This piece was written for Livingmaps Review and appeared in section of the journal entitled News From Point Nemo. This is a geographical term denoting the most isolated and inaccessible points in the globe. As the journal’s editor at large, I have used this occasion to explore cartographic and other issues which arise from my travels, in this case to Australia and Japan.… Read the rest
WAITING GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
SOME UNSEASONAL THOUGHTS ON TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
This year I am giving a Brexit Advent Calendar to those of my friends who voted to Leave because they thought it would de-stabilise the political class, liberate us from the bureaucratic toils of Brussels and open up the road to socialism in our small island state. The online calendar depicts the Houses of Parliament as a gothic ruin, and each day as you prise open one its shuttered windows you are told to expect one of the Brexiteers suitably dressed for the occasion.… Read the rest
Pictures from a not quite gone city: A field trippers rambling guide to San Francisco
Near Views from Afar
Schoolboys of my generation learnt one thing that stuck in our minds about San Francisco : earthquakes. The frequent earthquakes which devastated large parts of the city had something to do with the San Andreas fault and meant inhabitants went about in daily dread of the world collapsing about their ears. Later, watching the eponymous Hollywood movie featuring the great 1906 quake plus Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy, confirmed this impression of a city living dangerously, on borrowed time, yet with a magical capacity to renew itself : at the end of the film the ruins dissolve into a modern rebuilt urban landscape.… Read the rest
POSTCARDS TO GRANDDAD
Note : This piece of writing, in which real events in my family history are interwoven with those fictions of self invention which Freud called the family romance, is in part a response to the current furore in the UK about antisemitism on the Left and the problematic nature of Jewish identity politics.
1.Genealogy
This much I was told: by night you slept soundly, framed between pictures of Lenin and Kropotkin as if guarding still untroubled dreams of Power and Freedom joining hands in Zion’s promised land.… Read the rest
FOR THOSE ORPHANED LATE IN LIFE – AN UNSEASONABLE XMAS BLOG
In the age of Instagram and Facebook, when people are constantly ‘updating their status’, and keeping family and friends ‘in the loop’ about the smallest detail of their everyday lives, a Xmas blog looking back and reflecting on the year’s events, both personal and political, must seem either redundant or an act of self indulgence, along with too many mince pies.… Read the rest
February Blog There goes the neighbourhood
FEBRUARY BLOG :THERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD – AN URBAN TRIPTYCH
1) Chic by Growl
I recently moved into a new neighbourhood in Islington. My flat is in a large Peabody Estate, off the Essex Road, quite close to the area which Ruth Glass made the object of her famous study on ‘gentrification’. I am living in one of the earliest ‘ model dwellings’ built in the 1860’s for the ‘industrious working classes’ by the great Canadian philanthropist and which became an inspiration for the development of social housing in Britain.… Read the rest
An Unseasonal Triptych
Trump L’Oeil
Like most people on what we used to call the Left, I guess I have been struggling to come to terms with the result of the US Presidential election, not to mention the UK vote to leave the EU and the gains by the Far Right in Eastern Europe. It is fatally easy to join up the dots and see the emergence of authoritarian populism and national isolationism as an irresistible force sweeping across the Western world, demolishing what remains of the advances made by Social Democracy and the Labour movement following the defeat of Fascism in 1945.… Read the rest
SEPTEMBER BLOG :SUBTLE DIALECTICS,CRUDE THOUGHTS
I was recently asked to speak at an event in support of Jeremy Corbyn`s bid to retain his leadership of the Labour Party. The request came from the son of one of my oldest friends, a young man who has recently discovered politics, along with a great deal of self confidence after an unusually difficult and prolonged period of sturm und drang. I would normally have agreed but when faced with the prospect of being a cheerleader for Jezza I suddenly balked.… Read the rest
August Blog; From London to Rio,the band plays on
Some reflections on the Olympic dream machine
‘As a microcosm of what we hope to achieve, look at the Olympics and their Legacy….We have set ourselves the goal of ‘convergence’. The idea is that kids growing up in East London should have the same life chances as anywhere else. There is no reason why the kids of East London should not benefit from, say, rugby, as much as the kids from Richmond.… Read the rest
Mad Dogs and Englishmen : The EU referendum and its Other Scene
1.Mad Dogs
Like most of you, I have been following the public debate about the EU referendum with horrified fascination and growing anxiety. Listening to the claims and counter-claims of the Remainders and Brexiteers reminded me of that famous opening verse of Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.… Read the rest
