Technology is a great tool – but it is people that will change politics | Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/26/politics-change-new-technology
Technology is a great tool – but it is people that will change politics | Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/26/politics-change-new-technology
Lesson one: when it comes to the crunch, private sector knows best
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/26/universities-private-public-david-mitchell
The private sector caused the credit crunch, the financial crisis, the global recession. The public sector bailed out the banks and brought the world back from the brink of ruin. When our railways were in public hands, they were shabby, unreliable and loss-making. In private hands, they still are but public money ends up in the hands of shareholders and the tickets cost vastly more.
Ireland’s poisonous blasphemy debate | Padraig Reidy | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/24/artwork-blasphemous-blasphemy-laws
Ireland, meanwhile, is facing its first blasphemy controversy since the Fianna Fáil/Green government introduced a new blasphemy law. Buckley’s claim that all Irish people revere Mary chimes dangerously with that law’s definition of blasphemy as something likely to cause “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of [a] religion”. UCC could yet have a case on its hands.
The invisible domestic #violence – against men | Nicola Graham-Kevan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/07/feminism-domestic-violence-men
That women accounted for 7% of all convictions for domestic violence last year will come as a surprise to many. But what is not clear is whether the growing numbers of women convicted – a 150% increase in five years – represents a rise in actual cases of female-perpetrated domestic violence.
F is for Franco but not for fascist, apparently | Miguel-Anxo Murado | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/02/franco-spanish-dictionary-biography
Did you know that General Franco was not a dictator, just a bit too “authoritarian”? What about the people who opposed him? Ever felt the temptation to call them democrats or anti-fascists? Wrong. According to Spain’s Royal Academy of History, the right term should be either “bandits” or “terrorists”. …