Category Archives: Culture

Now, what I want is, Facts

‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them . . . Stick to Facts, [...]

What is 'free' about the web?

Perversely, Web 2.0 has become synonymous with an American mythology of freedom. But information technology works best in small well-organised political units with high levels of social protection. So there is every reason to believe that the net works best with another notion of freedom – the security of knowing that failure will not have [...]

Hurrah! BBC licence fee increase preserves a bourgeois Pravda

But for how long? On 19 May, the Tory motion to freeze any increase in the BBC licence fee was defeated by 334 to 150 votes in the House of Commons. The compulsory tax of £11.62 per month on every household with a TV or radio, enforced by highly democratic ‘we know where you live’ [...]

It's official! Parasite blogging bastards have killed print journalism

Hold the front page – on second thoughts, don’t bother. There won’t be one to hold much longer. That bloody web thingy has eaten our journalists. Everything we hold dear – the right to be told what to think by poker-arsed blowhards in the pay of Illuminati kingmakers, fed and watered by PR lizards in [...]

Random facts about funhouse Britain from Thus

In no particular order, and with no special weighting, here are a few facts gleaned from the media with help from friends of Thus at Ten. Please feel free to send in your own facts. We need them in this era of spin and errant fantasy: 68% of Britons believe that MP’s salaries are ‘too [...]

Is Twitter the new Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep?

Twitter has soared like the mercury on an Australian thermometer to become one of the world’s most-visited websites. Facebook, its older cousin, the 5th most-used social networking utility, has become so alarmed that it is redesigning. Neither make money (nor does Thus, to be fair). The Twitter logo is a Disney birdie twittering on a [...]

Emigrate to Leicester: you could do a lot worse

Leicester is now officially one of the most diverse towns in the UK, forecast to be the first to have a majority non-white population by 2011. Good news for everyone, argues John Keyes. My memories of being brought up in Leicester are in most ways fairly typical of anybody of my age and class. Regiments of [...]

Not a lot happened in Hay-On-Wye while I was there . . .

. . . but everyone says the party started after I left.  By John J. Kelly Wordsworth famously observed that poetry takes its origin from ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.’ Art is emotion harnessed to artifice. The artist gives the impression of spontaneity. The work aims to evoke powerful emotions, but it is a representation of idealised [...]

Forcing teen mothers to work could be Labour's worst social policy idea yet

By Julia Margo, Demos One of the themes to emerge from debates last week about the Karen Matthews/Baby P/shocking state of social services scandals was the ongoing saga of Britain’s teenage birth rate, or more precisely the so-called benefit claiming class of teenage single mothers who suck up state resources and services, do not work, [...]

Another wrong move in the war against teenage binge drinking

In political circles we talk about the Problem of our Binge Drinking Culture as if it is something that can be solved with the right intervention or piece of legislation. By Julia Margo, Demos Much recent research has explored the causes of youth binge drinking. Work at Sheffield University has suggested that “cheap alcohol is [...]