Volver, an’ that

With canny timing, just before the release of his new film Broken Embraces, Pedro Almodovar’s Volver was on FilmFour t’other night. It tells the story of a crisis in the main character Raimunda’s life which disturbs the memory of traumas she thought she’d buried long ago – memories which become physically embodied in the form [...]

Green Shoots

“We do not know whether the green shoots of recovery some observers claim to have seen in the late spring will wither in the summer heat. But they are unlikely to blossom this year or, for that matter, next.” The intervening time is more than enough for the invisible hand – and the iron fist that [...]

Surrenders and Surges

First of all, Afghanistan. Flash back a year or more, to the American presidential race.  The main issue of contention was the war.  McCain and Clinton talked about escalation in the Middle East, boggage-down in Iraq and possible bombing of Iran.  Obama rejected this, instead making – and ultimately winning – the case for a [...]

Dave Against The Machine: Our Time Or Theirs

You wait months for one of these to come out and then bam, two at once.  But who am I to understand publishing?  Ho hum.  This week/month/quarter I call for smashing the BNP with our own response to the crisis.  I’m not massively happy with it – a bit ultra-left in its panicked socialism-or-barbarism message, and [...]

Dave Against The Machine: In Defense of Viruses

In which I argue that we don’t have to choose between sustainability and employment – the solution is a green revolution.

Foxtrot Tango Alpha

A poll for the Guardian last week revealed that “42% are in favour of the immediate withdrawal of British troops, and a further 14% want them home by the end of the year” compared to only 36% who want troops to stay “as long as they are needed” – which they somehow interpreted, in the headline [...]

“The Daily Telegraph smells of sexist poo, claim scientists”

From the Bad Science blog: Three weeks ago the Daily Telegraph published an unpleasant article headlined “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. It was based on the unpublished and unfinished dissertation of a masters student and got the story entirely wrong. The title of the press release for the same [...]

Who would win?

Klingons vs Nazis? IRA vs Taliban? I wanted to find a clip from The League of Gentlemen, too, where the two video nerds are debating Alien vs Species and other implausible deathmatches – for no other reason than the fact that it was filmed in the late, lamented Palace Cinema, which would have made it [...]

Crisis and the Zombie State

I’ve been reading War and an Irish Town, Eamonn McCann’s account of the “Troubles” – from a compelling first-person narrative of Free Derry and the Battle of Bogside through to an analysis of the material causes of sectarian violence.  I can’t recommend enough that you get your hands on a copy (or better yet, come [...]