Yesterday, a little the worse for wear after the excellent Alabama3 gig and consequent after-party in Brixton, I joined my friend Kate at Parliament Square for some guerilla gardening. For the last couple of weeks, the square has been taken over by Democracy Village, which is a surprisingly large number of tents, even a small… [Read more…]
May 14, 2010
I’m podcasting again, this week with The Pod Delusion. My segment’s about women in the election. A lot of people have been seeing red about the ludicrous imbalance in the new government (and the old ones as well), including The F-Word, the Guardian, the Guardian again, and the Fawcett Society. In my bit, I get… [Read more…]
May 11, 2010
I haven’t bought a newspaper for about five years. I read them online. On Sunday, however, I was at a friend’s house and, while the kettle was boiling and my friend was laying the cakes out, I flicked through the pile on the coffee table. Ah, Sunday Times Style, I thought, and had a look.… [Read more…]
May 7, 2010
The above statement may seem counterintuitive, even incorrect. Twitter sparkles with ideas, among all the links, gags, and TV commentary, and when people talk about politics, they talk of little else but change. So what the hell happened today? In my corner of Twitter, the pre-election talk was LibDems or bust. All sorts of people… [Read more…]
May 5, 2010
Two more days left until the election closes. Two more days of the thrilling yet sickening agony of not-knowing, knee deep in hashtags on Twitter. Or two more days to spend in Barking & Dagenham helping Hope Not Hate spread the word against the BNP, who are trying to take over the local council. I… [Read more…]
May 3, 2010
Change was long overdue, and here it is. There’ll be a proper relaunch of everything later on, but for now, please bear with me while I tweak any broken links and formatting glitches on this little upgrade. I’m keeping it simple for the moment and sticking with wordpress.com for now. Even so, there are 89… [Read more…]
May 1, 2010
I normally avoid current affairs blogging. There are so many experts, and ‘experts’, filling the air that I just can’t see how my opinion, scattered on the top with all the others like so many hundreds and thousands, is of any use to anyone. But I’m scared. It is childishly cynical to say ‘I don’t… [Read more…]
April 28, 2010
I hesitated about writing this post, because I will be sticking my toe out from under the liberal canopy, which always causes a chilly little wind to whip up from certain quarters. I am essentially a liberal. With some of my life experiences, it would be very weird and hypocritical if I wasn’t, but there… [Read more…]
April 25, 2010
I always feel a twinge of cynicism when I hear that someone is lecturing or writing about fame and celebrity. As a subject it is self referential to the point of dullness, despite the best efforts of the likes of Marina Hyde in the Guardian. There are only so many times you can hear about… [Read more…]
April 23, 2010
Anonymous hate mail had its moment in the spotlight this week, with this story: Historian’s wife and her poison pen expose dark side of literary criticism. Historian Orlando Figes, who teaches at Birkbeck, called in the lawyers when he was accused of penning nasty reviews of various colleagues’ work. How embarrassing, then, that the culprit… [Read more…]
May 16, 2010
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