British Society

Britain has become an Unequal and Unfair Society Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 13th 2013 Britain has been mired by scandal this week: MPs proposed pay rise, BBC Executive payouts, and the controversy of G4S and Serco engaging in corporate abuse of power. Yet through all this people tell themselves that one of the central characteristics of being a civilised country is progressive taxation and the degree to which we successfully redistribute resources from those who have the most to those who have the least. This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures which showed what many have

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On Living in an Old Country: The Power of the Past after Thatcher Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 15th 2013 The last week has effectively been an elegy on Britain’s recent past and present rolled into one. This is not just about Thatcher, but the numerous references to the Churchill and Attlee funerals and how we marked these past titans. Is this who we really were, we ask with curiosity? Are we still that same people who dreamed dreams, stood alone against the Nazis, and built a welfare state, we ask, with a hint of anxiety? Britain seems increasingly a

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Four Nations and a Funeral: The Demise of the British Welfare State Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 30th 2013 The British welfare state is meant to be one of the ties that bind us together; along with the NHS and the BBC representing our common strands of citizenship. Each has been remarkably eroded in recent years but on Monday April 1^st huge changes will occur in the first two - the welfare state and NHS in England – which will have massive consequences for hundreds of thousands of people up and down this country already hard pressed and vulnerable, and

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The Beginning of the End of ‘the Global Kingdom’ Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 9th 2013 This week something momentous happened for the future of the Britain, its economy and politics, for Europe, and our relationship with the continent. The European Union proposed and agreed a curb on bankers bonuses, over-riding the predictable opposition of the UK Government and George Osborne. The EU proposals supported by the European Commission, European Central Bank, and 26 out of 27 EU members, will put a ceiling on banker bonuses of one year’s salary, or two years if approved by a large majority

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How the World of Eton Sees Scotland and Scottish Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 20th 2012 The name of Eton resonates down through English tradition and privilege: from the Dave ‘n’ Boris show to the wider return of the old Etonians across public life. It has produced nineteen British Prime Ministers and a host of Scottish and British iconoclasts and radicals from Tam Dalyell and Neal Ascherson to John Maynard Keynes and George Orwell. Eton was an august setting for debating Scottish independence in the week of the Scottish and UK Government’s agreement. On the same day the

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How the Beatles Changed Britain and the World Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 6th 2012 It was fifty years ago yesterday that a popular revolution began in humble settings which had a seismic global impact that still affect the world today. This is the UK release on the Parlophone record label of the first ever single by the Beatles, ‘Love Me Do’. The Beatles changed so much: the image of Britain, music, culture, fashion, attitudes to class. They made Britain feel a better place and more dynamic, ‘swinging’ and ‘cool’ to people across the world. It is impossible to

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There is a long story to the crisis we are in Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 14th 2012 As the economic, social and political turmoil mounts across Britain, Europe and the West, some voices of certainty have arisen. One of the most vocal strands of opinion concerns who to blame for the wreckage and debris we see before us, with some wanting to lay the responsibility solely on the shoulders of Thatcherism, ‘the Big Bang’ and 1980s. It is very simple and easy to understand; the human need to rewrite history as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The 1980s as the epitome

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The Problems of Living with Capital-ism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 5th 2012 London is ‘the world city’ of these isles, a place which attracts and pulls talents from across the UK and the world: on a par with New York, Paris and Tokyo. Yet the London love-in of our political classes, media and business elites is fast pushing things to breaking point. We have had to endure Boris v. Ken as if it were a national contest, and this week the militarisation of the London Olympics and Heathrow chaos have dominated the airwaves. As UK politics and society

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The Continued Legacy of Britain’s South Atlantic Adventure Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, March 31st 2012 The 30^th anniversary of the beginning of the Falklands war is next week, a conflict that matters to this day. Like many at the time, I had to first find the South Atlantic islands on a map, then put them into my leftist anti-Thatcherite view of the world, and then observe the mood of a Britain I barely recognised. The Falklands war raised so many questions then and now. Was this a war of principle or pride? What did this say about Britain’s self-image

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The Comeback of ‘Gorgeous George’ and What It Says About British Politics Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, March 30th 2012 A seismic shock has been delivered to the British body politic and its insular, complacent, steady as she goes assumptions. It is one with many levels, layers and complications: the return of George Galloway as the ‘Respect’ MP for Bradford West overturning a Labour majority of 5,763, winning by a margin of 10,140 over Labour, with an impressive 18,341 votes (55.9%), considerably more than the combined Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem vote of 12,402. Already the qualifiers are out, implying

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