Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Brooklyn, Georgia

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (94)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 94th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1487 friends!

Recent blogs:

  • Food: commodity or need?
  • The Grimethorpe Miners
  • Do We Need Money?
  • Quote for the week:

    "In short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself - a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others." William Morris, Useful Work vs Useless Toil, 1884.

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill (Dell 1990)

    "You reckon?" she said, picking up her book once more. This time he glimpsed its title. Anna Karenina. Dalziel's reading was not extensive. Fiction-wise, it was restricted almost entirely to Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, which he'd stolen from his honeymoon hotel and read circularly as if it were Finnegans Wake. But Anna Karenina he knew because of the Garbo movie. He'd been more concerned with copping a feel from the buxom lass by his side than watching the elegant shadow on the screen, but he did remember it hadn't been a bundle of laughs.

    Tuesday, April 28, 2009

    Mike Bassett: England Manager (2001)

    Capitalism in Crisis: A May Day School for Socialism

    The Socialist Party is holding a dayschool on the current crisis this Saturday 2 May at its offices at 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

    Programme with approximate timings:-


    10.30 Welcome visitors


    11.00 First session with Brian Gardner - Capitalism and Economics
    - Chair Richard Field

    11.45 Discussion

    12.45 Lunch


    14.00 Second Session with Gwynn Thomas -- Capitalism, Resources & the Environment

    - Chair Fraser Anderson

    14.45 Discussion


    15.45 Tea Break

    16.15 Third Session with Simon Wigley - Capitalism and Society

    - Chair Tristan Miller

    17.00 Discussion


    18.00 Close

    ALL WELCOME.
    ADMISSION FREE

    Sunday, April 26, 2009

    In Ditmas (2009)

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (93)

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 93rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1484 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • CapitalismĂ­s reserve army of labour
  • The health of wage slaves
  • Guess who's not getting that rose garden?
  • Quote for the week:

    "This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser." Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 4 (1867)

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Friday, April 24, 2009

    In Bruges (2008)

    Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin (Little Brown 2002)


    - "Where will you be working from?"

    - "I thought we might find a spare office at St Leonard's . . . "

    - Siobhan's eyes widened. "You think Gill's going to go for that?"

    - "I hadn't really thought about it," he lied. "But I can't see a problem . . . can you?"

    - "Do the words 'tea,' 'mug' and 'lob' mean anything to you?"

    - "Tea mug lob? Is that a Cocteau Twins track?" He won a smile from her. "So you really were just driving around?"

    - She nodded. "It's something I do when I can't sleep. Why are you shaking your head?"

    - "It's just that I do the same thing. Or I used to. I'm that bit older and lazier these days."

    Wednesday, April 22, 2009

    Punk: the Early Years (2003)

    He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (2001)

    'I asked for cornflakes'

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (92)

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 92nd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1480 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • What is to be done?
  • Never say oil
  • Financial wizards or great pretenders?
  • Quote for the week:


    The grabbing hands

    Grab all they can All for themselves, after all

    It's a competitive world

    Everything counts in large amounts


    Depeche Mode, Everything Counts (1983)

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Vaux populated

    Quick mention that the SPGB election blog, Vaux Populi, is up and running again what with the coming Euro Elections.

    The SPGB will be contesting the London seat, and has listed its eight candidates in a recent post.

    Monday, April 20, 2009

    Not So PG Quips

    OK, this clip is probably old news now but my post title skills takes time to steep.

    Hat tip to a poster at Urban 75.

    Wednesday, April 08, 2009

    Compañeros

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (91)

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 91st of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1480 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • All You Need is Money?
  • Council tax or free access?
  • The Tolpuddle Martyrs
  • Quote for the week:

    Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out ... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel ... and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. Mark Twain

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain

    Allen Street

    Three out of the five 'Local Favorites for Brooklyn, New York' are Woody Allen films? Really?

    Tuesday, April 07, 2009

    Socialist Party debate: 'Should capitalism have a future?'

    PUBLIC DEBATE
    Thursday 23 April, 7.30

    SHOULD CAPITALISM HAVE A FUTURE?


    Yes: John Meadowcroft (Author of 'The Ethics of the Market')

    No: Richard Headicar (Socialist Party)

    Brockway Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1

    Little Children by Tom Perrotta (St Martins 2004)

    And all at once, it came to Sarah: It was like being back at the Women's Center. For the first time since she graduated from college, she'd managed to find her way into a community of smart, independent, supportive women who enjoyed each other's company and didn't need to compete with one another or define themselves in relation to the men in their lives. It was precisely what she'd been missing, the oasis she'd been unable to find in graduate school, at work, or even at the playground. She'd searched for it for so long that she'd even come to suspect that it hadn't actually existed in the first place, at least not the way she remembered it, that it was more a product of her romantic undergraduate imagination than anything real in the world. But it had been real. It felt like this, and it was a huge relief to be back inside the circle again.

    Monday, April 06, 2009

    Graffiti from the bunker

    What's going on with H over at the mighty fine Cactus Mouth Informer blog?

    If I didn't know any better, I'd hazard a guess that he's been battered senseless with a rolled up copy of the November 2003 Socialist Standard. He keeps coming out with SPGB soundbites over at CMI.

    It'll be that one about the hottenhots next . . . mixed in with a Membranes cassingle.

    Thursday, April 02, 2009

    Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin (1994)

    Wild Davey Soutar. He and his kind detested the Festival. It took away from them their Edinburgh and propped something else in its place, a facade of culture which they didn't need and couldn't understand. There was no underclass in Edinburgh, they'd all been pushed out into schemes on the city boundaries. Isolated, exiled, they had every right to resent the city centre with its tourist traps and temporary playtime.

    not that that's why Soutar was doing it. Rebus thought Soutar had some simpler reasons. He was showing off, he was showing even his elders in The Shield that they couldn't control him, that he was the boss. He was, in fact, quite mad.

    Wednesday, April 01, 2009

    The brother of the greatest living englishman

    FDTW's Stuart and Dave's old mucker, Chris Knight, gets his three minutes. (Granted, he got his other twelve minutes last week.)

    Comedy gold or revolutionary insight . . . I'll let you decide. I just think he's Martin Newell's twin in both get up and humour.

    Molung Rouge

    Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (90)

    Dear Friends,

    Welcome to the 90th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

    We now have 1472 friends!

    Recent blogs:

  • Boom, boom, Brown
  • The death of ideas?
  • Threats and threats
  • Quote for the week:

    "Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave." Leo Tolstoy, What shall We Do Then? 1886

    Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

    Robert and Piers

    Socialist Party of Great Britain