Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel

An outstanding piece of research; ambitious and sympathetic to its subject but by no means sycophantic. The life-long work of Karl Marx to unravel the inner workings of capital and to strip away the more fanciful and utopian notions of socialism are more than adequately dealt with by Gabriel, yet Marx and his family are not deified in any way. The self-absorbed, even self-obsessed nature of Marx, probably essential to any pioneer in any field, is carefully unravelled. But equally important are the descriptions of the roles played by Engels, Jenny Marx, their three daughters and their respective spouses.

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Australian Open – Climate Change Stops Play

Just how many warnings do we need? Just how much evidence is enough? And how long will the climate change deniers, wined and dined by the fossil fuel industry, hold sway? We are now regularly experiencing the worst storms, the hottest and driest summers, the wettest and coldest winters and the most extreme weather patterns ever recorded. Murderous floods and droughts are the new norm. Even the polar ice caps are melting in protest at what we humans are doing to the planet. Will it get even worse? Yes it will, because we continue to burn highly polluting fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate as if nothing detrimental is happening. It’s as if we are all in a collective denial.

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Sugar is the new tobacco

Capitalism is teeming with contradictions. Every now and then the rabid Tory press comes out with a delightful surprise. Going back about eight years, Murdoch’s Sun, in response to the increasing ghettoisation of Britain’s ethnic minorities, produced a stunning front page with a collage of children’s faces of differing ethnic complexion with the proud headline, We’re All British. Whatever the intention, that single front page probably did more to counteract deeply entrenched racist views in this country than a thousand well-meaning editorials in the progressive press.

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Gove versus Hunt: Two Sides Of The Same Imperialist Coin

Two men slugging it out in the British press. One, a rabid Tory education minister, makes the plea for national patriotism when commemorating the First World War. And patriotism, as we have learned at great cost, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Bob Dylan said that, or was he merely quoting someone else?) The other, his shadow Labour Party minister, dons his professional historian hat and calls for a moment of national reflection and respectful debate. We know all we need to know about the Tory minister. Gove is an arch reactionary masquerading under the banner of raising educational standards. Hunt we know less about, but judging from his mealy mouthed reply, he is as gutless an apologist for British imperialism as his Tory counterpart.

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Mark Duggan: No Justice – No Peace

As Donald Rumsfeld would have it, there are the known knowns, the known unknowns and those damn tricky unknown unknowns. That seems to encapsulate the Mark Duggan tragedy perfectly. Was Duggan part of London’s gang culture? Almost certainly. Was he carrying a gun at the time of his arrest and murder? Possibly. Did he have the gun in his hand at the time of his murder? Almost certainly not. Could the police have detained Duggan without shooting him dead? No doubt about it. Have the police covered up and lied about the whole affair. Very likely. These sort of questions and answers pretty well cover the known knowns and the known unknowns. Read More…

Heathrow Expansion – The Irrationality of Finance Capitalism

Where to start. From whichever aspect and angle you care to look from, the endless expansion of Heathrow Airport symbolises the irrationality, the sheer insanity of finance capital. It’s a text book case of the tail wagging the dog. In this particular case it is international finance capital seeking to remorselessly and shamelessly expand itself in the face of widespread social criticism. Heathrow’s relentless lobbying has nothing at all to do with the business and social needs of London nor the country as a whole, and everything to do with private profit margins of its corporate empire and shareholders.

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The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing

A great read, which is obviously dated from a plot point of view, but the themes that Lessing toys with are as contemporary, timeless and universal as they ever could be. Lessing offers a wonderful interplay between the idealist political aspirations of young revolutionaries and those most inconvenient things we might call human frailties. In one sense it’s a bit like Karl Marx meeting Sigmund Freud. All the leading characters have personal baggage that weighs them down no matter how politically determined they are. Much of it is related to family stuff, the mother daughter complex being the most pronounced, though the daughter-father relationship also comes in for some serious attention. And lurking behind all this Freudian interplay lurks the very real and legitimate revolutionary activities of the IRA. Read More…

Hull: City of Culture, City of Debt

At the very moment that Hull was awarded the UK City of Culture 2015, it was revealed by the BBC that Hull has the highest levels of personal indebtedness anyway in this dis-United Kingdom of ours. This cruel juxtaposition of images, one of life enhancing cultural pursuit, the other of debilitating personal indebtedness, is the reality not just for Hull, but for cities and towns up and down the country, including of course, the capital city itself. And on closer inspection, these two accolades, the one a cause for celebration, the other for sober commiseration, are inextricably linked. Culture, as one wily old German professor from the nineteenth century once observed, is nothing but a reflection of the economic base. True today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago. Read More…

Mandela Dies: Now Hear the Tidal Wave of Hypocrisy

They’re all at it. The monarchy, the Tories, the tabloids and every two bit reactionary this country has managed to produce over the last fifty years. All sing praises to Nelson Mandela, all ring out condemnations of the wicked apartheid system. All tearfully celebrate the saintly life of the magnanimous one. It seems we’re all rainbow democrats now. It makes you wonder how apartheid managed to last a day let alone fifty years. Read More…

The Selfish Giant – Director Clio Barnard

Watched a great film at the weekend. Clio Barnard’s , The Selfish Giant, a story of two young lads from the north of England who struggle to survive at school, at home and in the world at large. They may be from a traveller’s family or they may not. What is certain is that they and their respective families are desperately poor and generally desperate. That desperation led our two central protagonists, who incidentally both played a blinder, to drop out of school (or were they excluded) and get caught into the trap of petty thieving. They specialised in scrap metal and cables and are soon being manipulated by a ruthless scrap metal merchant, who has a side line in illegal pony and trap racing.

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Russell Brand: Capitalist Democracy is Junk

It perhaps takes a junkie, or a recovering junkie, or at the very least, an ex-junkie, to be able to speak with such clarity where normally there is only fudge and subterfuge. I missed Russell Brand’s recent Paxman interview but I did catch up with his line of thinking via his follow-up Guardian article 6/11/13, and without over-egging it, it was hot stuff. Quite electric. Little wonder there has been so many reverberations in the days immediately following. It’s not often, in these long, bleak years of political reaction, where global capital reigns supreme and virtually unchallenged, that a shallow celebrity comic should come out so damningly against our phoney corporate democracy.

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We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

For as long as I can remember there has been this music category called World Music. More recently there has emerged a genre of novels which might usefully be termed World Literature. Loosely speaking, World Literature includes novels that shine a light on the horrors and misery of corporate globalism, with all the ramifications for people living in both the so-called developing and developed worlds. Such labels have a whiff of Euro-centric paternalism about them but the intention is honest to bring to public attention and to celebrate music and literature that wouldn’t normally end up on the shelves of WH Smith et al. Without wanting to needlessly pigeon-hole it, Bulawayo’s first novel, We Need New Names, comfortably fits into the World Literature category, and for me it is a real gem. Read More…

John Barnes – Passionate, Articulate But Undialectical

John Barnes, writing in The Guardian 5/11/13, argues that one-off high profile racist incidents in football grounds ought not to be of concern, it’s deep seated racism in society that we need to focus on. The other stuff is just a distraction. Here is Barnes in his own words: Tackling racism is a long and complicated process but one thing’s for sure; it cannot be solved by banning a player or closing part of a stadium. The problem is wider than that and if football really cared, those involved in the game, players in particular, would worry less about one off incidents like what happened to Toure and more about what is going on around them. Perceptions need to change and for that to happen, education needs to be pushed as the only way forward. Read More…

Twin Ambitions by Mo Farah

Quite an absorbing read though to be honest, in a rather predictably and superficial way. Behind the exceptional athletic achievement of Mo Farah’s story, there are at least three important sub-plots, but each one of them is dealt with in only the most cursory of ways. A pity. Like all highly successful athletes, you suspect there is a rather special, unique and complex human being at work, but the agents, the ghost writers and the sponsors are keen not to allow that person too much oxygen. Anyone that can dedicate that much focused energy to an all-consuming single endeavour is, by definition, a bit special and worthy of our attention. Most of us get distracted along the way, but to Farah’s credit, he just keeps on getting better and better.

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War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

With the centenary of the first great, global imperial slaughter rapidly approaching, a simple parable like War Horse is sure to be drafted into active service. I haven’t seen either the stage adaption or the recent cinematic offering, but I hear nothing but plaudits for both. I did however, recently stumble across the original 1982 story and I’m pleased to say it had a distinctive and unambiguous anti-war sentiment. I sincerely hope the stage and film adaptions remained faithful to that sentiment. Read More…

Harvest by Jim Crace

What a joy. What a craftsman, and what a timely reminder that the very embryo of English capitalism, the enclosure of the common land, was not that long ago. With these class sanctioned, criminal enclosures, came the wool trade, and with the wool trade came a cash surplus that could be put to no end of new profitable endeavours. It was, as Marx would have it, a brutal period of primitive capital accumulation. Wage labour was soon to follow and hey presto a brand new socio-economic system comes into being. Jim Crace, zooming in on this long forgotten bitter transition, gets the mood and bitter implications perfectly. Read More…

Commonwealth Games

I’ve always had a little bit of a soft spot for the Commonwealth Games because, from the very parochial point of view of English table tennis, here is a realistic chance to be amongst the medal winners, whereas in the World Championships or Olympic Games, England doesn’t have a hope in hell. China has a monopoly in that respect. Having said that, even the Commonwealths are becoming an increasingly insurmountable hurdle for England, as former Chinese national stars fan out across the globe turning up in places as far a-field as Canada, Australia and Ireland, not to mention closer to home in Malaysia, Singapore and Honk Kong.

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Prince Charles – The Crusader Prince

I have chosen a deliberately ambiguous title for a distinctly ambiguous man. At one moment Charles Windsor can be a mouthpiece, as he was last week at a national pension’s conference, for some quite progressive ideas. At other times his views can at best be described as conservatively wacky. And still at other times he displays the airs and graces of the true reactionary crusader that he really is. If Charles had an ounce of real integrity about him, he would renounce and denounce the entire edifice of monarchy, exposing it for the antiquated, anachronism that it is. Can you imagine anything more absurd than to be fawning and deferring to hereditry princes and princesses, kings and queens in the modern era? It is an affront to modernity itself. Read More…

Daily Mail – Daily Bile

Nick Clegg got it absolutely right. The Daily Mail and its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, regularly spews forth bucket loads of bile against anyone and everyone that dares challenge the iniquitous status quo in this country or anywhere on the planet for that matter. Complete with its history of fascist support, The Mail is contorted by its hatred of all things progressive and humane. It feeds, like a drug pusher, the fears and insecurities of middle England, creating a fictitious England of old, a fiction that could not be further from the truth. The real history of England is one of overbearing class privilege matched by generations of stunted, unfulfilled lives, all wrapped up in a cruel imperial grandeur.

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Slave labour in Qatar

FIFA has excelled itself. Not content to take Qatari kickbacks in return for handing the resource rich Sheiks the 2022 World Cup, they are now embroiled in a bleak controversy which has seen the death of hundreds of Nepalese and Indian labourers as they toil in subhuman conditions on Qatari infrastructure projects. Forty Nepalese guest workers have died in the past two months alone. Denied even the most basic of human rights, these desperate workers have had their passports confiscated to prevent them leaving the country. Wages are routinely withheld and overtime in fifty degree heat is mandatory. Even fresh water is rationed. The catalogue of abuse, uncovered by a Guardian investigation, is staggering. It amounts to slave labour and guess what, FIFA feigns shock and disbelief at the Guardian findings. Read More…

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

I have often argued, perhaps facilely, that the three institutions that are holding back humanity, are religion, nations and family. That of course is in addition to class, the most debilitating of all social institutions. It is fairly easy to imagine a more enlightened world without religion and nation, but somewhat more problematic to envisage alternatives to the family. From most reports, neuroses arising from the Israeli kibbutz network were every bit as pronounced as those produced by your typical nuclear family. Similarly, the English boarding school system was and is notorious for producing its own catalogue of life-long disfunctionality.

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