It’s not an obvious combination I’ll grant you: Richard Milhouse Nixon and The Woodcraft Folk – but they both came through for me in my bid to cycle (at least part) of a classic trans Pennine road in traffic free conditions.
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onthebrynk apologises unreservedly for misinforming
You know how it is. There you are kicking back after a difficult job achieved – a potentially controversial blog posted and positive responses received. Then the mobile pings and there, right in your face on a whatsapp video call is the Head of Legal.
Following the post entitled ‘Who is the massive turd Guardian?’ I received the following barrage of questions from a good friend:
What is going on here as far as the much-lambasted Guardian is concerned? Is there some kind of conspiracy? and if so, how does that work? Or is it sloppiness or laziness on the part of The Guardian and its contributors? Or some kind of malice? Or just crap judgment?
Is there some kind of monolithic control at the top of the Guardian, willfully distorting and slandering because of some shared agenda? And requiring adherence throughout the organisation?
Phew! That’ll teach me to post in a ‘red mist’.
Most of us, I imagine are Guardian readers.
Occasionally you have to take yourself aside for a good talking to, I find.
The New Age of Empire, Kehinde Andrews (2021), Allen Lane.
‘Capitalism is racism.’ That’s what it says on the inside of the dust cover.
The Band had the Big Pink, Eric played dominoes at 461 Ocean Boulevard and Mr Stills had a whole railway station, whilst The Bad Dads (well two thirds of them) had Dock Cottage. It was all the rage in the 70s, bands would go all residential in big rambling houses in remote or exotic places in order to craft their next album, largely un-interrupted by the outside world. These sojourns would typically last for months with music being made at any time day or night – as the inspiration took them (or as Calvin Samuels, bass player in Manassas, put it ‘whenever the boss said so, as he was paying’).
You know how it is. You’ve let things slide a bit, taken your eye off the round bouncy thing, failed to keep across it all etc etc and now there was going to be a reckoning …… and consequences.
This Land, The story of a movement
Owen Jones (2020) Allen Lane
It is a year since Boris Johnson’s Tory Party won the 2019 general election with an 80 seat majority – a ‘landslide’ for the Right and a ‘disaster’ for the Left. In our current covid crisis this all feels a long time ago and rather difficult to think about – but the consequences of the defeat will be with us for a long time and so this seems like an appropriate time to review a book that covers the Left’s leadership of the Labour Party in the five years preceding this.
