Very enjoyable read that. Always tears me up a bit that song.
Yeah, love it, even Dario G couldn’t ruin it for me
I’m halfway through - it’s really good !
Children of the Neon Bamboo- can’t recommend enough
Wow pretty eye opening account
Love Dream Academy. Never quite got their due in the states (maybe anywhere for that matter), but those first two albums are gold.
“Weekender… Whatever you do just make sure what you’re doing makes you happy.”
Ian Dunt’s latest piece on his Substack. Worth a subscribe
This is a great piece. The horror we all refuse to look at. Only once have I ever heard a politician say they’d never use the bomb in any circumstances, a Scottish Presbytarian as I remember. The sanest thing I think I’ve ever heard a politician say.
A really touching piece by Sid Lowe on Athletic Bilbao’s 40 year wait for a trophy. The story of the Williams brothers whose Ghanaian parents literally walked across the desert to give them a better life is the stuff of a movie.
Just read this, not a new book by any means and probably should be retitled ‘The true history of Joseph Merrick’ in the 21st century… but nevertheless very moving humbling story
Small claims fun fact - The co-author of this book, Peter Ford, lives up here in Orkney, and I see him fairly regularly through work. A very nice old chap.
Pass on my regards, its very well researched,
Been reading that Dunt article above and this is the bit where imho it all unravels
Opposing nuclear weapons doesn’t mean you have to believe in immediate unilateral disarmament. It simply means that you show leadership by reducing your nuclear capacity rather than increasing it, and then use that leadership to try to secure international progress towards full multilateral disarmament according to a realistic timetable.
In order to talk to other state actors about disarmament, there has to be an element of trust, the idea that the other guy is sincerely committing to disarming too. in the 80s Gorbachev inspired trust at Reykjavik. Who resented Gorbachev more than any other Soviet officer? Vladimir Putin. The evil that followed all stems from that determination to never be ‘weak’ again. It wasn’t that Gorby was the nice smiling reformer of legend. It was the hard economic numbers that forced the Soviet hand. But in Russian folklore he was a sellout.
We now live in a world where nobody trusts anyone and where globalised economics are more even. The US are seen as raging hypocrites by much of the global East and South. It may be pure propaganda but lots of people on the ground buy it and the resentment is often real and justified. (see Middle East disasters). Likewise, much of the West still (reluctantly) buys into the US ‘world policeman’ role because the alternative is often even more terrifying. Exploitative rapacious capitalism v that sinister knock on the door OR actual anarchy. Most people in the West until now opted for the former, the perceived lesser evil.
So against this backdrop who the hell is gonna give their away their nuclear leverage? Nobody but a fool.
Dave Haslam has published a short form book called STRAWBERRY AND THE BIG APPLE: Grace Jones in Stockport, 1980 detailing why Grace asked to meet up with A Certain Ratio - fascinating subject, would love to know more.