For approximately two decades I have formulated and commended a ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’ (GBH for short). This was done with health inequalities in mind. It asserts that health inequalities in Britain, and indeed in kindred societies, are in large part an unintended consequence of the strategic, profit-seeking and often predatory behaviours of a hard core… Read More »
I have always had concerns about the emergence and consolidation of the concept of ‘hate speech’ in the UK (and indeed elsewhere). It is obvious that it resists easy definition, so let’s start with the current guidelines proffered by the Crown Prosecution Service. ‘Hate crime’ is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived by… Read More »
There are times when it is appropriate, even necessary, to be angry and to shout out. I’m presently in a local café trying hard to restrain myself. I have two immediate sources of irritation (and many more lurking around). These are: (1) the reviewers’ reasons for calling for a second set of revisions to our… Read More »
A new report from the Resolution Foundation tells of a widening of the wealth gap in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. The short summary that follows is indebted to Larry Elliot’s summary on 12 June in the Guardian. In terms of wealth, the richest 10% of the population have gained £50,000 on average, dwarfing… Read More »
We have written a paper on the salience of ‘muckraking sociology’ in the era of COVID which has (1) been rejected by a mainstream sociology journal, in part because it apparently doesn’t publish ‘polemical pieces’, and (2) returned to us with a request for a second set of revisions by a specialist health sociology journal,… Read More »
Today my co-authors and I have withdrawn a manuscript under consideration in a well-regarded international journal. We were invited to make a second set of revisions to a paper on ‘muckraking sociology, the NHS and COVID’, but felt that to agree to yet more revisions/compromises would be a step too far, not least in a… Read More »
OPEN LETTER TO JEREMY CORBYN AND JOHN McDONNELL 7 May 2021 Dear Jeremy and John, I have been following the Hartlepool by-election and local election results from yesterday’s ballots. They are grim results for the Labour Party, even if not much of a surprise to many of us. But they have set me thinking again… Read More »
A Canadian colleague and kindred spirit, Dennis Raphael, recently sent me a copy of a pamphlet prepared by the Medical Research Group of the Labour Research Department entitled ‘Social Murder’ and published – ‘price twopence’ – in 1934. It has extraordinary resonance today and warrants a summary. It starts, appropriately enough, with a seminal quotation… Read More »
I have often pondered on what I have, or more to the point haven’t, contributed to the socialist movement. My record of activism is certainly parsimonious compared with others I know. I once blogged on what I see as an elective affinity between sociology, education and socialism, at the back of my mind a sense… Read More »
There have been times when I wished that Michael Marmot would attend to what I – as a sociologist – regard as root or fundamental causes of health inequalities, that he would talk and write about capitalism and class division and conflict. We have talked about this. He is of course an epidemiologist not a… Read More »