Let’s Turn the Tide on Plastic, Daily Mail

Notwithstanding my unflinching revulsion of all that is the Daily Mail, complete with its non-stop xenophobia, its petty little England mentality and its outright racist bile, I am forced once again to congratulate its editors for their front-page campaign against the tsunami of plastic currently devastating our planet. I say, once again because they ran a similar inspiring front-page campaign not so long ago declaring sugar as the new tobacco. They were correct on that one and they are equally correct on their attitude towards discarded plastics. Just as The Sun, that vile tabloid rag, once came out defiantly against the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, so The Daily Mail occasionally demonstrates its better nature. It is rare but welcome nevertheless. But there is a glaring contradiction at the heart of their campaigning journalism; the not insignificant question of government regulation.

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I Am Not Your Negro, Film Review, Raoul Peck

Based on an unfinished James Baldwin manuscript, this is an important piece in the jigsaw of America’s Civil Rights Movement. But it is so much more. Baldwin was attempting, in his final work, to link together the lives, criminally cut short, of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the lesser known civil rights activist, Medgar Evers into a coherent whole. And Raoul Peck does full justice to that unfinished work. He does so by allowing plenty of space for Baldwin to speak his own wonderfully eloquent words rather than allowing others to speak for him.

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Brick Lane by Monica Ali

This one is important, and perhaps more important than its author might have originally imagined. In an age where religion and other assorted superstitions are making something of a comeback, here is a novel that tenaciously works, on every front, to deconstruct all the nonsense about gods, fate and the god-given, subordinate role of women. That the novelist achieves this with much humour and empathy for her characters, whilst maintaining throughout a growing level of tension, is an achievement in itself. That the novel stands out, fifteen years on, as a searing indictment of all things patriarchal and metaphysical, is its real achievement.

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Another Country by James Baldwin

The title of this powerful novel is somewhat ambiguous and probably deliberately so. It might refer to the very different experiences that Black and White people experience in the USA. It might equally refer to the different worlds and experiences of gay and straight people, not to mention the many shifting shades in between. It might actually refer to the dreams and aspirations that we all have, contrasted with the hum-drum reality that most of us inevitably lead.

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The War on Women by Sue Lloyd-Roberts

For a harrowing journalistic account of how a violent, misogynistic patriarchy still rules our planet, you could do no better than to read Sue Lloyd Robert’s The War on Women. It’s not a theoretical exposition but the theoretical questions behind the viscous misogyny that continues to plague our species emerges clear enough. The book feels a little unfinished and that is probably because its author sadly died before she could tidy things up. And one cannot help but feel there is a vital missing chapter. Robert’s does a heroic job of presenting the global picture, but where are the all damning chapters recounting Britain’s shameful record of domestic abuse? The statistics emerging from the so-called western developed countries are truly shocking. By the time you have read this short blog, half a dozen women would have been battered nearly to death in their own homes by men they thought they could trust. Every week two will die of their injuries. This is truly a war on women and it’s happening right in front of our noses.

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Shooting in the US of A

I’m shooting from the hip
I’m shooting with red hot lead
I’m shooting at the passers-by
I’m shooting till they’re dead.

I’m shooting from the rooftop
I’m shooting em in their beds
I’m shooting up my local school
I’m aiming for their heads.

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Hard Brexit, Soft Brexit, No Brexit – It’s all quite irrelevant really

Under the forty-year golden era of British EU membership, we had the introduction of zero-hour contracts, the rise of food banks along with poverty wages, chronic levels of personal debt, a chronically underfunded welfare system, a crumbling transport infrastructure and a completely dysfunctional housing system. The reason was simple. The EU was, despite some useful social and environmental legislation, firmly in the hands of the transnational corporates and the big banks. Neo-liberal globalism was the order of the day and to hell with the indigenous working class. In the southern nations of Europe, some 50% of the youth population were and still are unemployed. The vicious and self-defeating policy of austerity was imposed on all the nations of Europe while a tiny elite of corporate bosses and money speculators became obscenely rich. Greece was reduced to pauperism and politically, the widely discredited neo-liberal economic model has ushered in the rise of the far-right parties. So, regards to the benefits of the EU for Europe’s working classes, not that much to cheer about. And after Brexit, it will be more of the same.

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The State, Channel 4

Someone should be congratulated for having the presence of mind to put this four-part drama onto our screens. Islamic State is not, I imagine, the easiest political beast to get one’s head around, and this drama, while far from exhaustive, was a genuine if tentative attempt. The Daily Mail hated it with a passion, so by that measure it must have had something going for it. The drama focused on a handful of British recruits to the IS battle fields somewhere in Syria. The acting from these British Jihadists was woefully wooden – central protagonists that looked and sounded as if they had just stepped off a Holby City set. But the acting was not the key thing here. What the script writers had set out to do was to present something of a human dimension to the Islamic State Jihadists.

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White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I first read this seventeen years ago back in the day, as they say, when everybody was going crazy over White Teeth and a shining new novelist called Zadie Smith. It was the ultimate millennium novel. And I, like everybody I knew, just loved every page of it. It brought us bang up to date on the theme of the day: the search for identity and meaning. It was philosophy and politics and sociology and any other ology you might care to name but above all it was damn funny. Blisteringly funny but not of a slap-stick verity. No sir. This was political humour that was both subversive and personal.

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The Men Who Stare at Goats, 2009, Film Review

Apparently based on a piece of non-fiction research into US Army Psychological Special Ops, this quiet little gem, which had escaped my attention until now, is broadly speaking a comedy. But not of the slapstick variety. More in keeping with the Dr Strangelove/Catch 22 genre, though in places you might say it borrows something from the irreverence of the US TV series Mash. Is it funny? Well, like all attempted comedy, it really is a subjective call. But perhaps a more apposite question is rather; is comedy a fitting genre to tackle the untold pain and suffering unleashed on Iraq and elsewhere by the US military-industrial complex and its corporate vultures?

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The Handmaids Tale

Based closely on Margaret Atwood’s haunting 1985 novel, this TV series is compulsive viewing and, given the recent political climate in the USA, should be compulsory viewing for all citizens east and west. Fascism can take many forms; religious cult, national fantasy, international utopia, but in all its varied forms it represents at base, capitalism in crisis. This has been largely misunderstood even by the most well-meaning critics of brutal authoritarian regimes. Mankind has created many such regimes in its ten-thousand-year history of civilisation but these should not all be carelessly confused with fascism.

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Soul of the Nation at the Tate Modern

I Enjoyed this exhibition, if enjoyment is the right word. More like an awkward mixture of nostalgia and anger. Nostalgia for an era that, from a relatively safe distance, was a magically heroic time. With all those iconic black leather coats, cool shades and defiant Afros, what youthful man or woman with half-formed ideals of equality and justice would not be inspired. And then there were the guns. By any means necessary. Afro-Americans defiantly standing up to the racists those in uniform, those in white hoods and those just in everyday clothes. Yes, the nostalgia was definitely kicking in but so too was the anger. Here we were, seventy years on and still the police brutality. Still the racist murders. Still the extremes of poverty between Black America and the white middle classes. Endemic poverty that living under eight years of a Black president could not even shift.

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Monument for Margaret Thatcher

They’ve been talking about a statue for Mrs Thatcher
Remember her they called her both the Iron Lady and the school milk snatcher
Remember her she said this lady isn’t for turning
Hold on a moment, is that the sickening smell of something burning?

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Jeremy Corbyn and the Tory Press – ‘I welcome their hatred’

I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn has ever publicly uttered these words but he may well have thought them on numerous occasions. In fact, it was FDR way back in the 1930’s, who is reported to have coined this phrase in response to the vitriolic attacks on him for daring to confront the US capitalists with his New Deal. Corbyn’s Labour manifesto is a sort of British New Deal and the owners of both British and foreign Capital hate it with a passion. And the corporate owners of the British Tory press are virtually foaming at the mouth with their own never ceasing vitriolic attacks. Even the so-called liberal media, the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian and Independent newspapers can barely disguise their contempt. And the least said about Jeremy Paxman the better. Read More…

Ping Brighton – Making a Statement, Taking a Stand

Brighton Table Tennis Club has won the beautiful accolade of being the first table tennis club in the country to be nominated a ‘Club of Sanctuary’. That is no small achievement. In fact, in these dark days of growing xenophobia and insularity, this accolade shines like a golden beacon.

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The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

In many respects, this little offering from Julian Barnes might be considered a something and nothing type of novel. Of course, the novel and the subsequent film interpretation were both exquisitely delivered. But with the pressing issues of the day bearing down on humanity extreme poverty, extreme and growing inequality, extreme, possibly existential environmental destruction just to mention a few, you might think that our Mr Barnes might have something a little more pertinent, a little more contemporary to busy himself with. But no. Our worthy Mr Barnes chooses to explore the life of a late middle aged, middle class Englishman who has some unfinished romantic business to unravel. Scintillating stuff. On first reading it certainly seems a tad indulgent to say the least. And yet, give yourself a little time to ponder this work and you can’t help but conclude that Barnes might just have something rather important to say about the human condition.

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Homeland – Series 6, Channel 4

The interplay between the so called real world and the world of TV is a strange place. If you want a realistic appraisal of what the United States is actually like, you could do a lot worse than to watch its leading TV series. In this I specifically include The Wire, The Sopranos, House of Cards, Sons of Anarchy and Homeland. Add to these some excellent documentaries like 13th and you will get an immediate snapshot of the violence, endemic racism and institutional corruption that underpins nearly all of American society. Strip aside some of the more lurid and fanciful scripts and you have the USA in a nutshell. A thoroughly nasty piece of work.

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UK Sport in the Dock

It simply isn’t good enough for UK Sport to put all the blame for the allegations of sexism, bullying, cheating and general boorish behaviour currently emerging at British Cycling solely onto the shoulders of cycling’s governing body. Certainly, like all national sports administration’s, British Cycling has questions to answer when it comes to all round good governance. But it is UK Sport that have the most to answer. Any national sports strategy and associated funding policy that is skewered obsessively towards international medals is guaranteed to create a dysfunctional and socially regressive climate in the upper echelons of British sport. British Cycling, once the golden girl and boy of British sport has inevitably succumbed to the insane pressures piled on them from UK Sport and their political masters in Whitehall and Westminster. Whilst those pressures persist, we can expect many more examples to emerge of bullying and general dysfunction, not just in cycling but across the entire sporting spectrum.

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Martin McGuinness – Freedom Fighter, Humanist and Astute Politician

Can we ever really ever know major public figures? Probably not. And in any case, like all humans, they are always complex and contradictory. But we can at least examine the concrete conditions from which such figures emerged and do so with some degree of objectivity. In the case of Martin McGuinness, we can say emphatically that he grew up in a country that had for centuries been socially, economically and militarily occupied by England, and that during his formative years, that occupation continued with great brutality in six counties of his country of birth. Even at the moment of his death, despite some reluctant attempt at power sharing by successive British governments, that occupation continues. Read More…

A 10-Point Manifesto for the British Labour Party

Like hundreds of thousands of other Corbynistas, I am greatly heartened by the totally unexpected arrival of Jeremy Corbyn and John MacDonnell at the apex of the British Labour Party. After decades of Tory and New Labour governments seeking to manage capitalism in the interests of the corporates, here is a leadership team that threatens to challenge the corporate agenda. The inevitable coups against their leadership began immediately, and they persist, without respite, to this day. Mandelson as good as admitted as much, and Tony Blair and David Miliband are already manoeuvring around the fringes of the party. We should expect nothing less. But moaning about these attempted coups is wasted energy. Read More…

Algorithms

I’ve been reading Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus – every line
And it’s got me thinking and a fretting about the future of mankind
I’ve been thinking that maybe we humans have truly passed our prime
And that Artificial intelligence is going to leave us humans far behind.

Algorithms clogging up my brain
Algorithms monitoring my pain
Algorithms calculating gain
Algorithms trying to keep me sane. Read More…