Working Practices: East v West
The efficiency drive in China means that architects and construction workers have to work very hard to meet deadlines and it is very difficult to keep a work-life balance. In the west, this is often all architects talk about.
Stay safe but remain sceptical
Regardless of the UK government’s twelfth-hour assurance that these new powers will be reviewed every six months, a potentially worrying precedent may have already been set.
Identity Politics ain’t Liberal
“Common cause” is not going to work if we have to morally browbeat people into supporting the uncommon interests of oppressed minority-groups. The question is, what unites us?
Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt by Paul Crowther
The aesthetic experiences that we have as adults are a kind of echo of these formative infant experiences: an ongoing rediscovery of the world and its possibilities.
Changing Politics for Good – What Next?
Changing Politics for Good: What Next? Cheshire Conference Centre, Stockport. 29 February 2020. When people mobilise, coordinate, and make their presence felt, things can and will change.
Post-Brexit (de)regulation
Fewer, simpler or looser standards doesn’t necessarily mean more cavalier, indeed it ought to mean that we could propose more efficient and thorough standards and regulation. Setting national standards in a global context should be liberating.
Election odds
Gamble on the election while you can. Soon afterwards having a flutter will once again be under attack by establishment Puritans… or simply by those people who think you have a ‘problem’.
Book Bites: Salvatore Babones’ “The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism and the Tyranny of Experts”
Babones’ short and pithy book challenges the domination of expert elites in political discourse, but acknowledging the fact that democracies don’t always come up with the ‘right’ answers.
Tim Parks’ “Pen in Hand”
We should read: “with a sense of wonder and curiosity at the general and implacable human determination to fill endless space with dubious mental material when life is short and there are so many other things to be done”.
Book Bites: Paul Morland’s “The Human Tide”
Once the Malthusian link is broken and enough food and liberating technology is available, progress begins to feed through to the general population.
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