Haven’t seen a full episode, but from what little youtube clips and wikipedia can tell me, looks like a load of petty bullshit to me.

Citizen Smith is a British television sitcom. The show was written by John Sullivan, who later wrote Only Fools and Horses. The pilot was transmitted on 12 April 1977 in the Comedy Special series of one-off plays, and the series proper ran from 3 November 1977 to 31 December 1980.

Citizen Smith starred Robert Lindsay as “Wolfie” Smith, a young Marxist^[1][2] ”urban guerrilla” living in Tooting, South London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are “Power to the People” and “Freedom for Tooting”. In reality, he is an unemployed dreamer and petty criminal whose plans fall through because of laziness and disorganisation.

Thanks again to Critical Reading

When hundreds of protesters battled riot police over plans for a gold mine in northern Greece recently, a newspaper compared their action with neo-Nazi squads who have been attacking foreign workers and stabbing immigrants.

This line of argument is reminiscent of the so called “horseshoe theory” according to which the far left and the far right, rather than being at opposite ends of the political spectrum, resemble one another like the ends of a horseshoe. This idea, which was at its peak during the cold war, appears in Greece disguised as the voice of “logic” against the “violence of the extremes”. What the media seem to forget is that the country was brought to its knees by the “extremism of the political centre” – a neoliberal project that ruptured the fabric of the society and paved the way for Golden Dawn. 

How fragile our ecosystem is:

“The fish started coming in last (Saturday) night after it was really windy,” Cresswell said, speculating that “the weather gets a little too hot and when the water gets above a certain temperature, the fish all die.”

 This all via Canada’s Sun News Network.

Don’t ask me why I was on the Sun News, Canada’s equivalent of Fox News. Well, okay, it was because of the recent ruling to keep Fox News out of Canada because lying in the news is illegal there... used to be in the USA too before Fairness Doctrine was canned under Reagan 

Here’s a statement from the ASLEF train driver’s union on the issue, something the above article COMPLETELY left out:

ASLEF announce strike dates on East Midlands Trains

18 Jul 2012

ASLEF’s Executive Committee announced today (18-07-12) that approximately 450 ASLEF members employed by East Midland’s Trains will take strike action on the following dates. August 6-7-8, 2012, as part of their on-going dispute with EMT over pensions contributions.

Previous strike action planned to take place from June 23-25, 2012 was suspended to allow for further negotiations to take place. However talks have failed to produce the hoped-for breakthrough.

ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan said

‘To cut pension contributions in the current climate is highly irresponsible. It is widely believed that the fund’s assets have dramatically decreased since the last valuation. Also, any suggestion that drivers would save money ignores the fact that the pension scheme is split 60/40 between the employer and the employee - so if our members are saving £500, the company is saving £750. In total that’s £1,250 a year less going into the fund per active member.

‘This is simply storing up trouble for the next valuation and the future of the scheme. It is disingenuous to suggest our members are getting something for nothing. The current owners of the East Midlands Trains franchise may have no responsibility over the pension fund in a few years, whereas our members face the prospect of either cripplingly high contribution rates or reduced benefits due to a short-term cost-cutting decision made by EMT that has left the scheme in deficit.’

And here’s another statement about their action plan against austerity:

Action For Rail

The rail unions are working together on a campaign to save rail from the government’s ‘cuts and austerity’ policies and to stave off the implementation of the McNulty Report.

…

‘We cannot leave rail to the ‘magic of the market’ as the Tories see it,’ she said. ‘The Command Paper is an attempt to save costs by introducing unproven and untested theories.’

…

‘Franchising and privatisation have been discredited as a faulty models,’ Mick declared. ‘One has led to the fragmentation of our industry and the second has deprived it of investment. Why are our fares more expensive than on Continental Europe? Because they invest in their railways while our system creams off profits into the bank accounts of private investors.’