lemon revolution

A song which you think initially, speaks of America's global dominance, the infiltration of British culture and a determination to break away, to run free from those haunting 'American satellites'. Yet the Roses never were nationalists, and Squire's bold cover-art here , a Union Jack splattered with the American stars, is about the closest the group ever came to acknowledging any kind of national identity. 'It's not where you're from, it's where you're at', of course, and emphatically, 'The British Empire? Just a bunch of public schoolkids playing about!' The latter offers a strong idea of exactly what Ian Brown and John Squire thought of imperial nostalgia. To me the song pens a beautiful tale of a ceaseless battler, the woman tirelessly threading a man's greatness and finally rising, stealing 'that which she never could own', and the immigrant 'racing from that hole' he calls home, lunging like the desperate...

Yesterday’s sandy Empires melt into the gorgeous warm air: a chewed fabric of me and you, them and us. Tales of revolt and domination: of slavery and struggle, salt and spice, of Che. Sugar canes wail and weep, and we dance alongside them. We pour ourselves into a glass filled with wine reddened by the gentle blood of everyone we ever loved, hated, feared and dreamed. I gaze at a pit of naked destitution, a soul of roaring fear advancing, spiralling towards me out of a television screen. And I see sadness, madness, joy and community. I see utopia.

A spectre is haunting not only our beloved school of Economics, yet indeed, the entire sphere Western education: the spectre of the 19th century priest, Cardinal Newman. A prominent thinker of his time and a prolific writer, it was Newman’s notion of the university: an institutional embodiment of the exploration of ‘universal knowledge’, a building site the intellect could turn to for the tools required to ‘perfect’ its very own ‘powers’, upon which the concept of a university was founded (Nichols, 2004: 262). And it is my belief that the real essence of Newman’s idea lies fossilised upon today’s grounds, an ancient ragged, ruptured remnant of the evolution of contemporary higher education. For the university system has abandoned the pursuit of understanding and knowledge, its chief propeller now engineered in the aim of, as the American cultural critic Henry Giroux (p. 110) describes, the ‘commodification of knowledge’: students find themselves playing the content role of...

Gramsci’s idea of football is certainly odd; the scholar Steve Jones describes the ol’ Italian’s mistake in the very first place, in suggesting football held no future in Italy, due to its Northern European ‘work ethic’. What else? Well, according to Gramsci, at a symbolic level of behaviour, football represents a capitalist society in flowing function. In the specialised, division of labour of roles across the pitch, football is described as crudely ‘individualistic’ and ‘hierarchical’. For Gramsci, this specialisation demands ‘initiative’; an initiative eagerly regulated by the rules upon which the game is structured, and to maintain the analogy with capitalist societies, the bourgeois bite of the law. Here, I think resides a painful, plaguing error of judgement, an error that decays the foundations of Gramsci’s argument in front of the reader’s eyes. The general, most basic rules of football are historically accepted; moments of tension surrounding the development of these ...

Yawn. That's all it induces, as your eyes doggedly scan the text, procuring the scarce semantics conveyed by the tiresome punchlines and lifeless descriptions. The text, exactly? Ed Miliband's latest interview in the New Statesman, of course. If, in some hypothetical, fitting theatrical realm, the Conservative Party was to secure the role of King Claudius, appointing from its considerable array of ministerial actors, the cursed Polonius would no doubt be assumed by Ed Miliband. The Labour leader as ever, offers little in the way of ingenuity, contradicts himself occasionally and intellectually, turns in speechless. Yet it seems as if Miliband cannot even summon the political fight to defend his own party. Labour's legacy in power remains under perpetual Conservative attack; verbal artillery decrying that ghastly, murderous, torturous, massacring, horrible, contemptible, foul  budget deficit remains live, the offensive driven forward by battle cries of irresponsibility and...

As Howard Webb's whistle drew the show to a close, some among the Anfield faithful reached with one hand to draw for their knives, offering only a tired groan of despondence in response to a performance that deserved little more. Of course, their sheaths contained no such weaponry, for the knives were drawn long, long ago, and the worn, tattered and blunt blades had rested in the other palm for so many a decade, that they had simply forgotten. For most, the knives were already waiting. Brendan Rodgers' second defeat in three league ties has punched Liverpool into a fiery media spotlight, and the Northern Irishman was already forced to assure reporters of his own position in the post-match press conference. "I have spoken to people in America since Friday. They have my thoughts", is the snippet Rodgers threw away in response to his club's dreadful end to the transfer window. A snippet that speaks volumes. A snippet eerily similar to the public lambastes Rodgers...

I am fortunate to have recently visited Portugal for a week, staying in the Vale do Lobo resort, located in the Southern region of Algrave, itself a hotbed for tourists, holidaymakers and the wealthy. I suppose then, that the punch of this article could leave the bruise of imperialist snobbery; the sort of finger-wagging, tut-tutting one would imagine Paris Hilton angrily demonstrating having encountered a beggar at Mumbai Airport. I assure you, this article should not; I am not demeaning the Portuguese people or protesting against them, and this should be clear throughout. Firstly, I do not hold that the poorer sections of society constitute the more animal elements of humanity, and secondly, even if I did, my personal situation would render me at an unfavourably ironic point of thought. The villa that myself and company resided in was burgled, at the rear end of the visit; following a meal, we returned to find a number of valuables missing, and an ajar patio door. As...