How do you feel about protection rackets? Go on, be honest. The phrase conjures up images in your mind of burly, swarthy men in pin-striped suits with pick-axe handles, doesn’t it? Smashing up your small enterprise, making you an offer you can’t refuse and breaking your legs if you do.
Archive for September, 2009
The rise of pseudo-democracy
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, September 25th, 2009Britain will be even less democratic if David Cameron gets his hands on power, warns Trevor Fisher
Oli Usher: Norman Borlaug: an expert in his field
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, September 25th, 2009The ranks of Nobel peace laureates are packed with politicians and campaigners. On the few occasions when scientists have entered the ranks, it is usually nothing to do with their research: Arctic explorer and researcher Fridtjof Nansen (1922) got it for inventing refugee travel documents; Chemist Linus Pauling (1962) and physicist Joseph Rotblat (1995) both won for their campaigning work against nuclear weapons. Among this distinguished company, the biologist Norman Borlaug, who died earlier this month, stands out as an exception.
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, September 25th, 2009
Should Labour cut government spending before the next general election? You said: Yes: 30% No: 70%
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, September 25th, 2009
You can’t keep a good Johnson down. Boris’ dad Stanley’s ambitions to follow his son into Parliament appear not to be daunted in spite of his rebuff at the hands of the Tories in the Mayor’s old Westminster seat in Henley. But the apparently gauche charm offensive of Johnson senior in the safe Tory seat [...]
Tribune Comment: Trident – a small but welcome step
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, September 25th, 2009“Considering how likely we are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected”. So wrote George Orwell, in one of his regular Tribune columns, in October 1945.
Real lives have been changed
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, September 24th, 2009The Tories can’t be trusted and Labour values will win the fight for Britain’s future, says Gordon Brown in an exclusive article in this week’s Tribune
Brown faces battle over control of Labour policy machine
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, September 24th, 2009Gordon Brown faces the toughest battle for control of Labour in a generation when the party meets at its annual conference in Brighton. The Labour leader is preparing a dramatic climbdown over his own party reforms in a bid to head off more sweeping changes that would deliver the biggest swing to grassroots power since members won a say over the election of the leader almost 30 years ago.
Clean environment could be legal right: Prescott
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, September 24th, 2009Living in a low-emission environment should be a legally binding human right, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said this week in a move which could change the European Convention on Human Rights.