The decision by Stephen Hawking to add his support to the international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians has predictably resulted in a furore not only in intellectual and academic circles but also in the mainstream, due to the renown in...

Modern literature suffers from the lack of an epic novel which encompasses and defines the times in which we live, containing as a result that elusive but necessary quality of timelessness necessary to accord it the status of the classic. Perhaps Don Delilio's Underworld (1997) is the closet there has...

So here we go again: another week and another attack on Respect MP George Galloway; this time over the personal meeting it has been revealed he had with Labour leader Ed Miliband a few weeks ago.

The original story appeared in the Daily Mail in the form...

Awarding what amounts to a state funeral to Margaret Thatcher is an obscenity and an insult to the millions who suffered as a direct result of her time in office and afterwards under the ideology, Thatcherism, which bears her name. The figure quoted of £10 million in public money to...

Margaret Thatcher is dead and I will shed no tears.

I refuse to accept that her death should be mourned or that her impact on British society and the world was anything other than a baneful one. The countless lives ruined, shortened, and blighted by this woman in the war...

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Mick Philpott, his wife Mairead Philpott, and Mark Mosley are repugnant human beings. The deaths of six children in a fire started by them with the objective of blaming Mick Philpott's ex wife and thereby gaining custody of the four children...

The bedroom tax, due to come into force up all over the country on 1 April, must be turned into this Tory-led coalition government's poll tax.

This is not because it has the universal reach of the poll tax, which it does not, nor because it exemplifies more than...

The West of Scotland anti-Bedroom Tax Campaign was launched at an open and public meeting at Unison offices in Glasgow on 13 March. At the meeting an interim organising committee was formed to build and coordinate the mobilisation of a planned march and demonstration against the tax on 30 March...

Dear Mark,

The PCS union under your stewardship has earned a proud reputation for standing up for the rights of its members, many of whom are employed in providing the vital frontline services upon which millions of people in this country depend day in and day out. A strong and...

Many people wonder what drives people to immerse themselves in a political cause or movement against a war being waged thousands of miles away, involving a country they have never visited, and a people and a culture that that have no obvious connection with.

When you think about it, one...

The achievements of the 1945 postwar Labour government, explored and depicted in Ken Loach's new documentary, The Spirit of 45, should be part of the school curriculum in every generation as a model of what a government committed to meeting the needs of the majority of its citizens can be....

The death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez met with an outpouring of grief and tribute not only in Venezuela, but all over the world - evidence of the impact he had on the lives of millions, people for whom his dedication and commitment to justice accorded him a status that...

The tragic death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has reverberated around the world in a manner befitting his impact not only on the lives of millions of Venezuela's poor, but on the poor and supporters of justice everywhere. Cancer may have taken his life, but the ideas for which he...

As the hell of Syria's ongoing and increasingly intractable internal conflict continues to play out, the announcement by newly installed US Secretary of State John Kerry that the US is to step up its support for the Syrian opposition with $60 million in 'non-military' aid should leave nobody in any...

None of us who marched on 15 February 2003 will ever forget the feeling of hope, excitement, and human solidarity we experienced as part of the 12-15 million people who came out on the same day all over the world, united in opposition to the then approaching war in Iraq...

In 2003, during the run-up to the war in Iraq, I was living in Hollywood, where at the time I was working as Ben Affleck's stand-in on the movie Surviving Christmas. The experience is recounted in my book, Dreams That Die, just published by Zero Books. Given that...

No matter how you try to frame it, those who are opposed to gay or equal marriage are bigots. And just like all bigots, no matter the subject of their bigotry, they are doing their utmost to deny that they are motivated by prejudice - instead seeking justification for it...

David Beckham symbolises everything that is wrong in society. The fanfare with which he announced he is to donate his entire salary from his new club, Paris St Germain, to local children's charities in Paris bore all the hallmarks of a cynical PR stunt, performed with the objective of enhancing...

We are living in the midst of an economic meltdown, which as the latest economic figures reveal is being made worse not better by a Chancellor whose incompetence and mendacity is now beyond doubt.

The damning revelation that the UK economy shrunk by 0.3 percent in the last quarter of...

Isn't it nice to know that the third in line to the throne, Prince Harry, is a killer? Presumably now we can sleep safe in our beds, comforted by the knowledge that hovering over Afghanistan our esteemed and courageous prince is in his Apache attack helicopter with his royal finger...