Chronic Dissentery: Olympic Whingers
‘The Art of Dissent’ edited by Hilary Powell et al Austin Williams | 24 July 2012 British comedian Jimmy Carr was recently heckled with the taunt ‘You don’t pay tax’. Floundering for reply, Carr spat: ‘I pay what I have to and not a penny more’, which was possibly one of the least funny comeback lines ever delivered. This exchange, allied to the growth of the self-proclaimed ‘grassroots movement’ UK Uncut, which campaigns...
FILM: Urbanization
‘Urbanized’ directed by Gary Hustwit, 2011 Reviewed by Michael Owens | 25 June 2012 Urbanized is the cinematic delight one might expect of Gary Hustwit, the director of this, the third in a trilogy of studies in design, following Helvetica (modernism in a typeface), and Objectified (industrial and product design). Each deals with a dimension of design’s intimate relationship daily life. Here, we look at design...
The First London Olympics
‘The First London Olympics’ by Rebecca Jenkins; Piatkus, 2008. 278pp Reviewed by Alison Walker | May 2012 This book is a straight history of the fourth modern Olympic Games, held at White City in 1908. It starts with a description of how London was chosen for the games, and the men who were the main organisers, Lord Desborough, a typical English sporting aristocrat, and Imre Kiralfy, a Hungarian who had made a fortune as...
The Power Broker
‘The Power Broker: Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York’ by Robert Caro; Knopf, 1974. 1344pp Reviewed by Michael Owens | 31 March 2012 Robert Caro’s epic account of the life of Robert Moses, the man central to shaping the physical fabric and governance of twentieth century New York, is both scholarly and highly readable. It is considered a definitive account of the play of power in the making of the greatest world city at...
Made in Britain : How the Nation Earns its Living
“Made in Britain ” is an optimistic state-of-the-nation book. In it, Evan Davis argues that we shouldn’t worry so much about UK ‘s Western decline… but then again, it was published 6 months ago. So why does Britain – one of the richest nations in the world (the sixth-largest manufacturing nation in the world in 2008) – seem so...
Ganging up on ‘Yoof’
Dave Clements | 23 February 2012 While they are, if claims coming out of last week’s summit are to be believed, to blame for the rise of al-Shabab in Somalia, the role of gangs in last summer’s riots was, at the very least, negligible. That much is acknowledged by pretty much everybody. It has even been reported that gang leaders called a truce during hostilities. Bless ’em. But still the government’s...
City migration as a development problem? It’s the ultimate urban myth
Alastair Donald | 17 February 2012 (The Guardian) Rather than portraying rapid urbanisation in terms of overconsumption, we should be celebrating it. In January, China marked a historic milestone in its development: for the first time ever, city dwellers outnumbered the rural population. According to the Chinese statistics bureau, 691 million people now live in cities, amounting to more than 51% of the population. Yet this fact...
Not the end of the world, says Blair
Dave Clements | 16 February 2007 “The UK is the worst place to grow up in the industrialised world” screamed the headlines, following the publication of UNICEF’s damning report. Added to the coincidence of an almost simultaneous bate of shootings in South London, commentators with their own particular spin on events, and state enforcers with a peculiar grasp on reality, were each whipped into a frenzy. Not only did...
Green Philosophy
‘Green Philosophy: How to think seriously about the planet’ by Roger Scruton; Atlantic Books, 2012. 464pp Reviewed by Austin Williams | 2 February 2012 Last year, Green MP, Caroline Lucas launched the “Home Front” initiative, which used the language of the Second World War to hark back to the joys of a war economy. In this rose-tinted world-view of global conflict, “31,000 tonnes of kitchen waste were...
The End of the West
‘The End of the West’ by David Marquand; Princeton University Press, 2011. 224pp Reviewed by David Bowden | 13 January 2012 Aside from being a well known commentator and academic on British constitutional politics, David Marquand is also a former Labour MP from 1966 to 1977, the son of Hillary Marquand, who was in the original Bevan post-war Labour administration. After he resigned from parliament, he was a Chief Advisor...
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