Latest Writing

Can secular humanism be a kind of brainwashing?

Richard and Dan are alienated from the society in which they live. They wish they could experience the exuberance of happy singing, the joy of worshipping the God they do not believe exists, and the togetherness engendered by a shared belief. But try as they might, they simply cannot believe. Have they been brainwashed?

Featured Essay

I’m an internet hypochondriac

There are few pleasures in life to match the sweet terror of flicking through Gray's Anatomy to determine whether the pain you've just noticed in your knee is a sign of the imminent demise of a vital organ. The internet just makes it all so much easier.

Shorts

• No doubt I need a pedant bypass operation, but am I wrong in thinking the first of the posters produced by the Socialist Workers Party, featured here, is a mess? Surely it only makes sense if the thing which Blears is claiming doesn't make her a corrupt politician does make her a corrupt politician. But in this case, it doesn't. There's nothing corrupt about saying that avoiding tax on a second home is within the rules, it's the non-payment of the tax that constitutes the corruption (if it is indeed corruption, which I make no judgement about). #
• Yes Phil, the best solution to the egregious reporting of the flu outbreak by the British press is to bring the media into public ownership. Because state owned media has a long and glorious history of fair, accurate and balanced reporting. Oh right, no it doesn’t… #
• I know I shouldn’t laugh at socialists, but… this post contains what I think must be the most absurd example of Marxist ‘economic determinism’ I’ve ever read: “the police officer who comes to your home in response to a burglary or an incident of vandalism with a sympathetic ear and a commitment to your needs at that particular moment, is the same police officer who when deployed at a demonstration against the very institutions responsible for people losing their homes is ready, able, and willing to put a baton over your head…Social being determines consciousness, and the primary role of the police in any capitalist society is that of a weapon in the hands of a state controlled by the few at the expense of the many.” This is then followed by a commentator earnestly commanding that nobody forget “the guy whose name I’ve sadly forgotten” (I kid you not)! #
• Over at Socialist Disunity, Andy Newman has posted George Galloway claiming almost 2000 people for his web cast to Toronto last night. Well, when I had a look, it didn’t seem anything like that number, and the Toronto Star is reporting ‘more than 600’. Hmmm! #
• Benjamin Libet, eat your heart out. #