texas and Las Vegas have left local populations shattered yet a feeling of deja vu rests with an increasingly desensitised nation. Such events have ceased to shock, leaving only numbness and a perplexed public watching politicians squabbling over gun laws and counting potential lost or gained votes. But some things remain the same: the US has a gun problem and everyone knows it.Continue Reading

UNDERSTANDING PREVENT REFERRALS: YOUNG PEOPLE, ISLAMISM AND EDUCATION

Posted on November 21, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Student and tagged Adam Deem, Counter Terrorism, extremism, government, Home Office, ideology, Islamism, islamophobia, prevent, profiling, Quilliam Foundation, racism, radicalisation, reports, statistics, students, terrorism, training, xenophobia.

By Richard McNeil-Willson

At the start of November 2017, the UK Home Office released its official figures for referrals to the Prevent Counter-terror Programme for the 2015-2016 period. It showed that, of the 7,631 of all referrals, ‘Islamist extremism’ represented the greatest threat, young people were the most vulnerable to radicalisation, and authorities only needed to respond to a minority of cases. But there are problems with this reading, which are shown by exploring the nature of referrals and the political context in which they sit.Continue Reading

50 YEARS – HOW FAR HAVE WE REALLY COME?

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives, Student and tagged Against The Law, bbc, capital, crime, decriminalisation of homosexuality, discrimination, gay capital, gay men, gay privilege, gay rights, hate crime, homophobia, inclusivity, LGBT+, lgbt+ rights, Marianna Valverde, media, media bias, misrepresentation, oppression, Owen Jones, Peckham, population, positivity, privilege, Richard Taulke-Johnson, sensationalism, sex, Sexual Offences Act, statistics, Stonewall, The Guardian, uk, universities, yougov, young people.

by Alex Powell

CW: mentions homophobia and homophobic abuse

Last week marked 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 entered into law, in the first step towards the decriminalisation of homosexuality. There’s been a great deal of coverage of this milestone in British media, including some brilliant, informative TV programming (I highly recommend the BBC’s drama ‘Against the Law’). But it is Owen Jones’s recent Guardian column ‘Hatred of LGBTQ people still infects society. It’s no time to celebrate’ that seems to have been most prominent. Jones’ arguments are certainly justified, but commentary like his risks misrepresenting the situation that now faces LGBT+ people in this country. It’s not all bad.

REVIEW: STATE AND SOCIETY, BY MARTIN PUGH

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged academic, bank reform, book, Britain, corporate, corruption, economy, election, general election, history, imbalance, inequality, jeremy corbyn, job loss, margaret thatcher, martin pugh, politics, privatisation, reading, review, selling, state and society, statistics, stats, student, tax, tax reform, theresa may, tony blair, uk, undergraduate, working class.

by Toby Gill

When Theresa May announced her snap election, I was travelling across Japan. At the time I was spending a lot of time on a variety of very slow trains (the famous bullet trains were somewhat beyond our budget). This gave me a lot of down-time to ponder my electoral choices, and consider which way I should vote. It also gave me a lot of time to read the latest tome of modern history I had picked up: Martin Pugh’s State and Society; a social and political history of Britain since 1870. It is not a politicised book; it markets itself as a rigorous work of academic history, designed to introduce new undergraduates to the period – a task it performs superbly.

However, this is a politicised book review.Continue Reading

BUT HE’S NOT RACIST

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged African, BAME, berlin, berlin wall, black, BLM, Britain, Business Location Center, colonialism, culture, France, germany, guilt, Isaiah Lopaz, manchester, melting pot, microaggression, personal experience, POC, politics, population, race, racism, report, resist, resistance, shame, slurs, statistics, systematic racism, The Netherlands, uk, UN, white west, whiteness, woc.

by Candice Nembhard

I have been living in Berlin for around two months now and generally the transition from the UK to mainland Europe has been a relatively easy process. If we put rising rent prices, endless German bureaucracy, and the future of Brexit aside, Berlin in some ways is a safe haven for a young black Brit such as myself.

Undoubtedly, my ability to move, live and work in Germany is not possible without an immense amount of privilege. I, unlike many people, do not face the same amount of adversity by simply being here; irrespective of my feelings towards my nationality, having a British passport is a golden ticket I didn’t have to work for. However, even with its numerous working and academic advantages, my citizenship does not defend me against the microaggressions of prejudice and racism that I receive almost on a daily basis.Continue Reading

statistics

KEEP CALM & WORK YOURSELF TO DEATH

WHY WAGES MATTER

2017: THE YEAR OF THE YOUTHQUAKE?

“TOO COLD TO CONCENTRATE” – THE STATE OF STUDENT HOMES IN 2018

WHY I WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO COLLECT DATA ABOUT MY ETHNICITY

DODGE THE BULLET

UNDERSTANDING PREVENT REFERRALS: YOUNG PEOPLE, ISLAMISM AND EDUCATION

50 YEARS – HOW FAR HAVE WE REALLY COME?

REVIEW: STATE AND SOCIETY, BY MARTIN PUGH

BUT HE’S NOT RACIST

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