tl;dr - I'm allowed to be angry about people who really ought to know better colluding with muppetry. Worse than useless. If you sat smart people down and asked them to come up with something that would make building granular, thickly networked radical movements and movement organisations that could sustain themselves in the face of... Continue Reading →
Letter: You get exactly as much justice as you can compel…
Letter MEN 8th June 2021 ROD Slater’s excellent letter (Viewpoints, M.E.N. 7 June) makes the compelling point that this government (like others before it, of all stripes) is not considering “the dangers inherent in an unfair society.” I’ve recently been rummaging around in the archives of the Working Class Movement Library, and can confirm the... Continue Reading →
The Lucifer Ploy: Manchester City Council and loyalty tests #TomEllis
Dr Wifey and I have vegged out through 5 (count 'em, five) seasons of the ludicrous, luscious, delirious and devilish show Lucifer. It's about (spoilers) Lucifer getting sick of Hell and deciding to own a nightclub on Earth. He teams up with an LAPD detective to solve murders, which always miraculously help him/them cope with... Continue Reading →
My objection to Hough End Fields “developments”
TFC has been forced to hit the pause button on their plans for Hough End Fields. The campaign (see website here) is still asking folks to submit objections before the "old" deadline of Tuesday 1st June, and there's a good portal for this. My general take on these things is to use the opportunity to... Continue Reading →
Letter in #Manchester Evening News abt Labour’s contempt for democratic norms
ONLY one member of the public attended Annual Council today. That's probably good, because outrageous contempt for democratic norms and conventions was on full horrible display. New councillors (there are 10) usually get their first choice of which of the six scrutiny committees to sit on. Scrutiny is vital to try to stop the Executive... Continue Reading →
I don’t need this pressure Ron… #delardification
Count your blessings, obviously (I've lived a life of undeserved privilege and luck. That can change, obvs we all live under a sword of Damocles) but being grateful for what you've got, and trying to contribute meaningfully are apparently solid ways not to be a miserable douche. This particular maundering comes from the fact that... Continue Reading →
Letter in MEN: You like authoritarianism, go live in North Korea
So one way that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan is baited, when they suggest even the mildest of social democratic reforms is "you like communism so much, go live in Russia". In this letter I thought it might be fun to riff on this. TURNING a blind eye - refusing to look for... Continue Reading →
Kenneth Rexroth – “Facing Extinction” (August 18, 1969)
Kenneth Rexroth was a poet, translator, thinker. Wikipedia page here. I have been reading his essays in "The Elastic Retort" and enjoying them enough to have bought another earlier collection (please don't tell Dr Wifey - she thinks I am addicted to books). There's also a bunch of Rexroth's essays online, and this one, from... Continue Reading →
Patriarchy persists – what’s a man to do?
On opposite sides of the world, women and not-enough-male allies are rightfully and righteously angry about the failures of state actors to act – at all or enough – around women being raped and murdered. The facts of the UK case is relatively straightforward. On March 2nd a young white woman, Sarah Everard, was kidnapped... Continue Reading →
Don’t budge from the budget. The responsibility of intellectuals yet again
We need to put front and centre the fact that we've blown our (carbon) budget. “We're massively off target we're massively behind.” We know that those who run official events are not going to say it front and centre (at absolute best they might mutter it under their breath while making sure that their microphone... Continue Reading →
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