FRIDAY MUSIC TIME

This one is for my brother, who isn’t very well right now. When we were younger he had this t-shirt – the official inspiral carpets one, though he obviously had the long-sleeved version, which is much better. He had to sneak it out under something else because our dad would have taken it off him [...]

WELL DONE NEPAL

Congratulations to Nepal on the declaration of the republic. There is obviously still a lot of work to be done in that country but well done nonetheless. Before I went there I read several times about how the Nepalis thought their King to be almost godlike. When I arrived I found that nothing could be [...]

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Sometime before midday today I will have had my 100,000th visitor to this site. That number of people have visited since the first week of April 2007 and that was after a relatively slow start. The weekly average is still going up and I just wanted to say thank you to my regular readers and [...]

CHOICE IS GOOD, CONSUMPTION IS GOOD

At my brothers graduation the person who made the speech to the the new graduates (I can’t remember who it was) made a speech about the role they would have in making new wealth and that the goal was always to increase growth. Growth was the absolute good, the solution for all the problems of [...]

FIRST OF A FEW

I am expecting to see more policies like this one coming from the Tories soon enough.. The Conservatives are bringing forward tough new proposals on work schemes for jobless young people. Anyone under 21 unemployed for three months would be sent to a specialist employer for an intensive programme of work-related activity. It seems that [...]

THE MAGIC NUMBER

I LOVE A PLANET WITH A HAPPY ATMOSPHERE

The newspapers and TV like natural disasters. They provide countless emotional and on the whole non-controversial scenes (with the exception of New Orleans as the Bush administration seems capable of making anything controversial with the way they handle things) and keep people glued to the news. Also, there is never any need to provide context [...]

SUNNY SUNDAY MUSIC BLOGGING

I always loved this bit from the commitments. and Barney does Tupac !

NOW YOU SEE IT

An excellent cartoon from THE PLEB (via Mickey Z)

SHOCKING AS USUAL, BUT NOT SURPRISING

I know that it is strange to say that something can be shocking if it is usual but keeping that capacity for anger at the sheer callousness of it all is very important. The Real News (who need your donations if you can afford) have put out this interview with one of the authors of [...]