Though Cowards Flinch

Now listen up.

I’m a very important and influential political commentator – a bit like Nick Robinson but with smaller glasses and a proper understanding of politics –  so I really haven’t got time to waste writing extra stuff for a medium-sized blog. 

So here’s an article I wrote for Red Pepper earlier tracing the historical dodginess of Credit Rating Agencies, and with an exciting start, middle and end bit.

This one’s for free, but I want you all to give serious consideration to subscribing to the magazine itself, and not just because I have now become its top writer, though that would be justification in itself.

Subscribe because Red Pepper is about the only regular (6 times a year) socialist magazine of its type available, and it’s actually pretty dammed good.  I don’t agree with all the stuff in there - in fact I’ll soon be critiquing one central article in the most recent edition which I think is rampant bollox -  and there’s too much Billy Bragg adoration, but it’s always well worth a good look through. 

It’ s run in a heroic pauper type way on a shoestring by really committed people, including the greatly estimable Hilary Wainwright who did a lot of the setting up in the 1980s and sticks with it even though she could easily tootle off and do other stuff instead.  Hilary, for reference, wrote by far the best book on the Labour left in the 1980s, and I still use it as a source of wisdom and clarity about what the left got wrong in the 1980s, even though I am also very wise.

It costs 20 quid for six editions a year, and you get back copies when you subscribe, which you can do by clicking here and doing the debit card stuff.

If you really get into it, and if you’re a student or something, you could go to your university bookshop and harrass them about stocking it if they don’t already.  After all, many of them already stock Total Politics, and that’s utter shite.