From the category archives:

.HERO

Week 19: Hero – Barack Obama

May 14, 2012

This weeks Hero of the Week, is the President of the USA himself, Barack Obama. Barack Obama is in the middle of the most intense and important election he will ever face. Within the next few months he will either be re-elected as President, or he will be rejected from the office into which he [...]

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Week 18: Hero – Ed Miliband MP

May 6, 2012

This week our award for the political hero of the last seven days goes to the Leader of the Official Opposition, the Rt Hon. Ed Miliband MP This award may feel a little obvious but that doesn’t mean it’s undeserved. There is no getting away from the fact that Ed Miliband and the Labour Party [...]

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Week 17: Hero – Robert Jay QC

April 29, 2012

As a barrister cross-examination is a fairly easy thing to do, but a bloody hard thing to do well. Anyone can stand up and ask a few questions, but, to do it in a way in which you leave your victim witness, railing, confused and blubbering like a fool is an art, it is also [...]

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Week 16: Hero – Francois Hollande

April 22, 2012

This week, our award for the greatest hero of the last seven days goes to French presidential hopeful, Francois Hollande. With today’s first round of the French presidential elections, there could be only one possible hero of the week here at All That’s Left.  Step forward, Monsieur Normal. Polling suggests that the first round will [...]

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Week 15: Hero – Kofi Annan

April 15, 2012

This week, our award for the hero of the last seven days goes to former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan Some weeks it is harder than others for All That’s Left’s editorial board to decide who deserve our weekly awards.  This was certainly one of those weeks for the hero category: we even had a [...]

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Week 14: Hero – Jim Marshall

April 8, 2012

This week’s Hero of the Week, is Jim Marshall. Normally someone has to do something more spectacular than simply die to be awarded the AllthatsleftHero of the Week Award. But in this case, Jim Marshall’s death seemed to us to be a perfect opportunity to mark the quietly important impact he has had on all [...]

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Week 13: Hero – John Mann MP

April 1, 2012

This week, our award for the hero of the last seven days goes to the MP for Bassetlaw, John Mann In politics, sometimes it takes only a single short well-chosen question to set off a domino effect of consequences.  We have witnessed that this week, when a single question put to the Chancellor of the [...]

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Week 12: Hero – Barack Obama

March 25, 2012

Our award for the hero of the week goes to President Barack Obama A month ago tomorrow, a bright and cheerful 17 year old lad called Trayvon Martin was walking back to his dad’s girlfriend’s house in the rain from the shops where he had bought a packet of Skittles and a can of iced [...]

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Week 11: Hero – Sachin Tendulkar

March 18, 2012

This week’s Hero of the Week, is the Little Maestro himself – Sachin Tendulkar. Each Summer I make a pilgrimage to Lords to watch the Test Match with my and Jackie’s old mate, Big Wally Souness, last year it was the Saturday of the England India test. Me and Wally arrived quite early and walked [...]

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Week 10: Hero – Lionel Messi

March 11, 2012

This week’s Hero of the Week, for his five goal performance in the Champions League – Argentina and Barcelona Number 10 – Lionel Messi Far and away the greatest footballer that ever lived who was named Lionel! Of course, we’ve never met him, but, he’s one of those footballers who you like to imagine is [...]

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Week 9: Hero – Shirley Murgraff

March 4, 2012

This Week’s Hero of the Week is retired teacher and NHS Campaigner – Shirley Murgraff. Shirley Mugraff’s argument in favour of the NHS is as straightforward as it is powerful – at 81 years of age, she remembers when we didn’t have a National Health Service, and she warns those who don’t remember those days, [...]

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Week 8: Hero – Marie Colvin

February 26, 2012

This Week’s Hero of the Week is the late Marie Colvin, War Correspondent of the Sunday Times As Jackie noted earlier today saw the launch of the Sunday Sun amidst a series of arrests of senior Sun journalists in connection with allegations that they were paying members of the Metropolitan Police for stories.  The Guardian [...]

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Week 7: Hero – Christine Gregoire

February 19, 2012

This Week’s Hero of the Week is Governor Christine Gregoire of Washington for signing into law a statute legalising gay marriage in her state In a week in which the catholic bishops in the United States have declared all out war on the Obama administration about his administration’s modest and entirely sensible proposal to require [...]

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Week 6: Heroes – The Greek Police Federation

February 12, 2012

This week, our award for the heroes of the last seven days goes to the Greek Police Federation As Papademos and the Greek Parliament debate the massive cuts being forced on them by the Eurozone this evening, the police are having to hold back the protesters amassed outside. Of course, those police officers’ jobs are [...]

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Week 5: Hero(es) – The Royal College of GPs

February 5, 2012

This Week’s Heroes of the Week are the largest of the Royal medical colleges, The Royal College of GPs for unequivocally calling for the Health and Social Care Bill to be scrapped Back at the beginning of last year when the government’s Destroy the National Health Service Health and Social Care Bill was first running [...]

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Week 4: Hero – Francois Hollande

January 29, 2012

This week’s Hero of the Week Award goes to the French Socialist Candidate for the Presidential Election – Francois Hollande! We are on the brink. Things have to change. The global capitalist system, dominated by the unregulated financial markets, has delivered massive wealth for the few, but is now grinding to a halt – leaving [...]

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Week 3: Hero – Caroline Lucas

January 22, 2012

This Week’s Hero Award goes to the leader of the Green Party and MP for Brighton Pavillion, Caroline Lucas There were two bright moments in the otherwise depressing general election in May 2010 that ushered in the current government.  They came within 20 minutes of each other. First, Margaret Hodge comfortably seeing off the odious [...]

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Week 2: Hero – Thierry Henry

January 15, 2012

This Week’s Hero of the Week is Thierry ‘Terence’ Henry for his Roy of the Rovers comeback for Arsenal last Monday against Leeds in the FA Cup 3rd Round To say that Thierry Henry is a bit of legend in the red half of North London is like saying Michael Gove is a bit of [...]

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Week 1: Heroes – Doreen and Neville Lawrence

January 8, 2012

This week’s Heroes are, overwhelmingly, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, whose son Stephen was the victim of a racist murder. It is quite rare that all the voting members of the Allthatsleft Committee unanimously acclaim the same person or people for our weekly award, especially for heroism. This week however, there was no debate, the undoubted [...]

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Week 52: Hero – David Hockney

January 1, 2012

This Week’s Hero of the Week goes to the new member of the Order of Merit, David Hockney The UK’s honours system has been the subject of frequent and justified criticism.  Whether it was David Lloyd George selling peerages or the more nebulous butequally dubious awarding of gongs to wealthy individuals who donate money to [...]

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Week 51: Hero – Vaclav Havel

December 25, 2011

This week, our Hero of the Week award goes to Vaclav Havel. As a young woman, my auntie went on holiday to Czechoslovakia.  For an idealistic, free-living leftie it was an exciting time, the heady days of the Prague Spring.  But that August, the tanks came rolling in.  My auntie had to be smuggled over [...]

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Week 50: Hero – Christopher Hitchens

December 18, 2011

This week’s Hero of the Week Award goes to the late Christopher Hitchens. If Vaclav Havel had died a day earlier, I reckon he’d have got this award. But he didn’t, and so this week we decided to award Christopher Hitchens our Hero of the Week Award. I have to concede that, at first blush, [...]

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Week 49: Hero – Osita Mba

December 11, 2011

This week, our hero award goes to Osita Mba, the solicitor for HM Revenue & Customs who blew the whistle on the deal that let Goldman Sachs off £10m in owed tax. Two months ago, we gave our Villain of the Week award to Dave Hartnett, the permanent secretary for tax who let Goldman Sachs [...]

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Week 48: Hero – Hillary Clinton

December 4, 2011

This Week’s Hero of the Week, is US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Our very first Hero of the Week and our Hero of the Year last year was Aung San Suu Kyi, the extraordinary leader of Burma’s pro-democracy movement and its rightful elected leader given the landslide victory her party won in the annulled [...]

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Week 47: Hero – Alan Johnson MP

November 27, 2011

This week, our hero award goes to the Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, for his stance on the public sector pensions strike We have been a little exasperated here at AllThatsLeft about the limp stance taken by Labour politicians on the public sector strike that is likely to go ahead on Wednesday.  Ever since Ed [...]

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Week 46: Hero – Rio Ferdinand

November 20, 2011

This week, our hero award goes to Rio Ferdinand Rio Ferdinand’s tweets this week lambasting Sepp Blatter have been bang on the money.  In a series of tweets directly responding to Blatter, he said: “Your comments on racism are so condescending its almost laughable. If fans shout racist chants but shake our hands is that [...]

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Week 45: Heroes – The Voters of Mississippi (well, 58% of them)

November 13, 2011

This Week’s Heroes of the Week are the good voters of Mississippi who on Tuesday voted  to reject Proposition 26. Even more than Alabama, Mississippi is the very image of the ultra-conservative,  socially backward,  god bothering deep south state.    It is the last state to still have the confederate battle flag in its state flag [...]

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Week 44: Hero – Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

November 6, 2011

There is, I think, something of the rock and the roll about dear old Rowan Williams – he appeals to me (and I am not one of life’s believers), in a way that few politicians do, because he’s not afraid to speak out and ruffle a few feathers when things need to be said. In [...]

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Week 43: Hero – Dr Giles Fraser

October 30, 2011

This week, our hero award goes to Dr Giles Fraser, who resigned this week as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral I was perhaps a little dismissive of the Occupy The City protesters a couple of weeks back: their occupation outside St Paul’s has done more to sustain attention on the behaviour of the City [...]

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Week 42: Hero, Steve Rotheram MP

October 23, 2011

This week’s Hero of the Week Award goes to the MP for Liverpool, Walton, Steve Rotheram In the last week or so, I have criticised politicians of the right and left for being uninspiring, cowardly and increasingly irrelevant. I have also written in the last year about my scepticism for e-petitions, which I damned as [...]

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