What if we're doing space travel wrong? Are there better ways of getting around than launching huge rockets and spending months/years in flimsy tin cans if we want to visit nearby planets? This is what Ian Watson explores in Alien Embassy. In this possible future, the answer to what is a monumental engineering challenge lies in Eastern philosophy and, particularly, passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and, because this book was published in the 1970s, tantric sex. A scientist works out the rituals contained therein can unlock the real star drive: the one in our brains. As such, the worl ..read more

Some quick points about the Tories' obsessive attacks on Angela Rayner. 1. From their side of the fence, Matthew Parris's argument that the Tories hate her because she's an "uppity lass" rings true. These are the sort of people who can barely tolerate the few working class Tories they have on their own benches, let alone those with the temerity to oppose and hurl jibes at them from the opposition. She doesn't fit the briefcase image the Tories cultivate to affect seriousness of purpose. And one other Labour MPs of working class origin, such as Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson, aspire to ..read more

Third time's a charm? Having previously read Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land and wondering why so many people rate him (he was one of the 'big three' of postwar SF, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke), I was hoping his tale of revolutionary derring do in a lunar colony might be an improvement on these earlier books. I'm sorry to report this was not the case. This is not because of Heinlein's iffy libertarian politics. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is overlong partly because of the digressions on "rational anarchism" by "the Prof", who's the mentor/L ..read more

Whenever Wes Streeting is in the news, it's usually because he's dumping on the NHS. Having said on several occasions that he wants more private sector involvement in the health service, he's reiterated this most unwavering of convictions in a piece for The Sun. His ire, as always, is firmly aimed at the left as he attacks us with a vehemence that never manifests versus the Tories. He wrote that "Middle-class lefties cry ‘betrayal’. The real betrayal is the two-tier system that sees people like them treated faster – while working families like mine are left waiting for longer.” What these peo ..read more

One from the BBC archive. Worth a watch ..read more

A great time was had at the Midlands Critical Theory conference at Nottingham Trent University these last couple of days. There was one thing I wanted to note in relation to a paper delivered by the comrades of the Critical Political Epistemological Network. To be honest, that political epistemology has become a recognised sub-discipline served by its own journals, professorial chairs, and postgrad programmes was entirely new to me. Political epistemology's concern is how we speak about truth and knowledge in politics and how this conditions decision-making, questions of legitimacy, who is a ..read more

The Israel lobby exists. Stating this shouldn't be controversial, but it is. In the UK, as elsewhere, there are several organisations whose purpose is to sell the Israeli state, its occupation of Palestine, and its colonialist project to political, business, and media elites. There is nothing uniquely sinister or unusual about this in itself. All states allocate resources to promote themselves in the polities of other states, including the UK. But what appears to be different is how, in the case of the Conservative Friends of Israel, we have an organisation that counts 80% of Tory MPs as its ..read more

When one affects to know about politics, there's always a risk of embarrassment. Take the recent pearls of Russ Jones, vendor of book length lists of damaging Tory policies and antics. This dogged foe of the Conservative Party told his not insubstantial following that if they are eviscerated at the next election, they "won't won't even have enough MPs to fill their allocated committee roles". This is bad because a weak opposition leads to poor government. If Labour are to be a "social democratic government" they need a decent Tory opposition "that keeps them focused". If I was Russ, I'd keep ..read more

The last 31 days have zipped by like nobody's business. But there was business done as far as this blog was concerned. What made waves among the internet-travelling public? 1. Politics After George Galloway's Victory 2. A Cynical Case of Fiscal Dishonesty 3. Why Reform Failed in Rochdale 4. The Political Uses of Racism 5. The Demise of Lee Anderson In other words, what made it were all the big political stories from the first half of the month. I know it was remiss not to discuss Owen Jones's resignation from Labour, Keir Starmer talking about his localisation agenda, the Angela Rayner "sca ..read more

Less frequent blogging = more frequent reading, as intended. Here's what I've burned through these last three months: Bourdieu and Literature by John RW Spellar 11.22.63 by Stephen King The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain Hyperion by Dan Simmons A Poetics of Postmodernism by Linda Hutcheon Serenade by James M Cain The Care Manifesto by The Care Collective The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons Tentacle by Rita Indiana The Monk by Matthew Lewis Gateway by Frederik Pohl The English Teacher by RK Narayan Lean On Me: A Politics of Radical Care by Lynne Segal The Anomaly by Herve Le Telli ..read more