One of the triggers for my post on Ed Miliband’s “quiet crisis” (published in revised form on the Guardian’s CIF site yesterday) was a Guardian Comment by Costas Lapavitsas. Lapavitsas suggests that the “return to agriculture” in Greece is “a sure sign of social retrogression”.
We begged to differ. [...]
A Quiet Crisis sounds like the title of a John Le Carré novel. At least from Le Carré we might get some real insight into the murderous logic of capital and the complicity of the British establishment, along with a good dose of well-directed cynicism. But this is Labour leader Ed [...]
As part of a debate elsewhere, somebody asks whether the “August days of 2011 [i.e. last weekend's rioting and looting] can be considered in terms of moments of excess”. It’s a good question.
For us a moment of excess is an intense collective experience, a moment [...]
We’re in the midst of two enormous news stories.
First the London burning story: three nights of rioting (and counting) in the capital, spreading from borough to borough and, now, to other cities (Birmingham). What a finance type might describe as a serious case of contagion.
Second, financial meltdown 2. Plummeting share [...]
As the phone hacking scandal unfolds and taints a whole political elite it becomes important to think through its exact political significance. On the most optimistic pole of interpretation some have claimed it as a British Spring, the UK equivalent of the revolutions in the Maghreb or the movements of [...]
In a recent blog post asking why some forms of action resonate and others don’t, Brian dismissed the idea that there is ‘some magic pixie-dust that will guarantee success’. He’s right of course but perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss pixie-dust too quickly. In fact during our collective discussions the Free Association [...]
Repetition and difference is a large part of the project we’re working on right now). But sometimes you stumble across something that says exactly what you were groping for without using any words at all. More here.
