“The two essential daily newspapers in the UK are the Morning Star and the Financial Times“ – discuss (1).
I’ve not time, money or inclination to get them every day, but on Saturdays… So, I will try to blog a bit about them, what I learn etc. For the FT it might only be the main section, not the Life & Arts, Magazine, HTSI etc.
Morning Star Feb 10-11 2014
Front page is abt Manchester Palestine Action doings vs Barclays, quoting an activist I know and respect.
Usual national and international coverage, all interesting (remember, no gossip/triviality).
Nice piece by Diana Abbot on the green investment plan
“Politicians are allowed to change their minds, especially when facts change. They are allowed to change policies, otherwise every manifesto would be the same as the last one. But what voters do not accept is being hoodwinked.”
Rehearses the different types of borrowing (the purpose you put it to etc) and closes with
“This government is so putrid that we can only hope this U-turn may not prevent Labour coming to office. But it is damaging. And it palaces a question mark over the trajectory of Labour in government. With no plan for economic growth and no policy to tackle climate change, or poverty, or the crisis in public services, the risk is for a very rough ride post-election.”
Abbott, D. 2024. Too many empty promises. Morning Star, February 10, p.11
Nice piece on the late Dave Lewis, a core member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. A couple of long pieces on the miners’ strike (began forty years ago). Little reflection on what went wrong, strategically; more pointing out how the state mobilised (“A ring of police ‘steel’ was imposed around Sheffield at that time… no-one was able to travel out of the city to neighbouring villages, towns or cities”) and taking solace in various forms of solidarity and resilience. Reminds me too much of the lyric from Tom Lehrer in his song about “The Folk Song Army” – “though he (2) may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs…
There’s an editorial “40 years on we must shake Britain free of Thatcherism”. Nowt on who the “we” is, and how “we” do that – what “we” have to do differently to the usual repertoires that give us comfort.
Nice stuff from Attila the Stockbroker (a regular columnist). This from a new poem of his The Lucky Generation.
But now the Bevan dream is dead
And who has sealed its fate?
the very generation whom
It sought to educate!
Our grandchildren despair of us-
Their words stick in their throats
They’re saying “Save our planet, please!”
We’re saying “Stop the Boats!”
Nice review of an exhibition at the British Museum by Tom King “The life and times of the Imperial footsoldier”. I did not, to my shame, know about Arminius
Arminius (/ɑːrˈmɪniəs/; 18/17 BC–AD 21) was a chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe who is best known for commanding an alliance of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, in which three Roman legions under the command of general Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. His victory at Teutoburg Forest precipitated the Roman Empire‘s permanent strategic withdrawal from Germania Magna,[2] and modern historians regard it as one of Rome’s greatest defeats.[3] As it prevented the Romanization of Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, it has also been considered one of the most decisive battles in history[4][5][6][7] and a turning point in human history.[8]
From the letters page – there’s a book to read by a German fighter pilot, Adolf Galland, called “The First and the Last”
Financial Times February 10 2024
They lead with Biden and his age-old problem (geddit?)
“Biden has shied away from such events during his presidency. He declined an invitation to be interviewed on CBS this weekend for a spot that would have aired alongside the Super Bowl, reaching 100mn Americans.”
Heaps of good coverage (junior doctors strike, Stormont etc). Crucial piece on the 28bn fiasco. Essentially it’s rolodex journalism, but what a rolodex!
Parker, G. Millard, R., Mooney, A. and Uddin, R. 2024. Labour drops green dream but clings to target. Financial Times, February 10, p.3
From the letters page –
Book recommendations – “The Alphabet and the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image” by Leonard Shlain (there’s a podcast. Of course there is. There’s always a podcast.)
Chloe Aridjis’s novel Asunder (have reserved at local library) Grauniad review here.
Monophysitism was the idea that Jesus had only one nature, either human or divine. This idea had little support, as it was consistently rejected by many church leaders during the establishment of doctrine. These debates occurred at the Seven Ecumenical Councils, where many monophysite groups were declared heretics.
Nice opinion piece by Edward Luce – “Democrats need to face the unavoidable truth about Biden.”
Andy Haldane extolling “business” as entrepreneurial – perhaps needs to compare notes with Philip Inman, in today’s Guardian -The hard truth is that Britain’s entrepreneurs simply don’t innovate.
Fun piece by Miranda Green “Pop goes the right as Sunak faces dual threats.” – key passage imo is this –
“Farage and Tice say they are determined not to call off their dogs this time (standing down in the Tory-held seats in 2019 gave Boris Johnson a huge boost). They hope to refashion the whole of the right in their own image. Truss and co believe that taking the Conservative party in a more radical direction will deliver salvation under the current banner. And Sunak is left in the same defensive crouch as so many of his predecessors.”
Quite.
In the Companies and Markets section (which I am forcing myself to read more assiduously) there’s a piece on Uber finally showing a year of profit, under new boss. We shall see…
And a good piece about customer boycots over Gaza leave bitter taste for Starbucks and McDonald’s by Daria Mosolova.
This kind of stuff goes on regularly and generally has no lasting impact on companies – sentiment can change very quickly, ” said Michael Barnett, professor of management and glboal business at Rugters Business School.
But he warned that while most boycotts ended in customers returning to their old routines, they had the potential to bring lasting consequences if they went on for “long enough to cause people to shift their buying patterns.”
So, another time I will write more about letters’ pages (I have a fascination with their usefulness as a source of learning), and other stuff… Hope this was useful to someone besides myself, but if not, never mind.
Footnotes
(1). FT because – as Uncle Noam says – it’s for the people who actually run the show, so less wish-fulfilment and dreary propaganda/Westminster bubble shite (looking at you, Torygraph, Times). The Morning Star because it covers the strikes, unions and has very good cultural coverage of specific stuff and offers an analysis largely absent elsewhere. In both cases, a minimum of gossip and triviality.
(2) Franco
marchudson.net 
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