The Tepid Take

I’m hardly the first person to throw the BBC in the bin. I respect their journalism and reject (most of) the hearsay that calls them thralls to the government position. Sure, they occasionally present news in an overtly straightforward way, without considering the systemic cause of the problem (see: late capitalism) but they’re not alone in that. To attack the BBC in principle is to attack an institution that most Britons instinctively respect and value – and thanks to hits like Top Gear and Doctor Who, consumers all over the world lean the same way. Yet, I can’t help but feel that the BBC’s tact on the recent fall into administration of His Master’s Voice , or HMV to his friends, is a tad off the mark. Immediately, as is so tempting nowadays, they err on the side of blaming digital streaming services: much like Netflix foresaw the collapse of Blockbuster, so Spotify, Amazon and Google have brought the downfall of outlets like HMV. Why buy a CD, DVD or any other physical media when y...

This piece was originally published in CityMetric in 2018. Imagine, for a moment, that you are wandering through the old town of Amsterdam. As a tourist, you might not be au fait with the smartcard system there, so you buy a “1 hour ticket” to travel across the city. You check in upon entering your first mode of transport, and then you’re free to mix transport modes as much as you like until your hour is up, when you are obliged to check out. This is only one fare of many different types that exist in Amsterdam, but it already differs radically from how things work in London. Here, buses and trams are consistently separate from the Underground and Overground when it comes to how much you pay. The only similarity is that both London and Amsterdam will ask you to pay extra if you want to use a national rail service. To make it plain, the difference is thus: fares align in Amsterdam – everything is included in the same fare, and it’s how long you travel for, not exactly where you tra...

The first “game show” ever to air took place in 1938, in the United Kingdom. It was called Spelling Bee, and consisted of a live enactment of said game. However, this ground-breaking first was notably short-lived, and ran for five episodes at most before ceasing production. Despite this commercial failure, the precedent had been set, and game shows soon grew strong in anglophone spheres on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps the most important knock-on effect of game shows' popularity was the launchpad they created for what we now call “panel shows”: game shows with celebrities, now broadly stand-up comedy vehicles where the points scored hardly matter at all. John Lloyd might be seen as the catalyst for this revolution, given his executive role in the creation of – among others – the News Quiz, QI, and Have I Got News for You. The contemporary panel show bears stark resemblance to its modern game show relatives, such as Take Me Out, Big Brother or even Eggheads. The notion of...

This piece was originally published in CityMetric in 2018. Capital cities are, more often than not, a focal point for the stark divide between rich and poor – places where the most economically deprived meet the most economically empowered. In London, these divides can be more than stark: they can be close, even intimate, and there are districts where crossing the street can be like entering a different world. One such street is the Caledonian Road. Known local as “the Cally”, Caledonian Road runs for about a mile and a half, from Kings Cross to the Nags Head junction in Holloway, and was built in 1826 to provide a new arterial route to the north from the West End. At first, developments on the road were sparse; among the first notable buildings were the Royal Caledonian Asylum, which gave the road its name, and H.M. Prison Pentonville. For some time, the northern half of the road was seen as far removed from central London, which stymied development. It wasn’t until the latter half of...

When someone says “socialist literature”, you probably think non-fiction, and then you probably think impenetrable and boring. Generalisation as that is, it’s a fair representation of the way material that presents itself as aiming to effect real political change can often cut itself off from its core audience as a result of alienating them by being simply too academic. Or at least, that’s the modern day conundrum, with a Brownite biography weighing in at more than 500 pages and using economic terminology that flummoxed even me, the soon-to-be politics grad, at points. Brown isn’t the only culprit; even the books written by Owen Jones are largely framed for the well-educated middle classes, when their core audience ought to be the working class they aim to actualise. What’s interesting is that this notion of political literature as something academic is actually relatively new. If we think back to Edwardian England, most leftist ideology was spread in small pamphlets and flyers desig...

I think it’s generally bad to point the finger. To single out an object, an individual or even a group and call them the unambiguous ‘problem’ tends lead us down a dark path. With this in mind, I have absolutely no problem with Lisa and Adam, the creators of Listography in all its forms. In fact, Lisa’s story on the founding of Listography is very heartfelt indeed. And it’s not the makers I’m interested in, anyway; I want to explore what the growth of Listography (and it has grown, exponentially) tells us about ourselves, our society, the way we behave, and more than anything, what we need. It pays to explain what Listography is. Originally started in 2006 as a website for collating personal lists, it has since expanded to include a multitude of books and even a board game. The nature of Listography is as simple as its portmanteau: using lists to explain something about yourself. Lisa says she would include a daily to-do list, a list of countries to visit, and a list of the best t...

In the closing chapter of The Old Patagonian Express, the writer, Paul Theroux, faces a problem: he has spent the entire book outlining his journey across America by the trains he takes along the way, with names like the Balboa Bullet and El Jarocho. However, as Theroux reaches the final stretch, the last few miles to the Tierra del Fuego - a journey intended as the ultimate reflective denouement - he finds this route has no calling card, no title; the motif has been broken by reality itself. Theroux won’t let this stand, so he decides to baptise the train himself, with the help of a boy across the aisle; it gives its name to the book, a symbol of Theroux’s ability to imprint what he has learned over two continents onto the miniscule details of provincial life. The journey changed him.  There is a stereotype, one that carries more than a grain of truth, about gap year students and other sorts who go on follies to faraway lands, always in the pursuit of “finding yourself”. The...