A Free Left Blog

This is only a brief post, but I thought it was worth doing on account of a classic example of left-wing double-talk on the BBC Newsnight programme last night which shows once more how our ideologies are completely blinding us from reality. The occasion was a little report on university admissions outlining how the admissions service UCAS has accepted just 172,420 male admissions for the coming academic year so far, compared to 224,570 from females. That is 35% of male A-Level students going to university compared to 44% female students. National Union of Students (NUS) Vice President Joe Vinson was interviewed for the segment and said the numbers were “ not surprising ” because “ apprenticeships pay less for women systematically; women earn less in the workplace, particularly when they don’t have a degree. So it’s not surprising that women feel like they have to go to university to better themselves, in order to compete with men on an equal level ”. So we can see how fem...

  How we do things is who we are The Labour Party’s internal problems are largely down to a lack of ethical standards in the party culture. I joined Labour around three years ago and it has become clear to me that conflicts of interest are rife in party organisation, seemingly at all levels, and are exploited widely by those in positions of responsibility. The way we do things is who we are, and the way we organise processes is often dominated by group- and self-interests rather than commitment to any values or ethics . There is a culture of fixing which encompasses all factions and all powerful groupings within the party, not just the major unions.   The ethical framework this relies upon is anti-ethical, the justification being that it is right to fix and manipulate processes in order to secure the right result. This is anti-democratic and indicative of the poor state of democratic culture and practice within the party. Also, positive discrimination proc...