Quiz 2014


It’s the Socialist big quiz of 2014. As a bit of fun, the editors invite readers to test their knowledge from the past 12 months’ coverage in the Socialist of political events and workers’ struggles. Good luck and a happy New Year!

Questions

The green benches

1) Who announced he was quitting parliament because his wages and expenses don’t provide him the life he aspires to?

2) Name the two Tory MPs who defected to Ukip and were re-elected in subsequent byelection

3) What percentage of Tory MPs are private landlords?

4) Why won’t there be an investigation of MPs’ expenses claims prior to 2010?

5) How long was Tory Cabinet minister Maria Miller’s apology to the Commons after fiddling thousands of pounds in housing expenses?

6) Which organisation’s report calling for the abolition of the Bedroom Tax was described by government housing minister Kris Hopkins as a “misleading Marxist diatribe”?

7) Which former spin doctor to David Cameron was found guilty of phone hacking charges?


Domestic news

1) What TV programme did former Education Secretary Michael Gove complain had been used by ‘leftie teachers’ to show war as a “series of catastrophic mistakes perpetuated by an out-of-touch elite”?

2) Who argued that the devastating floods in the UK earlier this year were caused by the government legalising same sex marriage?

3) Name the Channel 4 ‘documentary’ which demonised low income families.

4) What was the percentage yes/no vote in the Scottish Independence referendum on 18 September?

5) What happened when two clergyman went to hand in a campaign letter on food poverty to the Witney constituency office of Tory Prime Minister and avowed Christian, David Cameron?

6) The most affluent family in the UK – Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor and family – has more wealth than what percentage of the population?

7) What was deemed to be no more effective than paracetamol at treating influenza?

8) According to the Sunday Times Rich List, what is the total wealth owned by the richest 1,000 people in the UK? a) £346 billion b) £478 billion c) £520 billion

9) Who, according to the Financial Times, gave Britain “a £10 billion boost”?

10) What happened after the right-wing Mail on Sunday claimed fraudsters abuse food banks?

11) Who was evicted for a second time by Newham’s Blairite mayor, Sir Robin Wales?

12) Who had to fork out £2.6 million to 45,000 customers after sending them threatening letters from non-existent legal firms?


Workers’ struggles

1) What event happened 30 years ago on 1 March provoking arguably the biggest industrial action in Britain?

2) What event also took place on 1 March effectively ending trade union influence in the Labour Party.

3) Who was re-elected unopposed assistant general secretary of the PCS trade union in March?

4) Why did solicitors and barristers go on strike?

5) In October, who struck for first time in its 133 year history?

6) Name (and shame) the Labour MP who crossed a UCU union picket line at Queen Mary University to deliver a lecture.

7) Which organisation launched the Fast Food Rights campaign?

8) Where was the government’s unjust Bedroom Tax defeated?

9) Whose 90 days of strike action result in a partial pay victory?

10) Whose protest action against their rogue landlord outraged the Sun?


The world stage

1) Where were 529 people sentenced to death, after a 24-hour trial, for killing a policeman?

2) Which notorious prison was closed in April?

3) Which terrorist group abducted 280 schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria on 5 May?

4) Name the billionaire businessman who won Ukraine’s presidential election on 25 May.

5) On 13 October, who voted by 274 to 12 to diplomatically recognise Palestine?

6) Who was re-elected president for another seven-year term on 3 June?

7) Which workers’ struggles coincided with the staging of the football World Cup in Brazil?

8) In January, Bloomberg Billionaires index reckoned the aggregate net worth of the world’s 300 richest people was a) $2.4 trillion b) $3.7 trillion c) $5.8 trillion?

9) Where in the USA was a doubling of the federal minimum wage won this year?

10) Name the Anti Austerity Alliance candidate elected to the Dáil (Irish parliament) in October on the tide of a massive anti-water charges movement?

11) After a five-week election in May who became prime minister of India?

12) What was the name given to the Israeli government’s war on Gaza?

13) Whose shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, in August produced angry protests across the USA?

14) What were 1.8 million people doing on the streets of Barcelona on 11 September?

15) Where did the ‘umbrella revolution’ take place?

16) In September, what did 300,000-400,000 protesters in New York City demand?

17) The removal of which notorious barrier 25 years ago was celebrated in November?

18) What was illegally manipulated by rogue traders resulting in multi-billion dollar fines against major banks?

19) Which nations were cleared by FIFA of corruption?

20) What video game has caused uproar among sections of the left in France?


Answers

The green benches

1) Tory MP Mark Simmonds can’t live on £67,000 salary, plus £28,000 accommodation expenses, plus the £173,000 general expenses he claimed last year

2) The upper-class reactionaries: Douglas Carswell, Clacton, and Mark Reckless, Rochester and Strood

3) 25%. That compares to 12.5% of Labour and 15% of Lib Dem MPs. This is in addition to MPs enjoying publicly funded second homes

4) Because the records have been shredded

5) 30 seconds

6) The United Nations

7) Ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson was given an 18 month sentence


Domestic news

1) The comedy series Blackadder

2) Henley-on-Thames (ex)-Ukip councillor David Silvester

3) Benefits Street

4) 45% yes to 55% no. A Times poll in December showed 52% yes and 48% no

5) Staff called the police.

6) 10%. The Grosvenors’ assets are £7.9 billion, while the 10% is £7 billion

7) Tamiflu – after the government had forked out £473 million in five years to ‘big pharma’ for the drug

8) c) £520 billion – up 15% on 2013

9) Prostitutes and drug dealers, whose trade was included in the UK’s economic growth figures

10) Financial donations to the Trussell Trust charity surged by over £50,000

11) Unemployed single mothers, known as the Focus E15 mums

12) Rip-off pay day loan provider, Wonga


Workers’ struggles

1) The closure of Cortonwood pit in Yorkshire; leading to the great 1984-85 miners’ strike

2) Labour’s special conference on the Collins Review – held in the east London constituency where Keir Hardie was elected the first independent Labour MP in 1892. It only took two hours to vote through the change.

3) PCS Left Unity and Socialist Party member, Chris Baugh

4) To protest over the Con-Dem government’s swingeing cuts to legal aid funding

5) The Royal College of Midwives, over pay cuts

6) Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt whose lecture was ironically titled: “Marx, Engels and the making of Marxism”

7) The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), to fight for a living minimum wage, and for union and workplace rights

8) Scotland. Following a successful campaign by the Scottish Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation

9) Doncaster Care UK workers

10) Celebrity Russell Brand was vilified on the tabloid’s front page after supporting a demonstration of tenants from the New Era housing estate in Hackney, east London


The world stage

1) Egypt. The defendants were arrested during protests against the coup which ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

2) Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Where inmates were tortured under the US-led occupation of the country in 2003

3) Boko Haram

4) Petro Poroshenko

5) UK MPs

6) Syria’s despot Bashar al-Assad, with 89% of the vote

7) The Metro workers, teachers and the homeless workers movement. Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the footie final

8) b) $3.7 trillion

9) Seattle, Washington state. 100,000 workers will benefit thanks to the $15 Now campaign and Socialist Alternative city councillor Kshama Sawant

10) Socialist Party member Paul Murphy

11) Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatoya Janatha Party (BJP)

12) Operation ‘protective edge’, which resulted in the deaths of 2,143 Palestinians and 66 Israelis

13) Michael Brown. The unarmed black teenager was shot dead by a white policeman who will not face criminal charges

14) Demanding independence for Catalonia from the Spanish state

15) Hong Kong. Pro-democracy protesters used them as protection against police tear gas attacks

16) Immediate action to halt destructive man-made climate change

17) The Berlin Wall

18) The foreign exchange market, known as Forex

19) Qatar and Russia. England who cried foul after losing the 2022 world cup bid was, however, accused of impropriety

20) Assassin’s Creed Unity – which portrays French revolutionary Robespierre as a psychopathic mass murderer