Featured Items
Romancing the Working Class
A Review of Paul Embery’s Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class; Polity: Cambridge. Simeon Scott Introduction Published in 2021, I bought this book recently in order to know Mr Embery’s views on such…
How Should Bradford’s Working Class React to Events in the Middle East?
Simeon Scott From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7th of October 2023, events have moved quickly in the Middle East. In Bradford, as elsewhere, we have seen rallies and…
McGarvey Review
The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain by Darren McGarvey Simeon Scott Published in 2022, Darren McGarvey’s book is well written, well presented and full of insights relevant to the working class of…
Bradford’s Mental Health
A Review of an Article Entitled: What the Anti-Psychiatry Movement Got Wrong About Mental Illness; by Madeleine Ritts in Jacobin,14thMarch 2022. available at https://jacobin.com/2022/03/anti-psychiatry-movement-mental-illness-psychological-suffering#:~:text=Madeleine%20Ritts.%20The%20anti-psychiatry%20movement%20advanced Simeon Scott Given the stresses of living in a society dominated by…
Magpie
Mike Barrett: An Example to Us All Now partly retired, Mike Barrett set up the Bradford-based radical news sheetMagpie. Below are some extracts from Mike’s writings, along with other contributions which, I hope you will agree,…
Immigration and the 2024 Riots
Simeon Scott and Muhsan Majid Introduction Fortunately, despite the rumours, the recent violent rioting committed by the English Defence League (EDL) and others did not directly affect Bradford. However, these riots were instrumental in raising the…
From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks: Shaping Our Own Destiny
Kamran Zamir In the eyes of the world, we’re often seen as the perpetual “From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks” narrative. It’s a label that clings to us like a stubborn stain, defining our existence through…
The Rise of the Gaza Independent Movement
A multipolar world The UK’s 2024 general election was notable for several reasons. Apart from the Labour Party’s landslide victory, along with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK’s surge, there was some success for independent candidates, particularly those…
The Working Class and the 2024 UK General Election
Simeon Scott Introduction Fortunately our screens are no longer dominated by the spectacle that was the 2024 general election. As working class people we were faced with a Punch and Judy show of career politicians, Love…
Bradford’s Banks are Ripping Us Off
The rise of global banking From the late 1970s until the present day a ‘free market’ approach has dominated the economic and political landscape. Apart from the occasional dissident voice such as that of Jeremy Corbyn,…
Council Watch
As some of our older readers will recall, Bradford’s Labour led Council has a history of both political and financial corruption. In return for used notes in brown envelopes, councilors gave permission for the demolition of…
Bradford Wants to Know the Truth about Netanyahu and Hamas
As was widely reported in the western media, a sizeable chunk of the Israeli population came onto the streets of their country’s towns and cities to protest against their ultra-Zionist government’s attempt to restrict the power…
Gaza and Ukraine
Taken from the website Viridis Lumen 1948 marked the Nakba, the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes by the new Israeli state, driving them into the small wedge of land that is Gaza, where the…
Bradford Asks the Jewish Community: With ‘Friends’ Like These Who Needs Enemies?
I am ashamed to admit that, for the first time in my life, I bought not only a copy of the Daily Mail but also the Daily Express. The 13th November 2023 front page of the…
Bradford Protesters Call for Ceasefire
Having attended a pro-Palestinian rally in Bradford Centenary Square on November 4th, we would make the following comments. We fully agree with the call for a full and permanent ceasefire, rather than a mere pause in…
Academic Articles
The Cult of Formal Logic
Simeon Scott The formation of the cult Coming from the Latin cultus, the word culthas several meanings. Originally used neutrally to describe a set of religious practices, it later took on negative connotations referring to unorthodox religious beliefs. More recently, and more relevant here, it can refer to obsessive secular beliefs. For instance, following the…
Gender and Capitalism
Simeon Scott Introduction This paper is the result of my reflections on a 2024 Channel 4 documentary The Push, which featured the trial, and conviction, of a Leeds-based man for the murder of his wife, whilst on holiday near Edinburgh. One such reflection was caused by a BBC News item (13th September 2022) charting the…
Language and the Media
Simeon Scott Introduction Bradford residents might be interested in thinking about the language routinely used by politicians along with journalists in the broadcast and print media. We could begin by looking at such mainstream texts as Crystal (2016); however, I found his book thoroughly disappointing. A simple, but important, example of the kind of language…
Wake Up Bradford! 