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No Quarter

I’ve never thought of myself as being any sort of empath, but maybe there’s hope, because I never got past the first episode on the first DVD of series one of Louie that we got given one Christmas, and now it feels as if the vibe I got from it was guiding true. I’ve locked in that piece of critical armour for good.

This Twitter thread inspired by CK’s behaviour is what’s shaken me most. Most men, surely, would find it shocking that there are enough shitty men acting out their basest fantasies to scar so many women and children. We have the unearned privilege of being shocked because such creeps don’t try it in front of other men. All the more reason to publicise it, and to fight the patriarchal culture that gives rise to it.

Read More · 23 November 2017

Escaped Lion

Read More · 29 March 2017

Thirteen Days

One of the incidental benefits of having written about politics here off and on for almost two decades is that I can see how many times I’ve used the words “fascist” or “fascism” in my public writing by searching a local backup of this site. Until 2016, one or the other had appeared only a few times, when quoting others: a political figure in Madagascar in 2002 talking about the supporters of his rival, and the poet Michael Rosen in 2015 (whose poem reads ominously today). It’s a word I’ve always used sparingly for fear of sapping its power.

I first used it here myself last year, when voicing fears in the days after the EU referendum of an apparently ascendant UKIP and the desire of many in England and Wales for a strong leader who would implement a hard Brexit. Those were fears of possible futures, but given how those particular events have unfolded I can’t say they’ve subsided much (UKIP is no longer ascendant, but only because the Tories have adopted their agenda). For Britain, though, they remain fears of a possible future. America has overtaken us.

Read More · 2 February 2017

The Late United States

My thoughts today are with friends in America, some of whom I’ve known since I was twelve, none of whom will have wanted this. I hope you get through it. I hope we all do.

20 January 2017 · 1 Comment

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