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...

     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 investig...

The history of the “British Institution” is a fuzzy one. Some of the things we consider most British, of course, hold their roots in faraway lands, such as fish and chips or curry culture. Only once we take things down a notch and start laying claim to more banal inventions such as the sandwich do we find our place; inventions we pioneered, only to lose their legacy as other great powers laid their claims. While the Earl of Sandwich remains a memorable innovator, the humble notion of putting some meat in some bread was preceded by the kebab and superceded by the hamburger. Only in its most banal form does the British sandwich maintain its esteem , in giant factories, at the hands of companies constantly trying to find new ways to keep salad leaves fresh and tomatoes from going soggy.  It is in this banality, tied into an oft unexpected ingenuity, that the British Institution often sits. The telephone box, now a hotspot for free Wi-Fi . Doctor Who, now a harbinger for social cha...

This piece originally appeared in CityMetric in 2017. Seville, the fourth largest urban centre in Spain, was recently voted Lonely Planet’s number one city to visit in 2018. The award made a point of mentioning Seville’s impressive network of bicycles and trams, but it neglected to mention that it’s actually their ten year anniversary. The city’s metro opened just two years later. This makes now an excellent time to look back on Seville’s public transport network – especially because almost all of it was completed in the middle of the global financial crisis. So, is it a good model for modern public transport? Let’s find out. Cycle Hire Seville, like any good metropolis, features a cycle hire scheme: Sevici, which is a clever portmanteau of the words ‘Seville’ and ‘bici’, short for bicicleta, the Spanish for, you guessed it, bicycle. The service, launched in 2007, is run as a public-private partnership. Users can pay a flat weekly fee of €13.33 (£11.81) for unlimited rentals, as long ...

This piece originally appeared in CityMetric in 2017. The economics of supply and demand is a fickle friend to urban planners everywhere. Say you work in a city with traffic jams, and the council decides to increase road capacity. In the short run, productivity improves, as getting about the city becomes easier. But in the long run, the demand for roads increases as travelling by car becomes a more viable option for an increased number of commuters. Previously, these commuters might have taken public transport, or chosen not to travel. However, now that road capacity is greater, they are compelled to drive. This results in a return to the status quo of traffic jams, just on bigger roads. This phenomenon is ubiquitous in American cities such as Los Angeles, where public transport plays second fiddle to private. The same is true for housing. When demand for housing is high, but supply is low, common sense would dictate that housing supply ought to be increased in the areas where demand i...

A Fever Dream was released last month to a moderate fanfare from the Everything Everything’s dedicated fanbase. It had already been made clear by the band’s frontman, Jonathan Higgs, that the album would tackle the state of politics in 2017, making reference to the election of Donald Trump and the EU referendum in the UK. While the album has already been dissected with this in mind, I believe it is worth diving deeper to examine the specific allegories at play in A Fever Dream and what purpose they might serve. In other words, fair enough – the band is trying to talk about politics, just like they were, perhaps less overtly, on their last album, Get To Heaven. But what’s actually interesting is what they’re trying to say about politics. Any budding songwriter can write a song about how annoying Trump is – heck, Passenger went and did it , and who still listens to Passenger? Music, at least lyrically speaking, has more to say when it delves beyond the surface level, and that is exact...