Fashion victims

Some of today's most interesting reads.

Let's start with the New Statesman, where an on-form Peter Wilby challenges the oily consensus that formed around Rupert Murdoch's daddy's boy James and his recent attacks on the BBC, "a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision" (the cheek!).

Also, if you scroll down, have a peep at Wilby's portrayal of what it would be like if British roads worked like the railway. Quality stuff.

Charlotte Raven discusses how "since the mid-1990s, feminist opposition to fashion has all but evaporated". Although you may be advised to read the cryptic piece with a dictionary at hand, she does make some good points.

On Blurred Clarity, Daniel Hoffmann-Gill destroys the myth of Milton Friedman's, the taleban of extreme unfettered capitalism, a man whose contribution to international misery from the 1970s on cannot be overstated. "Milton Friedman never had a moment of self-doubt in his life" he writes, "and people without self-doubt always go straight to the burning torments of Hades".

In the meantime staff at Cadbury's in Bournville (Birmingham) voted to strike over pay. In the words of Unite's National Officer, "Cadbury’s bosses have showered themselves and shareholders with 30 per cent profits, and the chief executive pockets, in one year alone, perks which far outstrip what the average Cadbury worker can ever hope to make in a lifetime. Yet the workforce is told they would be getting only buttons and 0.5 per cent in their pay packets".