The Tepid Take

This piece was originally published in CityMetric in 2018. In Berlin, tourists from London, Paris, Madrid, or even Moscow may be surprised to find that upon leaving Schönefeld Airport, there are no ticket barriers greeting them at the nearby S-Bahn stop. Instead, all passengers are kindly reminded that before boarding their train, they should “validate” their travel with a stamp from one of the nearby machines. Anybody who forgets to do so is met with the less friendly reminder that the penalty fare for such an act is 60 euros. And I should know, because I’ve paid that very price. So why employ such a system? Although disconcerting at first, relying on ticket validation does make rather a lot of sense. Passengers can purchase as many tickets as they want, whenever they want, and simply stamp one every time they take a ride on the public transport network – be this by bus, tram, U-Bahn or S-Bahn. Day tickets are stamped when travellers take their first journey of the day, and are valid

     Earlier this week, Carillion collapsed in a sea of fire and envy, and I should know, because, absurdly, you can find my name at the end of a by-line about it for the Guardian. What’s important for us today, however, isn’t the Carillion liquidation per se, but how Jeremy Corbyn can capitalise on it, something that’s already been reported on by PSA Journalist of the Year, Stephen Bush. Stephen quite rightly points out that the collapse of a major government contractor is a good time for the opposition to hold the government to account and then pummel it into the ground; however, there’s some doubt over whether Corbyn is the best instigator of this scrutiny given the party’s previous inaction on the May Ministry’s problems, most notably the Junior Doctors scandal. However, the background to the Carillion mess is largely unlike that of Hunt’s NHS, and it actually has far more in common with another scandal we all remember: Grenfell Tower. The most notable similarity between these

     The other day, I found myself re-reading the affable graphic guide, Marx For Beginners. It’s a good book, if a little biased towards the man, and I’d recommend it if not for the fact that it was published when Germany was still two countries and the jury was still sort of out on the whole USSR thing, at least amongst Marxist circles. However, what's relevant for today is the book’s mentioning of Marx’s early foray into investigative journalism. While interesting, this is wholly unremarkable. Many latter-day social activists are writers and journalists as well as thinkers. However, at the time, Marx was remarkable for his desire to not just consider philosophy, but argue for it too, which is sort of what Dialectical Materialism was getting at (nowadays such a notion appears to be just a jumble full of words, untangled to suggest a polemic about real-world goings on; that is, what we’d consider modern day economic and political philosophy). Anyway, this whole investigative jour