- Blog
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Berger on Palestine
John Berger is brilliant and infuriating: Bolshevik, poet, monk. The man who gave his Booker Prize money (for G) to the Black Panthers and radicalised a whole generation of art history students through the amazing Ways of Seeing has been a constant witness for the poor and marginalised, especially for peasants and migrants. Never a…
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A new role for Government: bullying the well-off
James Crabtree and Noah Curthoys from the Work Foundation’s iSociety research project have written a report about e-government targets. They think the current goal of getting 100% of government services online by 2005 is silly and they’ve found some funny examples from the official literature to back up their assertion ndash; the seed potato classification…
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Thinking ahead
At the House of Commons event the other day I ran into a futurist called Susan Clayton. I like futurists. They do important work reminding us to remember our descendants. We don’t (can’t?) think far enough into the future. Our horizons are miserable, collapsed, mean-spirited. Future generations don’t really get a look in – one…
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Early retirement, Mr Kaufman?
You don’t have to be a Dykista (A Dykie?) to think that DCMS Select Committee Chairman Gerald Kaufman’s attack on the corporation yesterday was unprincipled, opportunistic – really a politically disreputable act. I can’t be the only one who’s getting fed up with Kaufman’s unreconstructed, Wilson-era Statism disguised as consumer advocacy or anti-establishment vim or…
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Bloggers in the house
Maybe it was the over-stuffed surroundings – the Grand Comittee Room of the House of Commons – but last night’s ‘blogging and politics’ event, organised by The Work Foundation and Vox Politics felt sort of important. The long-hairs and the suits, the iBook trendies and the wonks (even a few Trots) – and all three…
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Don’t prejudge the Comms Bill
Richard Tait in the FT (subscription required) says we shouldn’t be too quick to predict the long term outcomes of the Comms Bill. After all, ten years ago: “…you could have got eye-watering odds betting that six years after channel Five?s launch it would be a major broadcaster of arts and history programmes; that its…
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Cars, green and not so green…
A genuinely green car is, of course, impossible. Moving a tonne of steel and plastic around could never use no energy at all and even the zero emissions hydrogen fuel cell cars will require prodigious amounts of energy to produce the hydrogen in the first place. The switch to hydrogen is going to happen sooner…
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Buy this thing
It looks like a home enema kit but you are definitely going to need this baby for your upcoming fortnight in Suffolk or the Dordogne or wherever you take your 4×4 these days. It’s a supremely clever and slightly weird car accessory: an ingenious 12 volt cigarette lighter-powered shower attachment. Go on, wash your feet.…
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Top media people
I feel obliged to link to The Guardian’s MediaGuardian 100, even if only for the old outboard brain, but I also have to link to Russ Taylor’s commentary. He’s an American so UK media looks pretty weird to him.
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25% of Anglican vicars are metrosexual
It’s not a new term but ‘metrosexual’ is ready for primetime and is now a fully-fledged market segment. The New York Times profiled an actual specimen a couple of weeks ago: “Mr. Martinson likes wine bars and enjoys shopping with his gal pals, who have come to trust his eye for color, his knack for…