I know that I am not writing anything myself but...a.) I haven't been very well for the past couple of weeksb.) this is another of those essays - in this case a very short one - which demands to be reproduced everywhere.Now one does have to point

 A wonderful column by Mick Hume from The Times of 4.1.08. Hume once again presents some of my own thoughts in a much more compelling and entertaining fashion; of course this is polemic - but what is wrong with polemic? <!-- BEGIN: Modul

 I am always ambivalent in my attitudes to Xmas. For me personally, as probably for most depressives, it is a difficult time because it demands jollity, cheerfulness and increased social interraction. I am often ill at Xmas ; indeed one year was

 Sometimes articles which are just so damned good they demand reproducing on any blog going, get posted on one of the lists. This, like most of the best, was posted to WWTTA.>>CEOs vs. SlavesBy Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet. Posted May 31,

 The Birmingham book Festival was once a major event but in recent years it has declined into a patetic populist charade populated by the latest celebrity biographers and aimed at boosting Waterstone's profoits as far as one could tell. This

 Way back in August - yes I know its a long time ago - an extraordinary column appeared in The Times by one Theodore Dalrymple. Britain - which already imprisons more of its population than anywhere else in Europe (except Portugal for some reaso

 On 4th October we attended the concert for the re-opening of Birmingham Town Hall. We were actually very lucky to get tickets for thsi heavily oversubscribed event - the wonders of Internet booking! The Town Hall is one of oldest purpose b

 Linebaugh in The London Hanged (p14) writes..." new morality became triumphant among the cpaitalist class at the end of the seventeenth century. Christopher Hill contrasted it with the religious attitudes prvailing earlier: 'Labou

For anyone follish enough to believe that the substitution of Brown for Blair would make any difference to the ideological tenor of the Government today's (8.07.07) Times front-page supplies an instant corrective. The latest subject to be introdu

 I went to a meeting of an organisation called the Positive Mental Health Group yesterday, which is funded by the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust. As an experience this was quite an ordeal; any social interaction is, but thi

   A superb South Bank show documentary on Marianne Faithfull; film from a recent concert, and a couple of interviews, the main one being conducted by Bragg (not a favourite of mine but I must admit this was a good, fairly self-effacing int

Blair's resignation - Rejoice!

This is simply a reproduction of a column by Matthew Parris in The Times of 10th March 2007 in reaction to the death of John Inman. For any non-British readers, John Inman was a camp comic who ma

A brilliant article by Magnus Linklater in The Times (3/5/06) on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy... >>Freud-lite: the ideal modern cureMagnus Linklater “WHAT PROGRESS we are making!” said Sigmund Freud. “In the Middle Ages they

Ellen has an excellent blog on Iran (and also on so called 'honor' killings) at... http://server4.moody.cx/index.php?id=424. To see the utter cynicism of US and British policy in respect of Iran it is worth remembering the 1953 coup against Mossadeg

 Here is another piece posted by my indefatigable friend  Ellen on the Women Writers list. I think this is the best piece I have read so far, not just because it is an eyewitness account, but because it bears testimony to the point I made yesterda

The following are mere reproductions of articles which have no doubt been reproduced on many thousands of blogs and sites and lists - but they still deserve yet more repetition. What is to be noted about the dominant discourse about events are two st

 It is very hard to avoid falling into the pit of world-weary cynicism and apathy when confronted with the 2005 election. The mood for many on the left is perhaps best caught by the excellent SoNowWhoDoWeVoteFor web-site (http://sonowwhodowevotefor.

 The revelation that the Queen receives over half a million pounds annually from the Common Agricultural Policy serves to remind to what extent the EU is a capitalists club. However, even if this sum shrinks in comparison to the 127million that Tate